#Wifi Calling offers coverage for UK homes, small offices EE on Tuesday announced the launch of Wifi Calling to make calls and texts available in every home and small office in the UK.
will benefit over 4 million people across the UK who lose connection in at least one room in their home.
000 adults) found almost one in ten people have one room or more in their home where they have no mobile connectivity.
The home connectivity survey also found that a quarter of people in the UK work from home at least one day a week
The numbers lead EE to believe that Wifi Calling could benefit the country's increasingly mobile workforce.
What's more, the National Association of Estate agents said Wifi Calling can stop house sellers suffering from losing out because of poor mobile coverage.
The EE release went on to promote Wifi Calling as having a potential change on the value of a home.
when they're buying a house innovations like this can help sellers ensure they are maximizing the value of their home
"Wifi Calling will make a real difference to millions of customers across the UK, from basement flats in London to the most rural homes in the country."
"Swantee told the BBC that"We have worked more than a year to make sure that everything works like a normal phone connection."
"Ringtone, voicemail, and quality of the conversation remains the same with the EE solution. EE is also promoting ease of adoptiono special app is needed for the service
and it is not necessary that friends be in the same closed user group service for talking and messaging.
Wifi Calling from EE uses the phone's normal dialer and contacts book to make calls,
The launch involves the Lumia 640 and Samsung galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. EE said, "More new and existing devices will be added to the Wifi Calling range in the coming weeks,
and by summer 2015 more than five million EE pay monthly customers will have access to Wifi Calling."
"Initially, said the BBC, The Wifi Calling service will be limited to pay monthly subscribers using Samsung's Galaxy S6 and S5 phones and Microsoft's new Lumia 640."
"Since it requires specific mobile data components to be built into the devices, it cannot be extended to other older models,
"said the BBC. John Mccann of Techradar meanwhile, delivered a Tuesday overview of what the feature is and how it works."
"Wi-fi calling allows you to use a Wi-fi network to make and receive phone calls, rather than using the traditional mobile network,
"he wrote. With EE's service,"you may not even notice you're actually using a Wi-fi network rather than the mobile one
-although you do get an icon in the status bar alerting you to the fact."
"He said text conversations remain uninterrupted and call log stays complete without the need to switch to a different application
when using a Wi-fi network to connect to friends. EE is a digital communications company in Britain.
Its mobile and fixed communications services are delivered to consumers, businesses, government and the wholesale market a
#Shifts in electricity generation spur net job growth, but coal jobs decline In the four years following the 2008 recession,
the coal industry lost more than 49,000 jobs, while the natural gas, solar and wind industries together created nearly four times that amount, according to a new Duke university study.
A county-by-county geographical analysis of the losses and gains shows that few new jobs were added in regions hardest hit by coal's decline, particularly counties in southern West virginia and eastern Kentucky."
"Our study shows it has not been a one-for one replacement, "said senior author Lincoln Pratson."
"The counties that were very reliant on the coal industry are now in the most difficult position,
"said Pratson, who is the Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Professor of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.
To estimate changes in electricity generation employment, Pratson and research analyst Drew Haerer examined data relating to both direct and indirect job growth and loss for each industry.
This included operations and maintenance jobs at electric power plants, as well as operations and maintenance jobs in resource extraction and fuel transportation.
Data for solar and wind generator operations and maintenance jobs were provided by the industries themselves. Job changes in the coal
and natural gas industries were derived using a model that analyzed year-to-year economic activity and energy production occurring within each sector of the two industries to estimate gains or losses in employment that supported electricity generation.
Overall, regions that had the largest energy job increases were the Northeast, Southwest, Midwest and West.
Regions that experienced the greatest job losses overall were Appalachia, the Uinta Basin of Utah and Colorado,
and parts of the Powder River basin in Montana and Wyoming. The lack of geographic overlap of job loss and job creation is the result of many factors,
Pratson said.""The areas where a lot of coal is mined in Appalachia, for example, are rugged very and heavily forestedot easy places to set up solar panels or wind farms."
"Differences in the availability of state incentives for renewable energy also had noted an effect Haerer.""States with incentives have more growth,
"he said.""The southeast is incentive-free, and there is almost no development of green energy there compared to other regions."
"Haerer said one way for states that depend heavily on the coal industry to cope with changing energy trends may be to transition to clean coal technology,
which reduces coal plants'negative environmental impacts. Pratson and Haerer published their study in the peer-reviewed journal Energy policy.
They conducted the study with no external sources of funding i
#Singapore Telecom to buy US cybersecurity firm for $810 mn Singapore Telecom (Singtel) said Wednesday it will buy almost all of US cybersecurity firm Trustwave for $810 million,
saying it was looking to become"a global player"in the sector. Southeast asia's biggest telecom firm by revenue said it will acquire a 98 percent equity interest in Trustwave under an agreement it signed with the Chicago-headquartered company.
Trustwave, a leading specialist in managed security services, is valued at $850 million, Singtel said in a statement.
Trustwave chairman and chief executive Robert J. Mccullen will hold the other two percent.""We aspire top be a global player in cybersecurity,
"Singtel group chief executive Chua Sock Koong said in the statement. Speaking at a news conference Chua added:"
"I think if you look at acquisitions outside of the traditional telco business on a single investment basis this is the largest that we have done."
"Singtel said it"will leverage Trustwave's threat intelligence, technology and talent to meet the growing demand for always-on managed security services in North america and the Asia-Pacific region".
"Trustwavehich helps firms fight cybercrime, protect their data and reduce security riskas three million business subscribers served by 1, 200 employees in 26 countries.
Singtel said that after the acquisition, Trustwave will continue to operate as an independent business unit
and strengthen is position in the United states and Europe. The purchase will also enable Trustwave to use Singtel's vast presence in the Asia Pacific to"broaden its overall security portfolio
and address the fast-growing emerging security market opportunity"in the region, the statement added. Cash-rich Singtel has been expanding well beyond its small domestic market
and holds substantial stakes in mobile telecom firms in key Asian markets including India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
'When social media software firm Sprinklr unveiled its latest funding last month, it vaulted into the club of"unicorns,
which makes a business software collaboration tool, entered the group which includes well-known names like Uber
the proliferation of these billion-dollar startups has raised eyebrows as well as concerns in the fast-moving technology sector.
The venture capital research firm CB Insights lists 53 US-based unicorns, saying the hefty valuations have been fueled by a flood of private equity investors seeking an early piece of the next
The use of the term"unicorn"began with a blog from investor Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures in late 2013,
unicorn fever has raised fears of a bubble in the private equity markets.""You have a frenzy of investors looking for the next Facebook.
They saw the possibility of a return of 1, 000 percent,"says Rob Enderle, a consultant and analyst at Enderle Group."
"But these are incredibly risky investments. All of these firms are not going to get a multibillion dollar buyout or massive public offering.
I think we're going to see a thinning of the herd."'"'Dead unicorns'The unicorns include a handful of startups worth at least $10 billion,
a group sometimes called the"decacorns.""These include China's Xiaomi, Airbnb, Pinterest and Dropbox,
Some equity investors are getting nervous over the trend.""I do think you'll see some dead unicorns this year,
said in a blog post that both investors and startups are pushing too hard, ignoring traditional standards of risk."
"Companies are taking on huge burn rates to justify spending the capital they are raising in these enormous financings,
"In a running Twitter conversation on the subject, Danielle Morrill of the research firm Mattermark said"I've narrowed it down to 61 potential dead unicorns.
"Prominent equity investor Marc Andreessen, one of the founders of Netscape during the dot-com era, expressed similar concerns in a series of tweets last year, saying too many startups are"burning
Mark Cuban, an early dot-com entrepreneur, said on his blog that the current situation is"worse than the tech bubble of 2000"because of"angel"investors investing in apps
and crowd funders are currently under water in their investments, "he wrote.""Because there is ZERO liquidity for any of those investments.
None. Zero. Zip.""Precipitous drop There appears to have already been some shakeout. The online retail startup Fab. com,
Another former unicorn, the gaming service Onlive, was acquired recently by Sony for an undisclosed price.
Many startups have been able to raise cash from eager investors without heading to Wall street for a public share offering.
This also means the firms are not subject to the same scrutiny and publicly traded company for finances and governance.
a professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of business who specializes in corporate valuations, said that while financial data on these unicorns is limited often,
few have demonstrated an ability to grow revenues and establish a sustainable business.""Based on historical data,
I wouldn't be surprised if a vast majority of these firms fail to live up to their valuations,
"Sundaram told AFP. Still, he said that these types of investments are part of the process of innovation and"creative destruction
"which fuel the economy. While this is reminiscent of the dot-com boom, Sundaram noted that in the last cycle,
"You had similar businesses (that) came in with very high valuations and many went bust,
but this produced a Google and an ebay and a number of other standouts.""Peter Barris at the venture firm New Enterprise Associates said investment is flowing
because"we are in the early days of one of the most robust periods of innovation
"In a blog post, Barris said he sees unicorns transforming the way we live.""Perhaps there will even be a flameout
The biggest'unicorns'roaming the US Billion-dollar startups or"unicorns"have been multiplying but only a small number have reached the value of $10 billionarning the nickname"decacorns."
in its latest round of funding, saw its valuation surge from $17 billion to $41 billion in January.
Snapchat is readying a new round of funding which could push its valuation to $19 billion.
The California group drew an investment from China's Alibaba last month at a valuation of $15 billion, according to Bloomberg News.*Palantir:
Palantir Technologieshich specializes in data analyticsaw its valuation jump to $15 billion in December with its latest funding round.
The California group founded in 2004 and financed in part by the CIA's investment arm In-Q-Tel develops technology used for counterterrorism as well as the financial sector.*
$12 billion The private space exploration firm founded by tech entrepreneur Elon musk announced in January that it raised $1 billion in a round led by Google and Fidelity Investments.
$11 billion The bulletin board-style social network confirmed in March a fresh investment round at a valuation of $11 billion,
The fast-growing social network founded in 2010 in San francisco has disclosed not the number of its users
but analysts say it has some 47 million in the United states and additional users worldwide.*
$10 billion One of the early online storage services, Dropbox's latest investment round came at a valuation of $10 billion, according to CB Insights.
#Self-assembling, bioinstructive collagen materials for research, medical applications A Purdue University researcher and entrepreneur is commercializing her laboratory's innovative collagen formulations that self-assemble
These collagen building blocks can be used to create customized three-dimensional tissue and organs outside the body to support basic biological research,
drug discovery and chemical toxicity testing. In addition, they can be used to create next generation tissue engineered medical products that foster improved tissue integration and regeneration.
Sherry Harbin, an associate professor in Purdue's Weldon School of Biomedical engineering and Department of Basic Medical sciences
and founder of Geniphys, has worked for more than 10 years to tap into the secrets of the extracellular matrix component of tissues.
The extracellular matrix is a 3d meshwork of molecules or microenvironment, including collagen, within which cells live
or quality controlled-based on their polymerization capacity, more specifically their ability to transition from a fluid to fibril matrix state.
"Conventionally, cells cultured on the surface of plastic dishes have been used to identify new drug targets, test chemical toxicity,
and disease states such as cancer, "Harbin said.""Unfortunately, growth of cells in these oversimplified environments has been shown not to correlate well with human cell responses in the body.
Geniphys collagen polymers allow scientists to grow cells within a highly reproducible, physiologically relevant 3-D collagen fibril matrix that they can customize.
In this way, scientists can determine how specific attributes of the collagen ECM affect cell behavior,
including tumor metastasis and drug/toxin sensitivity.""This is important as pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies look for new,
less expensive ways to better predict human outcomes as part of drug development and chemical toxicity testing.
This technology also is supporting the development of the first bioinstructive collagen-based therapeutics for medical applications,
including regenerative medicine strategies involving therapeutic cells, multifunctional drug delivery, surgical implants, and tissue engineered medical products.
Conventional biological products including collagen sponges require extensive chemical and physical processing to improve their mechanical strength
and reduce their proteolytic degradation. A challenge is that this processing method causes adverse cell reactions by altering the biological properties of the collagen.
Furthermore conventional medical collagen products do not self-assemble so their biophysical properties, including fibril microstructure, mechanical properties (stiffness),
Harbin's startup Geniphys is currently manufacturing research-grade collagen polymer and standardized polymerization kits that support creation and customization of 3-D cell culture systems.
Geniphys plans to produce medical-grade collymer products for veterinary and medical applications, including wound and hemostatic dressings,
cell-instructive implants, engineered tissue and organ replacements, hybrid medical devices and therapeutic cell and molecule delivery.
Research into the nature of this process is of significant importance in biology and medical science.
what is known as a contractile ring is created in the interior wall of a cell membrane. As this ring contracts
Although research in molecular and cellular biology has gradually shed light on the proteins that form and control the contractile ring, there are many aspects of its self-organizational structure that remain a mystery.
Professor Shin'ichi Ishiwata (Graduate school of Advanced Science and Engineering) and Research Assistant Makito Miyazaki's (Research Institute for Science and Engineering) research team at the Waseda Bioscience Research Institute
This is expected to lead to medical treatments in various fields that can for example, prevent cancer cells from multiplying,
The details of this research were published in the online English science magazine Nature Cell biology on March 23 3
#New technology could speed up lifesaving drug discoveries A team of researchers from our University has developed a revolutionary new biochip device that will lead to a faster
Preventing kinase over-activity The'Phosphosense'technology screens compounds for use in drugs and has produced a new way of detecting the activity of enzymes called kinases.
it can cause a range of life-threatening diseases such as cancer, autoimmune disorders, Alzheimer's and diabetes.
This patented technology will allow pharmaceutical companies to measure simultaneously a large number of compounds and select which one can be developed into drugs to fight against diseases.
The device was developed at Bath by researchers Dr Pedro Estrela and Phd student Nikhil Bhalla in the Department of Electronic & Electrical engineering, Dr Mirella Di Lorenzo in the Department of Chemical engineering,
and Dr Giordano Pula in the Department of Pharmacy & Pharmacology. Revolutionising drug discovery Dr Giordano Pula, Lecturer in the Department of Pharmacy & Pharmacology said:"
"This technology has the potential to change the drug discovery process as we know it
and facilitate the development of new drugs for diseases like cancer, stroke and dementia.""The simplicity is the strength of this technology.
and frees it from the use of radioisotopes or antibodies.""""The free flow of information between departments at the University of Bath promoted this collaboration
and the work leading to this discovery, which was a truly interdisciplinary endeavour.""The work, published in the Nature Group journal Scientific Reports, explains how this technology identifies potential new drugs by combining semiconductor devices that measure protein kinase activity by calculating ph change,
which signifies the effectiveness of a potential drug compound in blocking kinase activity y
#Getting the perfect fit for artificial hips When a patient receives a new hip, it is adjusted usually only approximately to leg length.
Greater accuracy requires a more precise measuring process as well as adjustable implants. Now, a new type of measurement method coupled with a modular implant should allow orthopedic surgeons to precisely calibrate leg length after the operation
so it matches its original length. The researchers will be introducing their development at the Medtec expo in Stuttgart, April 21-23.
A painful hip that feels unstable and no longer has the same range of motion: For many patients, this means they need a prosthetic hip something that happens to more than 200,000 people each year in Germany alone.
Implant manufacturers face numerous challenges; for example, the artificial joints may eventually Break in addition, orthopedic surgeons currently have no suitable method for precisely measuring leg length before the operation
or for adjusting the implants accordingly. The result is that after the operation, the leg can actually be longer
or shorter than it used to be. This leads to problems with the spine, which have to be resolved using shoe inserts.
orthopedic surgeons will be able to measure their patients'leg lengths much more precisely. The Fraunhofer researchers collaborated on the new system with several project partners:
the Clinic for Orthopedics, Trauma Surgery and Plastic surgery at the Leipzig University Hospital; University of Applied sciences Zwickau and its Research and Transfer Centre;
AQ Implants Gmbh; and MSB-Orthopädie-Technik Gmbh.""The margin of error in our process is less than one centimeter,
"explains Dr. Ronny Grunert, a researcher at IWU.""Eventually we'd like to get that down to five millimeters."
"Currently, the usual procedure calls for the doctors to determine leg length with a tape measure,
Here's how it works: With the patient in a prone position, the doctor affixes a small plastic box containing two LEDS to the patient's shin.
The doctor then takes hold of the patient's heel and lifts it upward. With that motion, the two lights trace an arc that is recorded by a camera positioned about 1. 5 meters to the side of the patient.
The principle is similar to that of a compass. The hip joint, from which the leg"hangs,"is essentially the point of the compass,
while the LEDS act as the pencil. If the distance between the two changes i e. if the leg becomes shorter or longer,
that will change the arc traced by the LEDS. The doctor takes this measurement twice once right before the operation
and once after the implant has been inserted temporarily. The box remains on the leg during the operation.
A software program compares both arcs to determine if the leg is the same length it was before the procedure.
If necessary, the doctor can make adjustments to the artificial hip. Initial testing of a measuring system prototype has met already with success at the Leipzig University hospital.
There are plans for a clinical trial later this year and the new system could be on the market in about two years.
Unbreakable, adjustable hip implants Fraunhofer's researchers also optimized the hip implants, again working together with partners from industry, medicine and research."
"We've developed an implant that can be adjusted to each individual patient, "says Grunert. The trick was to do away with prefabricated implants in various sizes and use a modular system instead.
In this method, the doctor can select the right hip stem as well as the right neck for each patient.
Special screw connections are used to attach the individual parts to each other and the combined unit is implanted in the hip for testing.
The doctor now measures the leg length, and, if necessary, can easily separate the implant's various components to exchange them for better-fitting parts
or adjust them as required. Another advantage is that the artificial hip is less prone to breakage than conventional modular models with a conical clamping ring.
Currently, the doctor connects the stem and the neck of the prefabricated artificial hip during the operation with a well-placed stroke of the hammer.
This puts tremendous stress on the connection point, a conical clamping ring. Furthermore, once the parts have been joined together,
it's virtually impossible to separate and adjust them. That's not the case for the specialized screws that hold the parts of the new implants together.
The point where they connect is mechanically stable and prevents the implant from breaking. The new system was developed within the"artificial joints"cooperative network
which is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWI) and coordinated by Fraunhofer IWU.
At the Medtec expo, the researchers will present the leg-length measuring system and the modular hip implant as well as the artificial joint network e
#Automated captioning system processes hundreds of video-hours per day In 2008, four students at the MIT Sloan School of management developed a system for captioning online video that was far more efficient than traditional methods,
which involve pausing a video frequently to write text and mark time codes. The system used automated speech recognition software to produce"rough-draft"transcripts,
displayed on a simple interface, that could easily be edited. Landing a gig to caption videos from five MIT Opencourseware (OCW) classes,
the students were able to caption 100 hours of content in a fraction the time of manual captioning.
This marked the beginning of captioning-service company 3play Media which now boasts more than 1, 000 clients and an equal number of contracted editors processing hundreds of hours of content per day.
Clients include academic institutions, government agencies, and big-name companiesuch as Netflix, Viacom, and Time warner Cables well as many users of video-sharing websites.
Today, 3play's system works much as it did at MIT, but on a grander scale:
Customers upload videos to 3play's site, where automatic speech recognition software produces transcripts and captions,
which are pushed then to the cloud. Then, any of the contracted editors can choose which transcripts to edit.
Finally, managers give each job a final look, before pushing it back to the cloud for customers to access.
"says 3play cofounder and chief technology officer C. J. Johnson'02, MBA'08, who co-invented the system in MIT's Computer science and Artificial intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)."
"The questions we asked were: How can we process one file faster, and how can we process thousands of files a day to scale up to meet the demands of the Internet?"
"The transcripts created by the system also have time data behind each word. This has paved the way for"interactive transcripts"that accompany video content posted by MIT,
and other universities, to online learning platforms, including edx. These transcripts scroll along with video, highlighting text that's spoken,
and let users click words to bring them to that exact moment in the video. In addition to Johnson, 3play's cofounders and system co-inventors are Josh Miller MBA'09, Chris Antunes MBA'08,
and Jeremy Barron MBA'08. Tools of the trade Over the years 3play has developed also a number of tools aimed at easing workflow. One tool allows users to switch captioning formats with the click of a button;
another lets users cut -and-paste text from the interactive transcript to create clip reels.
But they've also developed tools to meet the ever-changing rules and regulations regarding captioning:
In January 2016, the Federal Communications Commission, for instance, will require online clips of full TV SHOWS to have closed captions.
To support this requirement, 3play has developed a video-clip captioner tool, being released this month, that generates closed captions for short clips by automatically extracting them from the full transcript.
Earlier this year, 3play developed a return-on-investment calculator, so your average Youtube uploader can learn
if captioning is worth the cost. To do so, the company drew on third-party data on thousands of Youtube videos that showed significant increases in viewership with the addition of captions.
When given a video link the calculator crawls the user's channel to tally viewership of noncaptioned videos and, based on that data, estimates the boost in traffic and search-engine optimization,
and how that could all add value with more advertising revenue, among other things.""Everyone wants to know,
'If I invest money into anything, what's my return?'"'"Johnson says.""It's the same for captioning.""
""Cutting the right corners"3play's system took shape at MIT, where the cofounders started"thinking about captioning from the viewpoint of manufacturing,
"While doing some work for OCW in 2007, Johnson learned of the laborious, time-consuming process for captioning videos."
Automatic speech recognition technology seemed like the clear solution. But, as it turns out, the technology is only about 80 percent accurate, at best,
This led the students to the Spoken language Systems Group directed by James Glass, a senior research scientist at CSAIL.
and earn funding.""VMS was the No. 1 thing that helped us launch, "Johnson says.
After 3play's cofounders graduated from MIT Sloan, the company set up shop in a tiny apartment in Somerville, Massachusettshere the four, without computer-science backgrounds,
tried to grow a Web-based company.""We had'Javascript for Dummies'books on our desks,"Johnson recalls."
"We were figuring it all out on the fly.""At one point, they found a list of every college and university in the country,
and started calling, one-by-one, to pitch their service.""We were trying to make money month-to-month by selling captioning,
"Johnson says. Then one day, representatives from Yale university, which had used the service once before, called to say they were coming to 3play's corporate headquartersour dumpy apartment,
"Johnson says.""So we light a few candles and we uncomfortably talk to them about how we're going to do their captioning,
Dozens of other educational institutions followed, including Princeton university, Boston University, Harvard Business school, Johns hopkins university, and others. Over the years, MIT has used 3play to caption videos produced for its Infinite History project, MIT Sloan,
and the Industrial Liaison Programhich was the first to use interactive transcripts in 2009. More recently, the company entered the entertainment space,
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