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.”