Mozilla wants to bring virtual reality to the browser

Last summer, Mozilla launched a very experimental version of Firefox with support for web-based virtual reality apps that could be experienced through the Oculus Rift. Earlier this week, support for WebVR also landed in Firefox’s Nightly and Developer Edition release channels. So why is Mozilla working on virtual reality when its mission is to “promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web?” At a talk last summer, Mozilla’s Josh Carpenter argued that the organization knows VR will be a “really big deal” and because “it presents a really great challenge — and we like great challenges.” To give users that feeling of actually being present in a different world (and not just that of looking at a simulation), you need to get the latency between head movements and the screen reacting to them down to an absolute minimum. Mozilla argues that, in the end, all of this work will not just benefit the VR experience, but also the Web experience as a whole. To do this, Mozilla has thrown its weight behind WebVR, an experimental API that makes it easier to connect the browser to virtual reality headsets. Google, too, has started to experiment with this as well, so there’s already some cross-browser support for it, even though it’s still far from being an official standard and from becoming a default feature of Mozilla’s and Google’s mainstream browser release channels. For now, the new Firefox builds only work with the Oculus Rift (though you still have to install a small plugin to make this work), but Mozilla says it also plans to add built-in support for Linux, Firefox for Android and Google’s Cardboard. With projects like asm.js and others, Mozilla has worked hard to bring native-like speeds to browser- and JavaScript-based applications. I’m not completely sold on the idea that the browser is the best place for experiencing virtual reality, but there is something to be said for Mozilla’s approach of creating an open ecosystem that could side-step the walled gardens of the different VR vendors in the long run. For now, achieving that feeling of presence greatly depends on getting the lag down and even if Mozilla manages to get JavaScript performance even closer to native speeds, native VR apps will always be just a little bit better.

Girl With Tessier Facial Cleft Undergoes 3D-Printing Surgery To Reconstruct Face

Violet (left) and her twin sister are shown in a family photo. Despite being born at the same time, one was born with a defect and one without.

 Two-year-old Violet Pietrok was born with an extremely rare condition called Tessier facial cleft, leaving the bones in her face so spread apart that her nose lacked cartilage and her eyes didn’t have normal vision.

Because the defect is so rare, not many doctors have experience with repairing it — but one plastic surgeon located in Boston, Dr. John Meara, seemed to offer the Pietroks some hope: He had performed four operations on children with similar defects in the past several years. Meara and his team planned to use 3D printing to recreate a mold of Violet’s skull, then practice operating on it, chiseling out areas that had problems and bringing the two parts of her skull closer together to fill the gap between her eyes.

“Normally you can’t see certain aspects of the skeleton with skin covering and muscle covering the area,” Meara, who is the plastic-surgeon-in-chief at Boston Children’s Hospital, says in a New York Times video. “3D printing allows you to see areas and actually dissimilate surgery in ways that’s never been possible before.”

Doctors would cut into Violet’s facial bone, and using the practice 3D-printed mold as a guide, complete the complicated procedure that involved moving her eyes together and pressing her bones into a more normal position.

“The printer lays this resin down, moving up through the skull, thousands and thousands and thousands of layers with acrylic being added in very specific spots,” Meara says in the video. “So when I’m looking at a complex cranio-facial condition like this, I’m able to turn this over and look at various areas where I might need to make special cuts in the bone.”

Important things you should know about Windows 10

Microsoft has taken the wraps off the latest version of its operating system Windows 10. The company showcased more Windows 10 features and shared information related to its pricing at a recently concluded event. The essence of Windows 10 is its Continuum feature, which promises users a unified experience across various devices say PCs, tablets and smartphones. While this device-agnostic approach is key to Windows 10, the update also adds several other features. Here are six important things you should know about Microsoft Windows 10… 

Windows 10 will be free for existing users Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will be free for customers running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 if they upgrade in the first year after launch. While this comes as good news for Windows loyalists, it also means that Microsoft will shift to a subscription-based model for its flagship operating system. Cortana comes to desktop Microsoft’s personalized virtual assistant and Apple Siri rival Cortana, will now be available on personal computers via Windows 10. Cortana made its debut on Windows Phone-powered mobile devices.

 The Cortana bar will be placed next to the Start menu and will answer voice and text questions, search across the web and desktop, and bring notifications. Microsoft’s new web browser will also have Cortana built-in and ready to help when users who need assistance. Project spartan replaces interner explorer Microsoft also unveiled a new web browser code-named Spartan. It will be the successor to Internet Explorer and feature a new web-rendering engine. The browser will offer distraction-free browsing, built-in note taking, annotating and sharing, and reading list features in addition to built-in support for the Cortana virtual assistant. It will also offer synchronisation across Windows devices. Xbox app for windows 10 Microsoft is also bringing some features of its Xbox gaming console to Windows. It will allow gamers to see their games collection and chat with other gamers making the experience more social and interactive. It will also offer Game DVR through which gamers will be able to share, comment and view gameplay clips. Users will be able to record clips while playing PC games. Users will also be able to stream games from their Xbox One console to their Windows 10 PCs. New interface features The early preview version of Windows 10 featured a Start menu similar to the one seen in Windows 7. 

The next build brings the ability to enlarge the Start menu to full-screen similar to Windows 8 Start screen. The Notifications menu at the right now also features an Action Center that has toggles for settings such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Brightness among others, similar to Windows Phone. Unified platform Windows 10 will run on all devices across form factors, including phones, tablets, 2-in-1s and PCs. The OS will come with a feature called Continuum which will detect when you remove a keyboard from a 2-in-1 and switch to a touch-optimised UI with big tiles. It will also have a universal app marketplace. Microsoft also demonstrated apps such as Calendar and Office featuring common UI elements across different devices.

Oymyakon: A Town That Gets Colder than The Peak of Mt Everest

Welcome to Oymyakon, A Town With 4 Hours Days and -67 Degrees Celsius of Temperature during Winter..

Deep into the north western frontiers of Russia, a population of 500 people in a Siberian town called Oymyakon spends a few extra ounces of fuel everyday to keep their cars running overnight so as to ensure they’ll start the next day. They melt the earth in order to bury their dead and scurry around hurriedly across the streets to beat the cold.

The temperatures in Oymyakon dip as far down as -67.7 degrees Celsius in the winter and on average, they stick to around -46 degrees. The town has thus been named the coldest place on earth with human life. 

  

A sign post with Oymyakon on it.

   

Cars stay on all night..

  

A Resident.

 

A lit store in the outback of Oymyakon

  

Frozen Shoes left outside.. 

 

A frozen building..

   

A local woman enters Preobrazhensky Cathedral in a swirl of freezing mist

It is no wonder that people here have to stay covered in warm clothing around the clock. In a single minute one can freeze to death if he stepped out into the open air in Oymyakon without clothes on. 

  

A resident of Oymyakon crosses a snowy street.

  

People waiting for buses.

   

A dog with snowy fur in Oymyakon 

 One can only imagine the health complications that can be developed from half a minute of nude sun bathing here. But backyard sun bathing isn’t a considered past time activity in the town of Oymyakon since there isn’t much sun to go around anyway. According to Dailymail, days can vary from 3 hours in winter and 21 hours in summer.

  

Farms animals are kept inside the barn to stay warm overnight.

   

Toilet in Oymyakon are built outside

   

  A woman in a parka in Oymyakon

  In addition to being a very cold place, this town is also haunted by darker afternoons with the sun being obscured most of the time by clouds of overhead mist.

 

 The only shop that operates in Oymyakon

  

A snow plow clears a road in Oymyakon

  

A coal heating plant in the town keeps people warm

All these climatic extremes do not come at a surprise since Oymyakon lies a few hundred miles from the Arctic Circle. It is therefore a long shot to expect any substantial crop farming to take place.

 

An Oymyakon farmer watching over his cattle

  

Oymyakon cattle

The most common diet amongst the residents of the town comprises of reindeer, iced up horse blood and frozen fish. Don’t expect any visiting vegan tourists here.

 

At the Central Market In Yakutsk, fish and meat are the most common foods sold.

Fortunately, the presence of a thermal spring in the town’s vicinity allows reindeer farmers to water their livestock. In fact, the hot spring inspired the name Oymyakon which in English means “non-freezing water”.

  

Lady walks down a frozen bridge. 

  

A statue of Lenin at the central square of the town.

  

The Road of Bones was built using Gulag laborers and is the only link between Yakutsk and outside regions. 

Artificial Heart Recipient Thriving 6 Months After Receiving Carmat's 'True' Artificial Heart; Shows No Sign Of Slowing Down

 robotic animal hybrid hearts soon be a part of everyday medicine

More than 23 million people worldwide will experience heart failure, and for most, a heart transplant is necessary. Unfortunately, heart donations are extremely hard to come by. Although artificial hearts have existed since the 1980s, the patient survival rate has been disappointingly low. One 68-year-old Frenchman is slowly changing the track record of artificial hearts, however. Six months after receiving his Carmat “true artificial heart,” the Frenchman is reportedly living a “completely normal life.”

On Aug. 5, 2013, a 68-year-old Frenchman, who chose to remain anonymous, became the recipient of the world’s first “true” artificial heart. The 2-pound heart, created by Carmat, is half-cow, half-robotic technology. Unlike previous models of artificial hearts, it is completely self-supporting, The Smithsonian reported. The unique use of cow tissue with manmade material also helps to prevent blood clotting, and patients would be less reliant on anti-coagulants, Newser reported. The surgery was conducted at the University of Nantes hospital in France.

This month marked the six-month milestone of the unnamed patient’s survival, a truly remarkable feat considering that the previous recipient of the Carmat heart survived a mere 75 days. The surgery to implant the heart has also improved, decreasing by two hours in time when compared to the previous surgery, which took place in December 2013. According to the Carmat heart’s inventor, Dr. Alain F. Carpentier, the patient is not only living but thriving and able to enjoy “a completely normal life...” and is even able to use a stationary pedal bike, Le Parisien reported.

While the news of the current patient’s impressive survival sounds promising, the Carmat heart does have setbacks. First, it's extremely expensive, with reports stating that a single heart will sell for anything between $162,000 and $246,000, depending on the sources. Also, the device is slightly heavier than a natural human heart, which means it's slightly too large to be used in females. (The device has a compatibility of 86 percent in men but only 20 percent in women.)

Carpentier hopes his device can help to sidestep the deficit of available heart donations. Theoretically, the external lithium battery would allow the heart to beat for five years, which could buy a patient time until a heart becomes available. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, in the United States a person is added to the organ transplant list every 10 minutes. An average of 18 people a day die while waiting for an organ. 

Kidney Harvested From Aborted Human Fetus Grown In Rat: An End To Organ Donor Shortage, Scientists Say

In a new study, scientists remove a kidney from an aborted human fetus and then grow it to a larger size after implanting it inside a rat

In a new study, scientists debut a technique for growing a human kidney, obtained from an aborted human fetus, inside a rat. This new rat model would be “perfect” for drug testing “because the animals are smaller and cheaper, making them scalable for pharmacological testing.

“Our long-term goal is indeed to have these organs ready for transplant into human patients. However, that would require a large animal model such as a pig rather than a rat.” The video below explains this process: 

A fourth year medical student at Duke University School of Medicine, Gu also is a co-founder and CEO of Ganogen, a company located in Redwood City, Calif. A tagline on the company’s website reads Ending the organ donor shortage. While this may appear a noble and worthy goal, the current kidney research, which was sponsored by Ganogen, undoubtedly will raise a red flag or two for many people. However, Gu defends his work, in part, by noting it is subsidized by family, friends, and small investors.

“We feel that our research is more palatable than all the other researchers who use taxpayer money to fund their research involving aborted human fetal tissues, which is the vast majority of major biomedical research labs,” Gu tells Medical Daily. In fact, Gu and his research team acquired the fetal kidneys used in their experiments from Stem Express, a self-described “multi-million dollar company that supplies human blood, tissue products, primary cells, and other clinical specimens to biomedical researchers around the world.”

Experiment & Ethics

Having obtained the kidney, the researchers transplanted it into an adult rat, connecting the organ via microsurgical techniques to the animals’ blood vessels. Then they adjusted the blood pressure to match. It was this final step of the specialized surgical procedure that spelled success. Past experiments failed when the researchers did not account for the fact that the blood pressure of rats is three times higher than in human fetuses.

“We did this study in rats as proof-of-concept to show that human fetal organs can indeed survive in an animal host, can function to keep the animal alive, and can grow larger over time,” Gu says. Indeed: the rats survived roughly four months after the transplant, and one even lived for 10 months.

Among the ethical questions raised by Gu's work is whether the use of human fetal organs in research should be permissible and whether it is right to transplant human organs into animals. The Ganogen website argues that, as personalized medicine advances and becomes increasingly prevalent, “the differences between mice and men can no longer be ignored.” The reason? Simple animal testing of new drugs, which increasingly target highly specific proteins or genetic variations, cannot sufficiently safeguard our human health. The drug Herceptin is their case in point. This commonly prescribed breast cancer drug caused heart failure in some patients after extensive animal testing proved it safe.

“Our in vivo human organ models may catch and identify human-specific drug toxicities before patients are harmed during clinical trials,” the Ganogen website reads.

Addressing his use of harvested organs from aborted fetuses, Gu says he and his colleagues “do not want to encourage abortions in any way, shape, or form. … If the organs are available, it is better to use them to save somebody's life rather than throw them into the trash bin.” Undoubtedly, Gu's argument is probably echoed in many research labs around the world. That said, most people would still find the details of his work unsavory... unless of course they needed a kidney. 

Kathy Beitz, Legally Blind Mother, Gets eSight Glasses To See Her Newborn Son

Immediately following the birth of their child, parents are quick to compare physical features that they or their partner may share with their newborn. This was one aspect of being a mother that Kathy Beitz did not think she would be able share with other parents. Beitz, who is legally blind, recently gave birth to her son Aksel and wanted nothing more than simply to look at him. Little did she know a very special pair of glasses were on their way to make her wish come true.

“Kathy and I have been legally blind since we were children,” Beitz’s sister Yvonne Felix said in the video’s YouTube description. “eSight glasses, an amazing new technology that I also use, helped her see the birth of her son. What an incredible moment!”

The price tag on eSight, “electronic glasses that enable the legally blind to actually see,” usually runs upward of $15,000. To help the new mother see her son’s face for the first time, eSight loaned Beitz a pair of glasses for the day. Hoping to share her experience with other people in her situation, Beitz recently launched #MakeBlindnessHistory to raise money so that more people who are legally blind can own a pair of eSight glasses.

“We are driven by our users’ stories,” eSight said on its website. “eSight is an enabling device that is used to support people and open them to any aspect of the world they want to see. Some users take eSight to work and school. Others use it to read. Some want to see faces and others want to get out into the wide-world. Many combine all of those benefits.”

TITANIC HOTEL AND RESORT IN TURKEY

 

No matter if it is a beach & sun holiday, a city break or a business trip you are looking for, you will find the ideal accommodation in one of our hotels. With hotels in the world’s most desirable locations, Antalya, Istanbul and Berlin, Titanic Hotels is the perfect choice the next time you’re planning to stay away from home.

 

From the sandy beaches of Antalya to the inner city charm of historical Berlin, and throughout charming Istanbul, they are offering you elegant hotels packed with all of the amenities you need when travelling. Whether you’re looking for a few days full of culture and shopping or you prefer to stay a little longer to soak up the restaurants and nightlife, their selection of hotels will help.

 

  

 

 

 

 

Introducing to you an ultimate game-changer for the way we listen to music: the Bragi Dash earbuds. These neat little gadgets are the world’s first wireless smart in-ear headphones. But they’re also much more than that. You can store music on them, take phone calls with them, wear them swimming and even track your fitness with them. Awesome.

Being able to listen to music on the go is a wonderful thing; you can take your favorite melodies with you anywhere you please and use them to shut off from the rest of the world. But then there are the dreaded headphones which often do a good job of ruining the experience. In-ear headphones are the bane of anyone’s bag; no matter how tidily you wrap them, they somehow get tangled and wrapped around everything else.

And all that untangling and pulling doesn’t do the wires any good, which often break, warranting a new pair pretty regularly. Then there’s the issue of poor fit, meaning many of us need to constantly pop them back in and twizzle them until they feel like they may stay in for another five minutes. Over-the-ear headphones negate this issue, but they are bulky and less ideal to carry around.

Thankfully, there are people out there that have realized our frustrations and woes, and have gone and done something about it. And that something is a pretty impressive piece of technology: The Dash earbuds.

These earphones were born out of German startup company Bragi, which received almost $3.5 million from 16,000 backers on Kickstarter. The buds are completely wireless and allow you to play music through a Bluetooth connection. Don’t fancy carrying your smartphone or iPod around all the time? Don’t worry—they’ve got that covered, as they have an embedded 4GB music player, too. They have impressive noise cancelling capabilities, but if you’d rather allow ambient sound through, such as traffic, you can adjust the settings accordingly.

Given the importance of good fit, the team used ear molds acquired from hearing aid companies to guide their design. The buds come with three different sized silicone sleeves, and they’re lightweight so they’re unlikely to fall out. Sean O’Kane from The Verge tried them out and reported that they’re surprisingly comfortable and do indeed stay in place. They’re also waterproof up to one meter.

But it doesn’t end there; these smart earphones also act like a fitness tracker as they’ll measure things like distance, speed, cadence, heart rate and calories burned. The Dash also has a built-in accelerometer which allows you to control it through gestures. You could set it to tell you the weather forecast if you tilt your head up, or answer a phone call if you nod, for example.

So what’s the catch? Well, all of these awesome features mean they won’t come cheap when they reach the markets in April. But they would be $299 well spent and a decent investment.

New Device Could Allow Deaf People To "Hear" Through Their Tongues

 

Since their introduction, cochlear implants have transformed the lives of many people across the world, allowing deaf or severely hard-of-hearing individuals to regain their sense of sound. Unfortunately, the devices also have their drawbacks; they have to be surgically implanted, aren’t suitable for all forms of hearing loss, and can cost a whopping $100,000.

But now, an alternative could well be on the horizon, as scientists from Colorado State University (CSU) have come up with a novel way to achieve the same outcome: a device that allows users to “hear” with their tongues. The system doesn’t restore hearing, but rather it converts sounds into distinct patterns of vibration that can be felt by the tongue, and thus helps the user to interpret sensations as sounds or words. Not only would this technology be significantly cheaper than cochlear implants, but it wouldn’t require surgery either.

Cochlear implants and hearing aids work in very different ways. Whereas hearing aids amplify sounds so that they can be detected, cochlear implants bypass damaged parts of the ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Sounds from the environment are picked up by a microphone and then analyzed by a speech processor. This information is then converted into electrical impulses which are then sent to different regions of the auditory nerve. It takes some training, but eventually users learn to recognize different impulses as particular sounds or words.

The CSU device works in a similar way, but what happens to the sounds after they're picked up is different. A Bluetooth-enabled earpiece transmits sounds to a processor which then converts them into patterns of impulses that represent a word. Rather than stimulating the auditory nerve, these signals are then sent to a smart retainer held in the mouth. When the user presses their tongue against the mouthpiece, tiny electrodes within the device send out patterns of impulses that stimulate nerves on the tongue, which then fire and relay the signals to the brain.

“Some people suggest it feels like the sensation of having champagne bubbles or Pop Rocks on their tongue,” engineer and project leader John Williams told PopSci.

As explained in the video below, once you’ve taught your tongue and brain to work together, you’ve effectively taught your tongue to “hear.” It will take weeks, if not months, of training, but eventually the brain will learn to recognize the tingles as useful sound information.

The reason that the researchers chose to stimulate the tongue is because is houses thousands of nerves, and our brain is very good at interpreting complicated touch sensations from the tongue.

“We’re able to discriminate between fine points that are just a short distance on the tongue,” Leslie Stone-Roy told PopSci. “It’s similar in terms of your fingertips; that’s why we use fingers to read Braille. The tongue is similar in that it has high acuity.”

At the moment, the device is pretty hefty, but the researchers are hoping to eventually develop a smaller mouthpiece that’s like a retainer, which wouldn’t be visible. They also believe it shouldn’t cost more than $2,000, which is significantly cheaper than cochlear implants. There’s much more work to be done, but for now, the team is focusing on mapping the nerves on the tongue so that the researchers can select the best places to stimulate. 

Computer Scientists Generate A Self-Aware Mario That Can Learn And Feel

 

For some of the world’s brightest brains, artificial intelligence (AI) could spell doom and gloom for mankind. So it’s nice to know that some researchers are managing to advance this exciting field of study whilst keeping it light-hearted. A trio of computer scientists from the University of Tübingen, Germany, has used an adaptive learning AI approach to bring one of our childhood heroes, Mario, to life. Well, kind of.

A “living and conversing” version of the agent was recently generated as part of the “Mario Lives!” project, which was created for a video competition organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). According to AAAI, which is a nonprofit scientific society, the aim of the competition is to showcase how much fun AI is by documenting exciting advances in the field.

The idea behind this project was to develop an artificial agent who gets to know and thus becomes alive in his own world. “As most of you know, this is Mario,” a researcher explains in the video below. “But what you do not know is that this Mario has become aware of himself and his environment, at least to a certain extent.” The Mario they created can understand a large variety of sentences, answer questions, learn and even make decisions based on how he is feeling.

As explained in the video, Mario starts out with knowledge about his body and then adds additional context to his knowledge base as he learns. He also maintains emotive states which can be influenced both by the environment and by voice commands given by the user. For example, when the character was told not to be so happy, he responded in a computer-generated voice “Somehow, I feel less happy.”

Not only can Mario understand a large variety of sentences, but he can also be taught. For example, he can be told “If you jump on Goomba, Goomba dies,” but he can also learn this from experience. In the video, Mario is asked to jump on Goomba, one of his enemies, and then report back on what he learned. After landing on Goomba and realizing that he dies, Mario translates this new information into human speech and says: “If I jump on Goomba, then he certainly dies.”

Furthermore, Mario is also programmed to alter his behavior based on his mood and motivations. For example, when he is “hungry,” he searches for coins, but when he is “curious” he will spend time exploring his environment.

As Fabian Schrodt, one of the brains behind Mario Lives!, explains to The Verge, it’s not the artificial intelligence that makes the project interesting, since Mario isn’t that different to a generic computer opponent. Rather, it’s the combination of AI programming with principles from psychology that makes it unique.

Schrodt says that they are now extending this work with a follow-up project in which Mario and his companion, Luigi, are able to communicate with one another, sharing information as they go and thus teaching each other new things. 

Mighty Daily Aspirin: New Report Says No One Under 80 To Experience Cancer by 2050

A new report has drawn quite a bit of attention with its eye-popping prediction that by as early as 2050 no one under 80 will experience cancer. The claim is tremendous, but the researchers from University College London (UCL) and King’s College London say they have the science to back it up.
In truth, death rates from cancer are a third down from 1996 and are expected to continue to drop. However, according to a report released from the University City London School of Pharmacy, these numbers will nearly disappear for those under 80 in a few decades, thanks to our increasingly effective prevention techniques. Report co-author Dr. David Taylor said healthy habits such as quitting smoking and taking a daily aspirin are helping to wipe out cancer, and 2050 was a “plausible guesstimate” of a time when cancer will only affect those over 80.

"If we put all these things together ... these killers of children and working-age adults can be overcome," Taylor told The Times in the UK.

Dr. Jack Cuzick, director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine at Queen Mary University in London seemed to agree that advanced preventive measures would seriously change the scope of cancer in Great Britain.

"Taking aspirin daily looks to be the most important single thing we can do to reduce cancer after stopping smoking and reducing obesity, and will probably be much easier to implement," he told The Times. "What makes this a special point in history is that cancers are in the process of becoming either preventable or effectively curable."

Aspirin, while good at keeping cancer at bay, has been tied to increased chances of stomach bleeding. Cuzick says individuals should therefore consult their physician before taking the drug on a daily basis.

Although cancer is becoming far less deadly, a day when nearly no one dies from cancer is not yet here. Cancer prevention can only go so far, and a recent study has suggested that as many as 65 percent of cancer cases come from random genetic mutation that cannot be foreseen or stopped.

"When someone gets cancer, immediately people want to know why," said oncologist Dr. Bert Vogelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, who conducted the study, published in the journal Science, with Johns Hopkins biomathematician Cristian Tomasetti, Medical Daily reported.

"They like to believe there's a reason. And the real reason in many cases is not because you didn't behave well or were exposed to some bad environmental influence. It's just because that person was unlucky. It's losing the lottery."

While many dispute the exact figures of this number, the truth remains that some people get cancer not influenced by lifestyle or genetics.

On top of cancer being hard to predict, it’s also extremely hard to cure. There will most probably never be any one cure to cancer, and while science has become quite successful in treating some forms of cancer, such as skin cancer, for other forms of cancer, effective treatment remains elusive. One of the reasons for this is the unpredictable nature of the cancer cells. As reported by LiveScience, the cancer cells constantly change their DNA, which means that a method may only be able to prove effective on some cancerous cells. Cancer is also able to hide, rearing its ugly head years later.

Elon Musk wants to spend $10 billion building the internet in space

Elon Musk’s plan for satellite internet is even more ambitious than originally thought. At a SpaceX event in Seattle on Friday, the Tesla CEO told Bloomberg Businessweek that his unnamed Space Internet venture could one day stretch all the way to Mars — and it could cost $ 10 billion to pull off.

“I don’t see anyone else doing it.”

The news comes at the tail end of a busy week for Musk, with the CEO announcing that a five-mile Hyperloop test track is in development only a day earlier. According to Musk, the satellite internet project would make for fast, cheap global internet that isn’t impeded by terrestrial wires. “The speed of light is 40 percent faster in the vacuum of space than it is for fiber,” he says, explaining that internet…

Continue reading…The Verge

HOW TO MAKE EXTRA-EFFICIENT SOLAR PANELS USING OLD BLU-RAY DISCS.

BLU-RAY DISCS' PRETTY COLOR ACTUALLY MAKES THEM GREAT AT CAPTURING LIGHT.



You probably don't think of them that way, but Blu-ray discs have a gorgeous color. In fact, the same physics that gives butterfly wings and housefly eyes their iridescent shine are also at work on Blu-ray. All are examples of what physicists call structural color, which are colors created not from pigments, but from translucent, microscopic shapes that capture light and reflect it in such a way that it appears colored to the human eye.

Blu-ray discs are so great at capturing light, a team of engineers from Northwestern University thought they would test how well Blu-ray works for solar panels. After all, solar panels must also trap light as it comes in. Maybe by replicating the microscopic, glassy wonderland of the surface of a Blu-ray disc onto a solar panel, the engineers could up a solar panel's performance.

This isn't as weird of an idea as it seems at first blush. Solar engineers already know that certain microscopic surface patterns, like those found in structural colors in nature, make solar panels more efficient. Making such nanometer-scale patterns from scratch is expensive, however. The Northwestern team sought a cheaper way to pattern solar panels.
A Blu-ray's microscopic surface patterns follow rules Blu-ray engineers wrote for getting discs to hold the amount of information required for high-definition movies. It turns out those patterns are just right for capturing light, as well.

What the team came up with certainly does sound inexpensive. First, they trimmed the edges off of a Blu-ray disc using a pair of scissors. (The disc was Police Story 3: Super Cop, the team reports.) Then they opened up the disc, revealing the disc's patterned surface, which encodes its data. They poured liquefied plastic onto the patterned surface and let the plastic harden overnight.

At the same time, they created their own solar panels in lab. When the panels were ready, the engineers pressed their patterned plastic onto the surfaces of their panels, stamping the panels the way you might stamp cookie dough. They also made a batch of panels with smooth, unstamped surfaces, as a control.

In in-lab tests, the patterned panels were more efficient than the smooth ones, they discovered. Although they first tried Super Cop, it doesn't matter what the disc is, as long as it encodes lots of data. A Blu-ray's microscopic surface patterns follow rules Blu-ray engineers wrote for getting discs to hold the amount of information required for high-definition movies. It turns out those patterns are just right for capturing light, as well. "It's as if electrical engineers and computer scientists developing the Blu-ray technology have been subconsciously doing our jobs, too," Jiaxing Huang, a chemist who led the research, said in a statement. Huang and his colleagues published their work 25th November, 2014 in the journal Nature Communications.

CES 2015: THE WILDEST THINGS WE SAW 3-D-PRINTED

Nervous System's Kinematics Dress 

It may look like just a pretty dress, but it was far from simple to make. Design studio Nervous System used a system called Kinematics to compress the project by 85 percent. The dress came out as one single folded piece of fabric, with 2,279 unique triangular patterns.

CES was chock-full of 3-D printers—some big, some small, some for food, and some for prototyping outdoor gear. More exciting to the casual passer-by, the booths were chock-full of printed wares. Take a look at some of our favorites in this gallery.

Popular Science is covering the coolest, most futuristic, and strangest gadgets and technologies at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Catch our complete CES 2015 coverage all week long. 

An Automatic Suture Device from Formlabs

3-D printing is known for its frivolous plastic trinkets, but it's also a powerful tool for innovators to rapidly prototype. Formlabs had one pretty amazing example at its booth this year. An engineer named Alex Berry had an idea to build a device that can insert sutures during medical procedures in order to cut down on pinpricks and unnecessary punctures. To quickly and cheaply validate his designs, Berry used the Form 1+ printer. 

Food, from XYZprinting

 

Here's hoping the 3-D-printed food of the future doesn't look quite so, well, strange. XYZ demoed its latest suite of 3-D printers, including a food printer. The results were neat dino shapes, but odd colors. The printer essentially squirts dough into pre-programmed shapes, which you then need to pop in the oven. The company claims the printer will cost less than $2,000 and is slated for release later in the year.

3-D-Printed Drum Kit From 3DSystems 

 

At first, I thought the band was just a way of getting the attention of passersby. But then, I took a closer look at realized all of the instruments—drums, guitar, and keyboard—had at least some element 3-D-printed. The components were very detailed and complex, which the creator, Olaf Diegel says, is only possible with a 3-D printer. I'm no discerning ear, but it sounded pretty good to me. 

CES 2015: NVIDIA WILL SUPERCHARGE CAR INFOTAINMENT SYSTEMS WITH COMPUTER GRAPHICS

 THE DRIVE CX IS A POWERFUL COMPUTER MADE FOR CAR COCKPITS...




The Nvidia Drive CX will bring better computer graphics to car navigation, instrumentation, driver-monitoring, and infotainment systems.

Nvidia is no stranger to computer graphics. The company has been a leader in graphics processor (GPU) manufacturing for more than a decade. Now, it wants to bring its high-end graphics processing capabilities to cars.
The Nvidia Drive CX, a high-end cockpit computer, was unveiled at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and its meant to power automotive entertainment systems. That means that car navigation, infotainment, instrumentation (such as speedometers), driver-monitoring and more will be capable of displaying graphics as powerful as a high-end smartphone or tablet.
The Nvidia Drive CX is powered by a Tegra X1 or Tegra K1 processor depending on the configuration. Both chips have traditionally been used in tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices. Now that they're being brought to the automotive industry, automakers will be able to build more complex computer systems such as 3D navigation models or better collision avoidance systems.
Although Nvidia hasn’t announced any partnerships that will make use of the Drive CX just yet, the spokesperson that we talked to was extremely confident in the new platform. “We’ve been building computer systems for automakers for ten years,” said Daniel Shapiro, Sr. Director of Automotive for Nvidia. "We're already seeing lots of interest from car companies."
Popular Science is covering the coolest, most futuristic, and strangest gadgets and technologies at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Catch our complete CES 2015 coverage all week long.