An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: A team of scientists in China are reporting that they have now performed the most precise measurement of gravity's strength yet by measuring G, the Newtonian or universal gravitational constant. G relates the gravitational attraction between two objects to their masses and the distance between them. The new measurement is important both for high-powered atomic clocks as well as the study of the universe, earth science, or any kind of science that relies on gravity in some way. The values measured by the team "have the smallest uncertainties reported until now," according to the paper published in Nature.

In the new study, scientists performed two independent calculations of G using a pair of pendulums in a vacuum, one pendulum setup for each test. Each pendulum swings back and forth between a pair of massive objects whose positions can be adjusted. The pendulums measure the force of gravity in two ways. First, they measure the difference between how quickly the pendulum swings to the "near," or parallel position, versus the "far," or horizontal position. They also measure how the direction of the pendulum's swing changes based on the pull of the test masses. The researchers ended up measuring 6.674184 and 6.674484 hundred billionths (10-11) for the time-of-swinging and angular acceleration methods, respectively. These measures were both very precise, but are still different from one another for unknown reasons. This might have had something to do with the string used for the pendulum. The paper's reviewer, Stephan Schlamminger from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, wrote in a commentary: "Li et al. carried out their experiments with great care and gave a detailed description of their work. The study is an example of excellent craftsmanship in precision measurements. However, the true value of G remains unclear. Various determinations of G that have been made over the past 40 years have a wide spread of values. Although some of the individual relative uncertainties are of the order of 10 parts per million, the difference between the smallest and largest values is about 500 parts per million."

Sportsbooks have closed 50,000 betting accounts just in the U.K. -- and placed strict limits on 50,000 more, according to gaming experts contacted by ESPN. "Bookmakers from London to Las Vegas are refusing to take bets from a growing number of customers whose only offense might be trying to win." Banning or limiting sophisticated players has been a regular part of Las Vegas sports betting for decades, and, like in the U.K., there's absolutely nothing illegal about it. Bettors say the practice is increasing and has even occurred in some of the new states (such as New Jersey) that have entered into the now-legal bookmaking game in recent months. "Americans should be worried," said Brian Chappell, a founder for the U.K. bettor advocacy group Justice for Punters. "It's coming."

In Nevada, refusing to take bets from any customer, from card counters to wise-guy sports bettors, is completely within any casino's legal rights. From Caesars Palace to the Venetian to more local spots like Station Casinos, every bookmaker in town will tell you -- albeit somewhat quietly -- that they've 86'd customers for one reason or another. Seasoned bettors are concerned, though, that the practice of banning or limiting accounts is not only increasing, but the reasoning behind the decisions is becoming more and more suspect. Many believe that the only thing betting intelligently will get you at some shops is a one-way ticket to being thrown out...

In shooting for commercial success, should bookmakers be allowed to refuse to take bets from customers who take steps to try to win? On the other hand, should a business be forced to take on a customer they fear will repeatedly damage its bottom line? The debate is getting ready to play out in state legislatures across the U.S. In May, the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on state-sponsored sports betting. Full-scale, legal sportsbooks have since opened in Delaware, Mississippi and New Jersey, and many more states are expected to pass sports betting laws and set up regulations in the coming months and years.
"In the end, you have two professions, each trying to increase profits, but only one side gets to make the rules," concludes ESPN.

One London-based veteran of the international sports betting industry even suggests a peer-to-peer betting exchange which simply pairs people betting on opposing outcomes -- thus taking a commission, but not facing any risk.

It's a well-documented, often criticized phenomenon that women's pockets are too small to fit a smartphone, but "there's been very little data to back up a wealth of anecdotal evidence," writes Megan Farokhmanesh via The Verge. Now, The Pudding has used scientific findings to fill this absence. From the report: According to The Pudding's findings, pockets in women's jeans are, on average, 48 percent shorter and 6.5 percent narrower than those of men's. To put this into a perspective we all care about, the site says that only 40 percent of women's front pockets can completely fit a iPhone X. The number only goes down for the Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel (20 percent and 5 percent, respectively, though the report doesn't specify which model) of the flagships). As for men's pockets? The Pudding marks a 100 percent success rate for the iPhone X, 95 percent for the Samsung Galaxy, and 85 percent for the Google Pixel. "If you're thinking 'But men are bigger than women,' then sure, on average that's true," the site adds. "But here we measured 80 pairs of jeans that all boasted a 32 inch waistband, meaning that these jeans were all made to fit the same size person."

If you happen to have a box of spaghetti in your pantry, try this experiment: Pull out a single spaghetti stick and hold it at both ends. Now bend it until it breaks. How many fragments did you make? If the answer is three or more, pull out another stick and try again. Can you break the noodle in two? If not, you're in very good company. From a report: The spaghetti challenge has flummoxed even the likes of famed physicist Richard Feynman '39, who once spent a good portion of an evening breaking pasta and looking for a theoretical explanation for why the sticks refused to snap in two. Feynman's kitchen experiment remained unresolved until 2005, when physicists from France pieced together a theory to describe the forces at work when spaghetti -- and any long, thin rod -- is bent. They found that when a stick is bent evenly from both ends, it will break near the center, where it is most curved. This initial break triggers a "snap-back" effect and a bending wave, or vibration, that further fractures the stick. Their theory, which won the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize, seemed to solve Feynman's puzzle. But a question remained: Could spaghetti ever be coerced to break in two?

The answer, according to a new MIT study, is yes -- with a twist. In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report that they have found a way to break spaghetti in two, by both bending and twisting the dry noodles. They carried out experiments with hundreds of spaghetti sticks, bending and twisting them with an apparatus they built specifically for the task. The team found that if a stick is twisted past a certain critical degree, then slowly bent in half, it will, against all odds, break in two. The researchers say the results may have applications beyond culinary curiosities, such as enhancing the understanding of crack formation and how to control fractures in other rod-like materials such as multifiber structures, engineered nanotubes, or even microtubules in cells.

Yesterday, during his quarterly earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed a new piece of hardware that the company is working on to perform all the calculations required to advance the self-driving capabilities of its vehicles. The specialized chip, known as "Hardware 3," will be "swapped into the Model S, X, and 3," reports TechCrunch. From the report: Tesla has thus far relied on Nvidia's Drive platform. So why switch now? By building things in-house, Tesla say it's able to focus on its own needs for the sake of efficiency. "We had the benefit [...] of knowing what our neural networks look like, and what they'll look like in the future," said Pete Bannon, director of the Hardware 3 project. Bannon also noted that the hardware upgrade should start rolling out next year. "The key," adds Elon "is to be able to run the neural network at a fundamental, bare metal level. You have to do these calculations in the circuit itself, not in some sort of emulation mode, which is how a GPU or CPU would operate. You want to do a massive amount of [calculations] with the memory right there." The final outcome, according to Elon, is pretty dramatic: He says that whereas Tesla's computer vision software running on Nvidia's hardware was handling about 200 frames per second, its specialized chip is able to crunch out 2,000 frames per second "with full redundancy and failover." Plus, as AI analyst James Wang points out, it gives Tesla more control over its own future.

Every four years, at an international gathering of mathematicians, the subject's youngest and brightest are honored with the Fields Medal, often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics. The New York Times: This year's recipients, announced on Wednesday at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro, include one of the youngest ever: Peter Scholze, a professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn who is 30 years old. Two weeks ago, Peter Woit, a professor at Columbia University who blogs about mathematics and physics, was among those who anticipated that Dr. Scholze would receive the medal. Dr. Woit said Dr. Scholze was "by far the most talented arithmetic geometer of his generation." By custom, Fields medals are bestowed to mathematicians 40 years old or younger. That means Dr. Scholze would have still been eligible for another two rounds of medals. The medal, first awarded in 1936, was conceived by John Charles Fields, a Canadian mathematician. The youngest winner, Jean-Pierre Serre in 1954, was 27. The other Fields medalists this year are Caucher Birkar, 40, of the University of Cambridge in England; Alessio Figalli, 34, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich; and Akshay Venkatesh, 36, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Stanford University in California. Peter Scholze's award cites "the revolution that he launched in arithmetic geometry," the study of shapes that arise from the rational-number solutions to polynomial equations (like xy3 + x2 = 1 or x2 â" y3z = 3). More about him here. As a mathematician, Caucher Birkar has helped bring order to the infinite variety of polynomial equations -- those equations that consist of different variables raised to various powers. No two equations are exactly alike, but Birkar has helped reveal that many can be neatly categorized into a small number of families. [As a reader pointed out, Birkar's award was stolen within minutes of him receiving it.] UPDATE (8/4/18): Organizers have announced they'll provide an identical replacement medal.

Once a classics student with no particular affinity for mathematics, Alessio Figalli has gone on to shake the venerable mathematical discipline of analysis, which concerns the properties of certain types of equations. Figalli's results have provided a refined mathematical understanding of everything from the shape of crystals to weather patterns, to the way ice melts in water. Akshay Venkatesh, a former prodigy who struggled with the genius stereotype, has won a Fields Medal for his "profound contributions to an exceptionally broad range of subjects in mathematics."

NBA superstar LeBron James is opening a new school that many are calling a "game changer." It extends the length of a traditional school day and focuses on teaching a STEM curriculum to students who have a higher probability of failing academically or dropping out of school. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares a report from SB Nation: LeBron James' I Promise School opened Monday to serve low-income and at-risk students in his hometown, and the public school could be an agent of change in the eastern Ohio city. The institution is the intersection of James' philanthropic Family Foundation and the I Promise Network he helped kickstart. I Promise began as an Akron-based non-profit aimed at boosting achievement for younger students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Now the movement has the means to educate these students year-round. I Promise will feature longer school days, a non-traditional school year, and greater access to the school, its facilities, and its teachers during down time for students. That's a formula aimed at replicating some of the at-home support children may be missing when it comes to schoolwork. The school has also anchored its curriculum in math and science-based teaching, dipping into the STEM -- science, technology, engineering, and math -- curriculum that prepares students for the jobs of the future.

xanthos writes: A fascinating article in Quanta magazine introduces us to Cohl Furey and the eight dimensional mathematics called octonions that she is using to model the interactions of strong and electromagnetic forces.

"Proof surfaced in 1898 that the reals, complex numbers, quaternions and octonions are the only kinds of numbers that can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided. The first three of these "division algebras" would soon lay the mathematical foundation for 20th-century physics, with real numbers appearing ubiquitously, complex numbers providing the math of quantum mechanics, and quaternions underlying Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity. This has led many researchers to wonder about the last and least-understood division algebra. Might the octonions hold secrets of the universe?"

"In her most recent published paper she consolidated several findings to construct the full Standard Model symmetry group for a single generation of particles, with the math producing the correct array of electric charges and other attributes for an electron, neutrino, three up quarks, three down quarks and their anti-particles. The math also suggests a reason why electric charge is quantized in discrete units -- essentially, because whole numbers are."

CBS has released a "Season Two Premiere" for Star Trek Discovery, offering the first look at the upcoming season of the show on CBS All Access. The first season launched late last year and finished up in February after a brief hiatus. The Verge reports of what to expect from the upcoming season, which is expected to premiere sometime in early 2019: [It] appears to begin with Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) coming aboard and taking control of the USS Discovery after a series of mysterious "red bursts" are detected, simultaneously spread out across 30,000 light years. Burnham later claims "Spock is linked to these signals." New series guest star Tig Notaro makes a very Tig Notaro joke, Pike encourages the crew to "have a little fun," Tilly yells about "the power of math" -- a good time, in other words. (After all, the whole thing is set the tune of Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away," so you know it's real.) Bonus: at the end we meet another, very sniffly alien Discovery crew member, proving Saru and the bridge androids aren't the sole non-humans aboard the ship, as we once feared. At the Discovery panel at San Diego Comic Con's Hall H, a new Star Trek series was announced, called Star Trek: Short Treks. It is "a series of monthly short-form stories that will function like bonus content and air on CBS All Access in conjunction with the larger Star Trek: Discovery series," reports The Verge. "CBS says Short Treks, which will air in installments of about 10 to 15 minutes, is 'an opportunity for deeper storytelling and exploration of key characters and themes that fit into... the expanding Star Trek universe.'"

Last year, Nike released a new pair of running shoes that claim to make you run 4% faster, thanks to its proprietary sole technology. The new "Vaporfly 4%" shoes would, in theory, "be enough to help a runner break the mythical two-hour marathon barrier for the first time," Fast Company points out. The New York Times decided to put the shoes to the test through an intensive analysis of 500,000 marathon and half marathon running times, culled from the social network Strava. Nike's claims apparently check out. Fast Company reports the findings: We know a lot about the runners in our data set, including their age, gender, race history and, in some cases, how much training they've done in the months before a race. We also know about the races themselves, including the distribution of runners' times and the weather that day. We can put all of this information into a model to try to estimate the change in runners' time from their previous races. After controlling for all of these variables, our model estimates that the shoes account for an expected improvement of about 4 percent over a runner's previous time. Including the uncertainty around the estimates, the Vaporflys are a clear outlier, one of the only popular shoes we can really say makes any difference at all.

According to a new book entitled "Megalith," which was released on June 21 to coincide with summer solstice, ancient humans who designed Stonehenge followed Pythagoras' theorem 2,000 years before his birth, around 2500 B.C. The theorem states that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the other two squares on the triangle. TechTimes reports: [The theorem] was developed by ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who was born in 570 B.C. However, Stonehenge was assembled 2,000 years before his birth, around 2500 B.C. This theory suggests that these ancient humans were smarter than what people give them credit for. In order to use Pythagoras' theorem, they had to be really skilled at geometry.

"We think these people didn't have scientific minds but first and foremost they were astronomers and cosmologists," John Matineau, the editor of the book, told the Telegraph. "They were studying long and difficult to understand cycles and they knew about these when they started planning sites like Stonehenge."

Lindsay, a compact rectangle amid the lakes northeast of Toronto, is at the heart of one of the world's biggest tests of a guaranteed basic income. Technology Review: In a three-year pilot funded by the provincial government, about 4,000 people in Ontario are getting monthly stipends to boost them to at least 75 percent of the poverty line. That translates to a minimum annual income of $17,000 in Canadian dollars (about $13,000 US) for single people, $24,000 for married couples. Lindsay has about half the people in the pilot -- some 10 percent of the town's population. The report outlines that the Canadian province's vision for a basic income -- and the underlying experiment -- differs from that of the one we have seen in Silicon Valley. The report continues: The Canadians are testing it as an efficient antipoverty mechanism, a way to give a relatively small segment of the population more flexibility to find work and to strengthen other strands of the safety net. That's not what Silicon Valley seems to imagine, which is a universal basic income that placates broad swaths of the population.

The most obvious problem with that idea? Math. Many economists concluded long ago that it would be too expensive, especially when compared with the cost of programs to create new jobs and train people for them. That's why the idea didn't take off after tests in the 1960s and '70s. It's largely why Finland recently abandoned a basic-income plan after a small test.

A Portland man appears to have a pill-sized camera stuck in his gut. That man is me... Let me explain.

For the average Joe, the following statement might sound a bit peculiar: I have swallowed a pill-sized camera a number of times. You see, I have Crohn's Disease (CD) in the small intestine -- a 20 foot-long portion of the gastrointestinal tract that runs between the stomach and the large intestine (colon). A "PillCam" is the most non-invasive, detailed method to survey this area as it doesn't require a scope up the rectum or down the esophagus, nor does it require any tissue slicing. It's also one of the safest procedures available -- the retention rate is as low as 1%. Unfortunately, this most recent capsule endoscopy resulted in my admission to the 1% club.

On March 27th, 2018, I swallowed the PillCam that is currently lodged in my small intestine. If you do the math, that's more than 82 days ago (over 12 weeks). After hiking Smith Rock and summiting Black Butte a couple weeks later, I thought for sure the pill would have exited. It didn't, as evident by the follow-up X-ray. It can be difficult to find research on such a what-if scenario that happens to so few, but I did manage to find a Motherboard article telling the story of Scott Willis, a CD patient that had a PillCam lodged in his gut for eight weeks. One of the key differences between him and me is that he had a partial block and endured more symptoms, prompting him to schedule a procedure to get it out quicker. I'm relatively symptom free.

We have tried upping the dose of corticosteroids to reduce inflammation and help the pill pass through the strictured areas, but that didn't seem to work. Most recently, I had two double-balloon enteroscopy procedures done within a week apart. They were able to locate the PillCam during the second procedure, but weren't able to retrieve it without risking the scope itself becoming stuck. The next step is to try again via the esophagus. The potential issue/complication here is the location. As my doctors warned, the PillCam is stuck 15 feet down and the scope is only 20 feet in length. There's little wiggle room if the pill is slightly further down the GI tract than estimated.

I am sharing this story with the Slashdot community for two reasons. First, those entrenched in the world of cyborgs and/or modern-day medical procedures may find this experience particularly interesting. Second, the more people who know about the procedures and complications of Crohn's Disease the better. For those interested, I'll update this post after the next procedure. Have you or someone you know experienced a capsule endoscopy? Please share what you feel comfortable with.

UPDATE 7/11/18: Yesterday, I had the procedure to remove the PillCam via the esophagus and it wasn't successful. The doctor said he tried everything he could to retrieve it but the scope wasn't quite long enough to reach the pill. I'll be talking with a surgeon next week and will update this post when a surgery date is confirmed.

A new study published in the journal Science finds honeybees are able to understand the concept of zero numerosity, joining the ranks of dolphins, parrots, and primates. Sci-News.com reports: The study authors set out to test the honeybee on its understanding, marking individual honeybees for easy identification and luring them to a specially-designed testing apparatus. The bees were trained to choose an image with the lowest number of elements in order to receive a reward of sugar solution. For example, the bees learned to choose three elements when presented with three vs. four; or two elements when presented with two vs. three. When the scientists periodically tested the bees with an image that contained no elements versus an image that had one or more, the bees understood that the set of zero was the lower number -- despite never having been exposed to an "empty set."

An anonymous reader writes: Last year, Canada introduced a new lottery system used to extend permanent-resident status to the parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens. The process was designed to randomly select applicants in order to make the process fairer than the old first-come, first-served system. There's just one problem: the software used to run the lottery isn't actually random. The Globe and Mail reported the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) uses Microsoft Excel to run the immigration lottery to select 10,000 people for permanent resident status from a field of about 100,000 applications received each year. Experts warned that the random number generating function in Excel isn't actually random and may put some applicants at a disadvantage.

First, it's best to understand just how the lottery system works. An Access to Information request filed by The Globe and Mail shows that IRCC inputs the application number for every person entering the lottery into Excel, then assigns them a random number to each using a variation of the program's RAND command. They then sort the list from smallest to largest based on the random number assigned and take the first 10,000 applications with the lowest numbers. The system puts a lot of faith in Excel's random function, which it might not deserve. According to Universite de Montreal computer science professor Pierre L'Ecuyer, Excel is "very bad" at generating random numbers because it relies on an old generator that is out of date. He also warned that Excel doesn't pass statistical tests and is less random than it appears, which means some people in the lottery may actually have a lower chance of being selected than others.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt of a New Yorker piece: Once, Mad Men ruled advertising. They've now been eclipsed by Math Men -- the engineers and data scientists whose province is machines, algorithms, pureed data, and artificial intelligence. Yet Math Men are beleaguered, as Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated when he humbled himself before Congress, in April. Math Men's adoration of data -- coupled with their truculence and an arrogant conviction that their 'science' is nearly flawless -- has aroused government anger, much as Microsoft did two decades ago.

The power of Math Men is awesome. Google and Facebook each has a market value exceeding the combined value of the six largest advertising and marketing holding companies. Together, they claim six out of every ten dollars spent on digital advertising, and nine out of ten new digital ad dollars. They have become more dominant in what is estimated to be an up to two-trillion-dollar annual global advertising and marketing business. Facebook alone generates more ad dollars than all of America's newspapers, and Google has twice the ad revenues of Facebook.

theodp writes: Almost 1.5 million foreign students have been allowed to stay and work in the U.S. after graduation as part of the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which is now larger than the controversial H-1B program (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). According to new Pew Research analysis of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the number of students authorized to work under OPT has grown 400% since the federal government in 2008 increased the amount of time graduates with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees could remain in the United States and work. More than half of those working under OPT from 2004 to 2016 were in STEM fields, Pew found, and as a result, were eligible for the so-called STEM extension.

The OPT program added a 17-month STEM extension in 2008, shortly after Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates suggested it in testimony to Congress after complaining that the cap for the H-1B program had caused a serious disruption in the flow of talented STEM graduates to U.S. companies. In 2016, another 12-month extension was added after a Federal judge threatened to torpedo the STEM extension program, saying it "appears to have been adopted directly from the unanimous suggestions by Microsoft and similar industry groups." In its Top Ten Tech Issues for 2018, Microsoft expressed "concern that in 2018 the White House will announce a rollback of the extended period of Optional Practical Training for STEM graduates." Pew also took note of allegations that "visa mills" have sprung up in response to demand driven by the OPT program.

Earlier this week, Carnegie Mellon University announced plans to offer an undergrad degree in artificial intelligence. The news may be especially attractive for students given how much tech giants have been ramping up their AI efforts in the recent years, and how U.S. News & World Report ranked Carnegie Mellon University as the No. 1 graduate school for AI. An anonymous reader shares the announcement with us: Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science will offer a new undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence beginning this fall, providing students with in-depth knowledge of how to transform large amounts of data into actionable decisions. SCS has created the new AI degree, the first offered by a U.S. university, in response to extraordinary technical breakthroughs in AI and the growing demand by students and employers for training that prepares people for careers in AI.

The bachelor's degree program in computer science teaches students to think broadly about methods that can accomplish a wide variety of tasks across many disciplines, said Reid Simmons, research professor of robotics and computer science and director of the new AI degree program. The bachelor's degree in AI will focus more on how complex inputs -- such as vision, language and huge databases -- are used to make decisions or enhance human capabilities, he added. AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have additional course work in AI-related subjects such as statistics and probability, computational modeling, machine learning, and symbolic computation. Simmons said the program also would include a strong emphasis on ethics and social responsibility. This will include independent study opportunities in using AI for social good, such as improving transportation, health care or education.

Subscription music service Tidal has been accused of faking the streaming numbers for Kanye West and Beyonce. "Kanye West's 'The Life of Pablo,' which was the first album to go platinum primarily from streaming, and Beyonce's platinum record 'Lemonade' were released exclusively on Tidal for periods in 2016," reports Quartz. "By placing their albums on the fledgling platform, which was relaunched in 2015, both artists risked losing big paychecks." From the report: West's album was said to have been streamed 250 million times in the first 10 days on the service. And Beyonce's record was reportedly played 306 million times in 15 days. While it's not hard to believe Bey and Yeezy could hit those numbers, they rang false to some, as Tidal said it had 3 million members then. However, according to an in-depth investigation by Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv (DN), Tidal has reportedly manipulated those streaming numbers, to potentially make the company appear more profitable or increase royalty payments to the artists at the expense of others on the service. This is something Tidal vigorously denies and says the DN report is part of a "smear campaign."

The DN's report investigated streaming numbers since 2017, when it reportedly obtained a hard drive of internal Tidal data with more than 1.5 billion of rows of user play logs. Those logs were from two periods -- from late January to early March, and mid April to early May -- totaling 65 days in 2016. Its reporters tracked down subscribers from the logs, and presented them with their apparent listening history, which the users said didn't add up. "We have through advanced statistical analysis determined that there has in fact been a manipulation of the data at particular times. The manipulation appears targeted towards a very specific set of track IDs, related to two distinct albums," found the researchers (pdf) at NTNU's Center for Cyber and Information Security. "The manipulation likely originates from within the streaming service itself."

An anonymous reader shares a report: At the Build 2018 developer conference that's taking place these days in Seattle, USA, Microsoft announced support for custom JavaScript functions in Excel. What this means is that Excel users will be able to use JavaScript code to create a custom Excel formula that will appear in Excel's default formula database. Users will then be able to insert and call these formulas from within Excel spreadsheets, but have a JavaScript interpreter compute the spreadsheet data instead of Excel's native engine. "Office developers have been wanting to write JavaScript custom functions for many reasons," Microsoft says, "such as: (1) Calculate math operations, like whether a number is prime. (2) Bring information from the web, like a bank account balance. (3) Stream live data, like a stock price."