National Geographic Robots Get Intimate With Lions

There is most definitely such a thing as getting way too close to lions. Way too close means close enough that lions can chase you down and tackle you and bite your legs off. Don't let this happen to you. Next time you find yourself in the Serengeti trying to snap the perfect lion picture, just do what the pros over at National Geographic do and enlist the assistance of a little tracked camera robot.

There's even better footage of the robot on the NatGeo website, although, be warned, when we say that some of these lion encounters are intimate, we mean intimate. Yeeeah. Slightly creepy robot, no?

This is not the first time humans use robots to spy on wild animals. We've seen robotic cameras used to film lions before (though not as close), as well aspenguins, zebras, and bonobos.

Photographer Michael "Nick" Nichols talked to NatGeo about how he made all of this stuff work; we've reposted a few of the robotics-heavy answers below, and you can read the full interview here.

Why did you decide to use a remote-controlled camera robot?

 

You don't want to be looking down on animals: They hate it; it is demeaning to them. Old zoos put the animals in pits, but if you go to a modern zoo you look up at the tigers. That makes their lives better; it makes them feel like king of the beasts. I couldn't bear photographing lions looking down on them; it made me sick to my stomach. I wanted to photograph them at their level or lower.

 

So we had a ground-level robot, basically a mini remote-controlled tank. It was from a company that makes them to defuse bombs and stuff like that, called SuperDroid Robots.

 

We had no idea when we started two years ago if we could actually do it, but when you think about lions and who they are, they are so supremely confident that they could give a **** about this robot. An elephant would stomp it or run away, and all other animals would run away.

 

After only three visits they didn't care about that tank. At first they were cautious. Some of the most cautious ones moved to the back of the family. But after five or six times they were all falling asleep with it.

 

How did the micro-drone work out?

 

We had a MikroKopter to give us a view of the Serengeti without bringing in a helicopter. Those are dangerous. They require a lot of permits to fly low, and they make a lot of noise and smoke, which scares lions away. Using planes and helicopters was a life of frustration. You have to hire them in advance, so you never have them when you need them.

 

At first the lions were a little spooked [by the MikroKopter], but then they seemed to have fun with it. One time one of the pride even jumped and tried to grab it. They seemed to know [the remote-controlled devices] came from us; they saw our green car, and they knew we didn't prevent them from getting a meal. So we could fly over these lions when they were sleeping. We crashed it a few times and had to replace it.

That's the nice thing about robots, though: you can crash them, or a lion can take a chunk out of one, and you can just buy a new one. It's a much better solution than an emergency airlift to the nearest hospital to try to find someone who can stitch your legs back on.

How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

Once a secret project, Google's autonomous vehicles are now out in the open, quite literally, with the company test-driving them on public roads and, on one occasion, even inviting people to ride inside one of the robot cars as it raced around a closed course.

Google's fleet of robotic Toyota Priuses has now logged more than 190,000 miles (about 300,000 kilometers), driving in city traffic, busy highways, and mountainous roads with only occasional human intervention. The project is still far from becoming commercially viable, but Google has set up a demonstration system on its campus, using driverless golf carts, which points to how the technology could change transportation even in the near future.

Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun, who guides the project, and Google engineer Chris Urmson discussed these and other details in a keynote speech at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco last month.

Thrun and Urmson explained how the car works and showed videos of the road tests, including footage of what the on-board computer "sees" [image below] and how it detects other vehicles, pedestrians, and traffic lights.

Google has released details and videos of the project before, but this is the first time I have seen some of this footage -- and it's impressive. It actually changed my views of the whole project, which I used to consider a bit far-fetched. Now I think this technology could really help to achieve some of the goals Thrun has in sight: Reducing road accidents, congestion, and fuel consumption.

Watch:

Urmson, who is the tech lead for the project, said that the "heart of our system" is a laser range finder mounted on the roof of the car. The device, aVelodyne 64-beam laser, generates a detailed 3D map of the environment. The car then combines the laser measurements with high-resolution maps of the world, producing different types of data models that allow it to drive itself while avoiding obstacles and respecting traffic laws.

The vehicle also carries other sensors, which include: four radars, mounted on the front and rear bumpers, that allow the car to "see" far enough to be able to deal with fast traffic on freeways; a camera, positioned near the rear-view mirror, that detects traffic lights; and a GPS, inertial measurement unit, and wheel encoder, that determine the vehicle's location and keep track of its movements.

Here's a slide showing the different subsystems (the camera is not shown):

Two things seem particularly interesting about Google's approach. First, it relies on very detailed maps of the roads and terrain, something that Urmson said is essential to determine accurately where the car is. Using GPS-based techniques alone, he said, the location could be off by several meters.

The second thing is that, before sending the self-driving car on a road test, Google engineers drive along the route one or more times to gather data about the environment. When it's the autonomous vehicle's turn to drive itself, it compares the data it is acquiring to the previously recorded data, an approach that is useful to differentiate pedestrians from stationary objects like poles and mailboxes.

The video above shows the results. At one point you can see the car stopping at an intersection. After the light turns green, the car starts a left turn, but there are pedestrians crossing. No problem: It yields to the pedestrians, and even to a guy who decides to cross at the last minute.

Sometimes, however, the car has to be more "aggressive." When going through a four-way intersection, for example, it yields to other vehicles based on road rules; but if other cars don't reciprocate, it advances a bit to show to the other drivers its intention. Without programming that kind of behavior, Urmson said, it would be impossible for the robot car to drive in the real world.

Clearly, the Google engineers are having a lot of fun (fast forward to 13:00 to see Urmson smiling broadly as the car speeds through Google's parking lot, the tires squealing at every turn).

But the project has a serious side. Thrun and his Google colleagues, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are convinced that smarter vehicles could help make transportation safer and more efficient: Cars would drive closer to each other, making better use of the 80 percent to 90 percent of empty space on roads, and also form speedy convoys on freeways.

They would react faster than humans to avoid accidents, potentially saving thousands of lives. Making vehicles smarter will require lots of computing power and data, and that's why it makes sense for Google to back the project, Thrun said in his keynote.

Urmson described another scenario they envision: Vehicles would become a shared resource, a service that people would use when needed. You'd just tap on your smartphone, and an autonomous car would show up where you are, ready to drive you anywhere. You'd just sit and relax or do work.

He said they put together a video showing a concept called Caddy Beta that demonstrates the idea of shared vehicles -- in this case, a fleet of autonomous golf carts. He said the golf carts are much simpler than the Priuses in terms of on-board sensors and computers. In fact, the carts communicate with sensors in the environment to determined their location and "see" the incoming traffic.

"This is one way we see in the future this technology can . . . actually make transportation better, make it more efficient," Urmson said.

Watch:

Thrun and Urmson acknowledged that there are many challenges ahead, including improving the reliability of the cars and addressing daunting legal and liability issues. But they are optimistic (Nevada recently became the first U.S. state to make self-driving cars legal.) All the problems of transportation that people see as a huge waste, "we see that as an opportunity," Thrun said.

Next-gen iPhone said to be 31 percent faster than iPhone 5

Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5S is rumored to be more than 30 percent faster than the iPhone 5. Specifically, the next generation A7 chip is said to be 31 percent faster than the A6 that powers the iPhone 5 and the fourth gen iPad according to sources as reported by Fox News anchor Clayton Morris.

A speed increase of this caliber would certainly put Apple’s flagship handset in line with other high-end phones on the market from Samsung, HTC and LG. That’s especially true when you consider it’ll likely be a dual-core chip while virtually every other manufacturer has moved to quad-core components. But perhaps even more interesting are rumors that Apple is also testing 64-bit processors in some of their iPhone 5S prototypes.

9to5Mac said they’ve heard independent claims that Apple is indeed testing 64-bit chips inside select iPhone 5S prototypes. The bump from 32-bit to 64-bit will reportedly boost the A7’s ability to handle tasks like animations, transparencies and other iOS 7 graphic effects. This same chip, or perhaps an even more advanced one, is expected to show up in the fifth generation iPad.

If the move to 64-bit doesn’t take place this year, we’ll likely see it happen in 2014 with the A8 according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Apple’s next iPhone is widely expected to be revealed alongside a cheaper model known as the iPhone 5C during a press event on September 10.  Cupertino has yet to confirm the date but given the fact that it’s fast approaching, we’ll likely hear an official announcement this week.

Intel to publicly demonstrate solid state drive overclocking at IDF

Enthusiasts have been squeezing extra performance out of processors, memory and graphics cards via overclocking for as long as I can remember. The challenge and ultimate satisfaction of achieving a stable overclock can often be more rewarding than the performance gains which is why Intel’s first public demonstration of overclocking a solid state drive piqued my interest so.

Next month’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco will be the stage for the tech demo according to a published session agenda titled Overclocking Unlocked Intel Core Processors for High Performance Gaming and Content Creation. Specifically, Intel mentions the first public demonstration of overclocking Intel SSDs will occur. The talk is scheduled for the morning of September 10 at 11:00 AM.

There’s not a whole lot to go on otherwise, but the idea itself brings up a few possible scenarios. Intel could be prepared to let users overclock the controller chip on their solid state drive or perhaps enable overclocking of the storage interface – either SATA or PCIe. The latter seems a bit less likely from a practical standpoint as overclocking the entire interface would also affect other connected devices.

While the idea of a faster anything is always welcomed, I’m also a bit leery of overclocking a storage device as one false move or bad overclock could potentially spell disaster for valuable data. I’d venture a guess that Intel has thought about this as well and has some sort of data loss prevention method in place, however.

Researchers modify handsets to block others' calls and SMS messages

Security researchers from the Technical University of Berlin have discovered a new way to block both phone calls and SMS messages with just a few software modifications to their own mobile device. According to the MIT Technology Review, the exploit works by embedding custom firmware in the baseband processor -- the component of the phone responsible for communicating with nearby network towers.

Under normal circumstances, when a call is sent out, the tower sends out a “ping” to the intended recipient. Before the call is properly connected or the SMS message is received, the intended receiver must answer back by effectively saying “it’s me”. The modified handsets, however, intercepts these signals by responding to the “pings” faster than the actual recipient. As a result, the unknowing victim never receives the message. If the hack is pulled off successfully, it can steal communications within an area approximately 75 square miles in size.

Fortunately, there are some restrictions as to what the exploit can actually do and who the software can target. First off, Motorola phones are currently the only known handsets that can be modified for these purposes.The jammers also only affect 2G GSM networks, rendering them useless against 3G and 4G variants. That being said, GSM networks are still the most popular network worldwide and are used by nearly 4 billion people.

Another limitation is that only phones under the same provider can have their communications blocked; for example, T-Mobile phones are immune to modified Verizon handsets. Most importantly, the hack can’t actually be used to listen in on calls or read SMS messages; disrupting the pinging process is about as far as the research group went.

Interestingly, the threat could be eliminated if current GSM protocols are altered to include the exchange of encrypted codes. This safeguard isn’t expected to be deployed anytime soon though - not unless there’s imminent danger. Victor Bahl, principle researcher of the mobility and networking research group at Microsoft, explained, “The defense is expensive to deploy. I can only speculate that the cell network providers are reluctant to invest in mitigation strategies in the absence of an immediate threat.”

A third of American adults don't have broadband access at home

It may be tough to believe given our connected audience but it’s true: nearly one out of every three adults in the US don't have high speed Internet access at home. What’s more, three percent of American adults still connect to the web using a dial-up connection – a figure that’s held steady over the past two years – according to the latest survey from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

The research firm further found that the number of adults that don’t use the Internet has dropped by 50 percent over the past five years, from 30 percent to just 15 percent. It appears that much of this growth comes from smartphone usage and accessing the web at work.

As was the case in previous research, college graduates, adults under age 50 and adults living in households earning at least $50,000, as well as whites and adults living in urban or suburban areas represent those with the highest rates of home broadband adoption.

Kathryn Zickuhr, research associate for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and lead author of the report said they’ve consistently found that age, education and household income are among the strongest factors associated with home broadband adoption. Many dial-up users cite cost and access as the main reasons they don’t have broadband, she said, but for adults who don’t use the Internet at all, a lack of interest is often the main issue.

Elsewhere, 46 percent of Americans polled said they have both a smartphone and broadband access at home. 24 percent reported having broadband but no smartphone while 10 percent had a smartphone without high-speed Internet access at home.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire as company faces needed shake-up

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will stay on at the company until a successor is found. 

Microsoft has stepped into a new and uncertain era with the announcement that CEO Steve Ballmer will retire within 12 months, triggering a search for a successor to take over the software behemoth.

The announcement on Friday surprised analysts and investors and sent shares surging, reflecting belief that the company will benefit from new leadership as it tries to innovate and chase the market for smartphones and tablets.

"There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time," Ballmer said in a statement.

The company needed a leader who could see through its reorganisation and new strategy, he added. "My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company's transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction."

Ballmer, 57, who succeeded Bill Gates as CEO in 2000, will stay on until a successor is found. Gates, who is now chairman of the board, will be part of a small committee tasked with finding the successor. It will be chaired by John Thompson, the board's lead independent director, and consider internal and external candidates.

"I'll work closely with the other members of the board to identify a great new CEO," said Gates. "We're fortunate to have Steve in his role until the new CEO assumes these duties."

Devices chief Julie Larson-Green was tipped as the most obvious internal candidate but many analysts urged Microsoft to plump for an outsider to shake things up.

Ballmer's departure will likely draw a line under Microsoft's origins and traditional tenure. He first met Gates in 1973 when they shared a dormitory hall at Harvard university. He joined the company in 1980 – the company's 30th employee – after it landed a contract to supply an operating system to IBM and swiftly rose up the ranks.

Under Ballmer the company developed successful products like WindowsXP and the Xbox 360. It grew to be worth $78bn and employ more than 100,000 people. It has more than a billion users and remains immensely profitable.

Over the past decade, however, its share price stagnated in contrast to the meteor-like performance of Apple, Google and Amazon. Once the world's most valuable company, Microsoft hemorrhaged more than half of its market value.
Critics accused Ballmer of failing to anticipate the explosive growth in tablets and smartphones and the decline of personal computers.

Some, though not all, were appeased by a 22% jump in share price this year after the company started developing and selling its own tablet-style computer.

"The stock is at a relative high at the moment. So it's better to leave on a high note rather than a low note," said Vasudev Bhandarkar, CEO of the Silicon Valley-based Caralta Corporation.

"If you look at the various revenue streams the future doesn't hold very much for the PC industry. Sales are flattening, revenue streams are under attack. Microsoft will have to reinvent itself just like it did in the internet age."

Last month Ballmer announced a sweeping reorganisation to focus more on hardware and make the company nimbler. It appeared to mimic Apple by dividing itself into functions each dedicated to a single purpose such as operating systems, devices, apps or services.

Ballmer fired Steven Sinofsky, who had run Windows and was considered to be the heir apparent, to pave the change.

Many concluded this meant the CEO would stay for the foreseeable future at the corporation's sprawling campus in Redmond, Washington.

"That's why today's news is even more surprising after Ballmer achieved such a big change for Microsoft. If his or her successor doesn't like the 'One Microsoft' vision, he'll have to do another reorganization," notedTechCrunch.

Ballmer's personal wealth is estimated at $15.2bn, which includes about 4% of Microsoft's stock. Born in Detroit, the son of a Ford motor company manager, he studied applied mathematics and economics at Harvard. He worked at Proctor & Gamble and later dropped out of Stanford's graduate school of business to join Microsoft.

Leaving was an emotional, difficult decision, he wrote in a letter to employees.

"I take this step in the best interests of the company I love; it is the thing outside of my family and closest friends that matters to me most."

Google now encrypts cloud storage by default

Google's Cloud Storage service now automatically encrypts all its customer data for free, the company said Thursday.

The encryption has "no visible performance impact," Google Cloud Storage's product manager, Dave Barth, wrote in a blog post. "If you require encryption for your data, this functionality frees you from the hassle and risk of managing your own encryption and decryption keys," he said.

New files added to Cloud Storage will be encrypted as they're uploaded and before they're saved to a drive. Older files will be migrated "in the coming months," Barth said. This is part of Google's emphasis on "forward secrecy," which many Internet companies have yet to adopt.

When asked about how Google handles encrypted data when requested by a government agency, the company repeated in a statement that user information is only provided "in accordance with the law."

"We don't provide our encryption keys to any government," said a Google spokesperson. "We believe we're an industry leader in providing strong encryption, along with other security safeguards and tools."

Google's Cloud Storage uses 128-bitAdvanced Encryption Standard (AES), a lower standard of encryption than the 256-bit AES that's often used to protect password managers and financial data.

Developers can still use their own encryption and manage their own keys.

Basically, this completes Google's quest to encrypt all of your data in its Cloud Platform. It adds to the encryption offered by the Google Compute Engine's Persistent Disks and Scratch Disks, so that all data saved to unstructured storage on the Google Cloud Platform gets protected automatically.

Windows 8.1 is ready, gets released to manufacturers

There's still no indication that developers or users are going to get the gold bits before October 18.

They said they'd do it by the end of August. And as we head into the last stretch, it seems Microsoft has released to manufacturing (RTMed) Windows 8.1, its next release of Windows.

Windows SuperSite editor Paul Thurrott tweeted on August 23 that Windows 8.1 had RTM'd. Thurrott said the final RTM build number is 9600.16384.130821-1623.

I talked to another contact of mine who said the internal RTM e-mail made the rounds inside the Windows division on August 23. A third source close to the company confirmed Microsoft RTM'd Windows 8.1 on August 23, and announced internally that the quality metrics for Windows 8.1 were back in line with those of Windows 7. (The vast amount of changes in the Windows 8 code base resulted in an increased number of crashes and hangs for Windows 8, one of my contacts explained.)

I asked a Microsoft spokesperson if Windows 8.1 RTM'd on August 23 and was told the company had no comment.

Microsoft may have opted against announcing Windows 8.1's  RTM on Friday so that the news wouldn't be overshadowed by the announcement that CEO Steve Ballmer is retiring some time within the next 12 months. As I blogged previously, my sources saidMicrosoft was targeting Monday August 26 as the day it would RTM Windows 8.1.

In June, officials said that Microsoft would be providing the final RTM bits to OEMs before the end of August.

The real question on some developers', IT pros', and other users' minds is whether Microsoft will make the RTM bits available to anyone early. In other words, will TechNet and MSDN subscribers get the Windows 8.1 gold bits in the next couple weeks or so, as Microsoft has done traditionally?

As I've noted previously, my sources said that Microsoft's game plan is to withhold the Windows 8.1 RTM bits until launch this year, which means almost no one outside (other than OEMs) would get officially released Windows 8.1 bits until October 18.

Microsoft may reverse that decision, but on the server side of the house, officials admitted that the Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Intune Wave E offeringswon't go to anyone in final form before October 18.

Windows 8.1, codenamed "Blue," is introducing a number of changes designed to make the new operating system more palatable to current Windows users. Windows 8.1 is adding a Start Button, a boot-straight-to-desktop option; the ability to unpin all Metro apps; built-in tutorials; an improved Windows Store and a host of other consumer- and business-focused features. Microsoft launched its one and only Windows 8.1 consumer preview test build in late June.

The biology behind a beer's 'bite': You're tasting carbonic acid!

Researchers say the characteristic "bite" that's associated with beer and other carbonated beverages comes from carbonic acid rather than carbon dioxide bubbles. The bubbles add to the appeal of a fizzy drink, but through the sense of touch rather than taste.

Researchers say the refreshing bite you get from an ice-cold beer or soda comes from a chemical reaction that's going on inside your mouth — a reaction that turns the beverage's carbon dioxide bubbles into irritating carbonic acid.

That's right: It's not the bubbles. It's the acid.

"Carbonation bite is an acidic chemical sensation rather than a purely physical, tactile one," Bruce Bryant, a sensory biologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said in a news release Wednesday. Bryant is one of the authors of a study on the biology behind the "bite,"published in the open-access PLOS ONE.

Bryant and his colleagues found that the bubbles do enhance the overall sensation of carbonation — but by stimulating the sense of touch rather than taste.

Feeling the pressureHere's how they figured it out: In the first stage of their experiment, they took 12 healthy adults and sat them down in a hyperbaric chamber — a sealed room where the atmospheric pressure can be raised to twice as much as normal. At that pressure, the CO2 that's dissolved in a liquid can't form bubbles.

The researchers asked their subjects to rate the intensity of the "bite" produced by various concentrations of plain carbonated water, at normal pressure and at high pressure. The ratings were the same, whether or not bubbles were produced.

Previous research has shown that carbonic acid has an irritating effect on nerve cells in the tongue, sending mild pain signals to the brain. The Monell experiment showed that the effect was pretty much the same whether or not there were actually bubbles in the beverage, as long as the carbon dioxide was turned into carbonic acid. But does that mean the bubbles are unnecessary?

To answer that question, the researchers set up another experiment: This time, the researchers added some extra air bubbles to the carbonated water. They expected that there'd be no difference, but were surprised to find that the air bubbles actually enhanced the bite of the carbon dioxide bubbles. Presumably, the "mouthfeel" of the bubbles added an extra dimension to the experience of fizz.

"We thought the touch of the bubbles would suppress the painful aspects of carbonation, much as itching a mosquito bite or rubbing a sore muscle does," Bryant said.

Flat vs. fizzyOne of Bryant's colleagues at the Monell Center, Paul Wise, told NBC News that the findings are in line with observations reported by mountain climbers. "They found that their 'victory beer' on top of the mountain tasted flat," Wise said. It turns out that climbers often take a drug known as acetazolamide, or Diamox, to counter altitude sickness. That drug blocks the conversion of carbon dioxide to carbonic acid — and thus dulls the beer's bite.

How about adding carbonic acid to a flat beverage? Would that give you the bite without the bubbles? That's an iffy proposition. "It just might be horrendously sour," Wise said.

"That's why CO2 is so wonderful," he added, "because it doesn't seem to stimulate taste nerves directly, but it goes into the tissue and produces the acid both inside the nerve endings and in the tissue surrounding the nerve endings."

He acknowledged that there's much more to a fizzy beverage than its bite. For instance, researchers have found that the carbon dioxide bubbles in Champagne transport volatile organic chemicals into the nose, stimulating all the olfactory sensations that are associated with a fine sparkling wine. The flavor of a beverage arises from the complex interplay of taste, smell and touch. "Ultimately, we're taking little simple pieces and working up to the more complex interaction," Wise said.

If you want to enhance the bite of your fizzy drink, here's a tip: Chill it down as much as you can. "There's a very strong interaction between temperature and carbonation bite," Wise said. "You get a much stronger bite when it's colder than when it's warmer."

Researchers haven't yet completely figured out why that is, but Wise said "it seems that somehow there are temperature-sensitive nerves that are involved in enhancing the bite of CO2." Just as hot-sauce lovers learn to yearn for the irritating sensation of capsaicin, fans of fizzy drinks get hooked on the nerve-tingling bite of a cold carbonated beverage.

Atomic clock breakthrough: It could be time to test Einstein theories

Scientists have designed a new atomic clock, using laser light and ytterbium atoms, that is 10 times more stable than previously reported clocks. Ytterbium atoms are generated in an oven (large metal cylinder on the left) and sent to a vacuum chamber in the center of the photo to be manipulated and probed by lasers. Laser light is transported to the clock by five fibers.

Atomic clocks are set to become even more precise than they currently are.

A new technique can ensure that the "ticking" of individual atoms — which is the basis of atomic clocks — is extremely constant, with the interval between ticks varying by less than two parts in 1 quintillion (1 followed by 18 zeros). That would lead to atomic clocks that are about 10 times more stable than the previously described clocks.

The new breakthrough, described Thursday in the journal Science, may not help people make their 9 o'clock meetings, but it could pave the way for atomic clocks so precise that physicists could test Einstein's theory of general relativity or probe the mysteries of the fundamental constants. [The 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]

Atomic clocksThe current U.S. time standard is set by cesium clocks, in which cesium atoms are pulsed with microwaves. The microwaves cause the cesium atoms' outer electrons to jump to a higher energy level, and the resulting vibration rate sets the clock's tick rate.

But newer atomic clocks have the potential to become even more accurate. Instead of using microwaves, these clocks trap bunches of atoms within standing waves of a powerful laser and excite these atoms with a second laser. The lasers can cause the atoms to vibrate, or "tick," at a higher frequency than the old microwave method could.

"The higher the ticking rate, the more finely you can divide time up," said study co-author Andrew Ludlow, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo.

Quantum mechanics prohibits scientists from knowing what any particular atom does, precisely, but researchers can average the energy jumps of thousands of atoms to calculate an incredibly precise measure, Ludlow added.

Ultrastable clockIn the current study, Ludlow and his colleagues cooled 10,000 ytterbium atoms to 10 Microkelvin, just a hair's breadth away from absolute zero. Next, they trapped the atoms in tiny wells formed by the laser's standing wave. A second laser, which oscillates 518 trillion times a second, excited the atoms.

The team achieved incredibly stable ticks by developing lasers that produce very little noise, or instability in the light wave. At the same time, they accounted for or eliminated many factors that jostle atoms around and would have led to greater unpredictability in their behavior.

Testing basic physicsIf the new technology can be incorporated into an atomic clock, it could provide incredibly precise measurements of time. That, in turn, could shed light on some of the most mysterious problems in physics.

Einstein's theory of relativity, which explains how gravity warps space-time, is incompatible with quantum mechanics, the reigning model that explains the behavior of the tiny particles that make up matter. Because gravity slows time, atomic clocks will actually tick more slowly in a gravitational field — a phenomenon known as gravitational red shift. But some theories predict that gravitational red shifting breaks down, and ultraprecise clocks could test to see whether that happens by even the tiniest amount.

Other physicists have proposed that the fundamental constants, such as the ratio of electron-to-proton mass or the speed of light in a vacuum, may not be so constant after all. Incredibly precise atomic clocks could begin to test that proposition.

"These clocks are weakly sensitive to the value of these constants, so you can try to ascertain whether the underlying atomic constants are changing," Ludlow told LiveScience.

Yahoo jumps 3.5% on Internet audience crown

SAN FRANCISCO -- Shares of Yahoo surged on news that it took the crown for largest Internet audience.

Yahoo rose 3.5%, to $28, on a report the company passed Internet search giant Google for the top spot.

Yahoo edged past its rival with 196.6 million unique visitors for the month of July compared with 192.3 million unique visitors at Google. Microsoft came in third and Facebook held the No. 4 position, according to the report from comScore.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been laser-focused on both refreshing existing products -- such as Weather and Mail -- as well as acquiring new ones to fold into its properties. Mayer's buying binge has gobbled over 20 companies since she took the top spot. Yahoo acquired photo-sharing site Tumblr in May for $1.1 billion.

Mayer has been touting Yahoo's focus on "beautiful products" and the boost to engagement and page views across its sites.

Despite the advances, Yahoo still remains a distant third behind Facebook and Google in display advertising, a position that is slipping. Yahoo's share of the display ad market is forecast to slide to 7.9% in 2013 from 9.2% last year.