University of Michigan activates antimatter 'gun,' cartoon supervillians twirl moustaches anew

At the University of Michigan, an international team of physicists has begun experimenting with its tabletop-sized super laser, modding it into an antimatter "gun." It's not quite a black hole-firing pistol, but we're slightly terrified nonetheless. Up until now, machines capable of creating positrons -- coupled with electrons, they comprise the energy similar to what's emitted by black holes and pulsars -- have needed to be as large as they are expensive. Creating these antimatter beams on a small scale will hopefully give astrophysicists greater insight into the "enigmatic features" of gamma ray bursts that are "virtually impossible to address by relying on direct observations," according to a paper published at arXiv. While the blasts only last fractions of a second each, the researchers report each firing produces a particle-density output level comparable to the accelerator at CERN. Just like that, the Longhorns/Wolverines super-laser arms-race begins again.

Washington Post reveals new PRISM slides, offers greater clarity into the US' surveillance operation

PRISM: The surveillance story that started with four leaked slides from the Washington Post, today gets a bit clearer. The publication has revealed four more annotated slides about the once-secret NSA operation, along with detailing the various levels of scrutiny from the FBI and NSA that happen before, during and after approved wiretaps take place. It seems that many of the measures make sure the warrantless data mining of US citizens occurs to the smallest extent possible and that FISA rules are followed -- still unsettling, nonetheless.
Detailing the process further, NSA analysts perform checks with supervisors to be certain intended targets are foreign nationals who aren't on US soil; approval is provided by way of "51-percent confidence" in assessments. During a "tasking process" search terms are entered, dubbed "selectors," which can tap into FBI gear installed within the private properties of participating companies -- so much for those denials. For live communications, this data goes straight to the NSA's PRINTAURA filtering system, while both the FBI and NSA scan pre-recorded data independently. Notably, live surveillance is indeed possible for the likes of text, voice and and instant message-based conversations, according to a slide that details how cases are notated. It's also worth mentioning that much of the collected metadata comes from programs outside of PRISM, as WP points out.
PRINTAURA is an overall filter for others, like NUCLEON for voice communications and MAINWAY for records of phone calls. Another two layers beyond that, called CONVEYANCE and FALLOUT, provide further filtering. Again, all of these checks apparently fine-tune results and help make sure they don't match up with US citizens. Results that return info about those in the US get scrapped, while those that have info about foreign targets mixed with US citizens get stored for up to five years. A total number of 117,675 active targets were listed as of April 5th, but the paper notes this doesn't reflect the amount of data that may also have been collected on American citizens. If you haven't already, now might be a great time to catch up on this whole PRISM fiasco to learn about how it might affect you. You'll find all the new slides and more detailed analysis at the source links.

UK consumers say the Galaxy S4 is the fastest smartphone with best battery life

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has won two award from UK consumer research company Which?. It found that Samsung’s Android flagship is not only the fastest smartphone currently on sale, but also the one with the best battery life.

Which? determined this by running the Geekbench 2 benchmark on selected smartphones. The Galaxy S4 got on top with 3188 points with the HTC One sitting in the second place with 2798. We also confirm this in our own benchmark results of the Galaxy S4, which you can check in our extensive review of the smartphone.
As far as battery test, the Galaxy S4 wins the gold as well with best call time and internet usage results. The Which? consumer research company uses its own phone network simulator, which ensures that the signal strength is the same every time.
And here’s a cool mini-infographic showing the battery performance of the tested devices.

Alt-week 6.29.13: DARPA's robot finalists, the IRIS solar mission and empathetic computers

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.

Sure, DARPA is slightly sinister, but it's so into robots that we're willing to let that slide. In fact, last year it launched the DARPA Robotics Challenge, and it just announced the top six nine seven teams to advance. But if just the idea of figuring out robotics frustrates you, NC State's face tracking program literally gets that, and NASA just launched the IRIS solar probe from the belly of a transport jet. It's Alt-week, baby.

Remember DARPA's Robotics Challenge (DRC) launched to create 'bots that would look like humans and perform real world tasks? Well, the military's skunkworks division just announced that its winnowed down the original 26 teams to seven after completion of the Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC) phase. To test them, DARPA created a cloud-based simulator, which teams used to simulate vehicle egress and driving, walking on rough, muddy terrain, attaching a hose to a spigot and turning a valve. While DARPA was planning on having six finalists, it turned out that JPL (which already has a DARPA-funded project and its own robot), decided to drop out and donate its resources Lockheed Martin's Trooper entry. At the same time, Team K from Japan and Case Western University pooled their resources and also received a donated ATLAS robot from Hong Kong University. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, DARPA decided after all that to keep seven teams, which will get an actual Boston Dynamics Atlas robot and more funding for the final DRC trials. Since that will no doubt produce the kind of entertainment we saw earlier this year at Engadget Expand, we can't wait.

NASA launches are always a hoot, even its so-called Small Explorer Missions. The IRIS solar observer is one of those, and was lofted into space on Thursday from an Orbital Sciences Pegasus rocket, which itself separated from the underside of a converted Lockheed L-1011 jet at around 40,000 feet. Now that it's in orbit at about 400 miles, IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) will begin observing solar material that transits a poorly understood region between the sun's photosphere and corona, causing solar winds and driving the million-degree atmosphere. It'll use an ultraviolet telescope built by Lockheed Martin to do that during its two year mission, which one day may improve solar forecasts and explain some of the bizarre tantrums occasionally thrown by our star.

Confused? That's a common issue for students learning computer science, and while in-the-flesh profs can easily see your anxious state, machines have no such empathy. Researchers from North Carolina State University want to change that, so they developed software that tracks facial expressions in order to predict the emotions of students during online tutoring sessions. Called JavaTutor, the program correctly sussed out moods 85 percent of the time and "will not only respond to what a students knows, but to (his or her) feelings of frustration or engagement," according to assistant professor Dr. Kristy Boyer. That'll lead to the next stage of research -- providing both "cognitive and emotion-based feedback to students" during learning sessions, which the scientists claim could have a dramatic effect on retention. Sounds good, but if you put that together with DARPA's project above, the result could be a scary-looking robot that senses your fear.