#Google maps can make sure you never see a"Closed"sign again Google maps has got another incredibly useful feature thanks to a recent update that will warn you
if the location you're navigating to will be closed by the time you get there. It could mean that people don't waste a journey by travelling to a store or restaurant,
only to be confronted with a"closed"sign. Instead, when you set off Google maps will now show a message that reads"Your destination may be closed
by the time you arrive"."You can either take heed of the warning and go somewhere else, or cancel and go there anyway.
Who knows, maybe you like staring at empty aisles and"closed"signs. At the moment the update is only available for the Android version of Google maps,
but we've reached out to Google to find out when it will be coming to ios. Via The Telegrap p
#Scientists are turning your gut cells into computers A team of biological engineers at the Massachusetts institute of technology are turning the cells in our guts into computers.
It's hoped that this could one day allow us to program those cells to detect
and treat diseases. They've published the details of a series of sensors, memory switches and circuits that can be encoded into the human gut bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron.
These components would allow the bacteria to sense, remember and respond to signals it detects.
Genetic circuits have been built in the past, most notably out of E coli but this is the first time circuitry has been possible in a bacterium that can stick about in our gut for a while."
"We wanted to work with strains like B. thetaiotaomicron that are present in many people in abundant levels,
and can stably colonize the gut for long periods of time, "said Timothy Lu, who led the research.
The genetic parts that Lu's team created include four sensors, which respond to signals like specific sugars-allowing the bacteria to be controlled by the food you Eat on receiving a signal,
they can switch genes on and off. During tests in mice, the bacteria were able to remember what the mice ate.
The next step is to build these tools in more species of Bacteroides. Different people have different microbes
meaning that flexibility is needed for this to work across a wide population. Eventually, it's hoped that the resulting gut computers could help the early detection and treatment of disorders like inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer r
#Meet the particle that could be crucial to future technology Physicists from around the world are celebrating the discovery of a particle with no mass that could allow us to create faster, more efficient electronics.
It's called the Weyl fermion. Originally proposed by mathematician Hermann Weyl in 1929, these fermions are thought to be the building blocks of other subatomic particles.
Right now, electricity is carried by streams of electrons -but Weyl fermions could provide a much more stable and efficient way of doing the same thing.
One interesting quirk of their physics is that they can behave as a composite of matter and antimatter inside a crystal
-which is how they were found, and the only place they can exist. But another is that they can be used to create massless electrons that move very quickly
"It's like they have their own GPS and steer themselves without scattering,"said M. Zahid Hasan,
who led the research team.""These are very fast electrons that behave like unidirectional light beams and can be used for new types of quantum computing."
#Synthetic coral could suck pollution out of the sea A team of Chinese researchers has developed a material that mimics the way corals suck industrial pollutants out of the water.
It's hoped the discovery could help combat health issues in fishing communities around the world.
Heavy metals like mercury, lead and arsenic are released into the oceans through manufacturing and industrial processes.
the pollutants build up in the food chain. Top predators-including humans-then end up with very high levels in their bodies.
Corals are particularly good at adsorbing pollutants due partially to their structure. So a team lead by Xianbiao Wang created plates of aluminium oxide
(which has previously proved useful in cleaning up heavy metals) curled up into a coral-like formation.
During testing, the coral-like plates removed 2. 5 times as much mercury from water than traditional aluminium oxide nanoparticles.
"We hope our work provides inspiration for more research into the development of materials that mimic biological organisms."
"Image credit: Matt Kieffer//CC BY-SA 2
#Reactionary surveillance will boost extremist groups After the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France, much of the world rallied around the magazine's right to free speech;
French President, Francois Hollande, said on Tuesday in Paris the government will present a draft law next month that makes Internet operators ccomplicesof hate-speech offenses
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he will travel to the U s. to seek help from the heads of Twitter, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.
This is not just leading to the oppression of every internet user but also makes little sense as potential terrorists will move away from public domains controlled by such large companies to darker areas of the web where they are monitored less-easily.
Moving away from terrorism, surveillance is a controversial subject on a global scale thanks to whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden
which would require the personal data of all passengers flying in and out of Europe to be stored up to five years.
BT and EE partnership will reduce'not spots'Broadband provider BT has confirmed its intention to acquire the UK's biggest mobile network
which could be a major step in providing coverage to mobile not spots where residents are struggling with limited or complete lack of connectivity.
Earlier this week the UK government published a map of public digital infrastructure (PDF) in the hope of tackling some of the mobile'not spots'across the country.
Minister of state for culture and the digital economy Ed Vaizey said: This report will be instrumental in driving savings
whilst ensuring value for money and improvements to digital infrastructure are maximised. A femtocell is a small low-power cellular base station
which is designed typically for use in a home or small businessbt is the only provider in the UK contractually-obliged to provide a telephone service to every home which means over the years it has built a gigantic copper network.
The telecoms giant has over seven million broadband subscribers many of which will use the company's own'Home Hub'routers.
Although new hardware will be required if BT chooses it could roll out new Home Hub devices which feature femtocell technology to boost mobile coverage in rural areas for its EE purchase.
A femtocell is a small low-power cellular base station which is designed typically for use in a home or small business to boost coverage.
BT is in a unique position to make use of its vast customer base and broadband network to reduce the amount of not spots in the UK.
EE has the widest network coverage of all the current mobile providers and has invested significant amounts in retaining its market leadership.
The firm which was created out of a partnership between T-Mobile and Orange had promised to connect more than 1500 rural communities within three years by investing in small cells to extend coverage.
Cisco released a report this week which believes that Wi-fi offload will dominate traffic by 2017 to deal with capacity demands from a mobile data traffic increase of more than sevenfold between 2014 and 2019 as part of a wider global growth of almost ten times.
Doug Webster Vice president of Products and Solutions Marketing at Cisco said: The ongoing adoption of more powerful mobile devices and wider deployments of emerging M2m applications combined with broader access to faster wireless networks will be key contributors to significant mobile traffic growth in the coming years.
This mobile-centric environment will give service providers a new landscape of challenges and opportunities to innovatively deliver a variety of mobile services
and experiences to consumers and business users as the Internet of Everything (Ioe) continues to take shape.
BT is working with Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) to use public funds to boost coverage in areas where the commercial case is more challenging.
As we reported yesterday the head of Virgin Media Business believes that rural broadband investment shouldn't be increased over inner-city
despite an EFRA (Environment Food and Rural affairs) report claiming that the allocation of funding between urban and rural broadband investment is unbalanced greatly.
#Human Genes Can Save Yeast WIKIPEDIA, LILLY MA large number of human genes can substitute for their defective counterparts in yeast
and certainly not of this scale, said Nevan Krogan of the University of California, San francisco,
who was involved not in the work. t rather satisfying to see that half of the genes could complement the yeast function
and look at their genomes we can recognize many equivalences, said molecular biologist Edward Marcotte of the University of Texas at Austin who led the new study. n fact,
there are thousands of genes shared between humans and yeast. These shared genes may appear similar,
Incorporating data from previously reported substitution experiments, that percentage rose to 47. The team went on to examine
For example, the sets of genes involved in sterol biosynthesis and in the proteasome complexhe cell garbage disposalere almost all replaceable,
who was involved not in the work. f you can replace some of the subunits of the DNA repair machinery,
The results could have implications for medical research, said Babu. For example, n the human population you have many individuals that carry single nucleotide polymorphisms
#Optogenetics Meets CRISPR The CRISPR gene-editing system just got even better: a new light-activated Cas9 nuclease could offer researchers greater spatial and temporal control over the RNA-guided nuclease activity,
according to a study published today (June 15) in Nature Biotechnology. his is an effective new system for extremely precise control of gene editing via light, Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell biologist at the University of California, Davis,
told The Scientist in an e-mail. ny technological advancement that can add in the precision and control of genetic modification is an important advance,
he added, noting that his is one of many such efforts. Recently University of Tokyo chemist Moritoshi Sato and his colleagues developed pairs of photoswitching proteins called Magnets,
which use electrostatic interactions to come together when activated by light. The team has used also photoactivatable technology to develop a light-activated CRISPR-based transcription system to target specific genes for expression.
using its Magnet proteins to create a photoactivatable Cas9 nuclease (pacas9) for light-controlled genome editing. he existing Cas9 does not allow to modify genome of a small subset of cells in tissue, such as neurons in the brain,
We have been interested in the development of a powerful tool that enables spatial and temporal control of genome editing.
Sato said. he new study makes use of the split Cas9 architecture to enable light-activated genome editing,
and highlights the versatility of the system. y impression is that the light-activated system using the magnet approach works well,
Sato group now plans to expand the colors of light that can activate the pacas9 nuclease o make genome editing more flexible
hotoactivatable CRISPR-Cas9 for optogenetic genome editing, Nature Biotechnology, doi: 10.1038/nbt. 3245,2015 d
#Tasty Visuals To help those with visual impairments make out the shape and movement of objects, a company has developed a device that takes visual information
and translates it to electrical pulses delivered to the tongue. The idea is that users learn how to interpret the tingling patterns
and come to eetheir environment through the gadget. Last week (June 18), the US Food and Drug Administration gave the company permission to begin selling its device,
called Brainport V100. edical device innovations like this have the potential to help millions of people, William Maisel, deputy director for science and chief scientist in the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health,
Users wear glasses mounted with a video camera and suck on an electrode array about the size of a lollipop.
A clinical study found that 69 percent of 74 volunteers were able to make out objects using the gadget after one year of training. his device does not give you your sight, Mike Jernigan,
and an early user of the Brainport, told the Washington post back in 2009. here is not that picture in your head.
but it a first step. or five years I have stared at a blank, black screen, Jernigan told the Post. eople are thinking outside of the box,
Researchers at Northwestern University have determined that Wernicke area, a hotdog-shape region in the temporal lobe of the left hemisphere,
may not be the seat of language comprehension, as has been scientific dogma for the past 140 years.
Instead, the team suggests in a study published today (June 25) in the neurology journal Brain,
and director of Northwestern Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer Disease Center, said in a statement. Neuroscientist Carl Wernicke discovered in 1874 that some stroke victims with damage to the left sides of their brains suffered language impairment,
which came to be known as Wernicke aphasia. Because those patients could often speak clearly, though nonsensically,
Instead of working with stroke victims, Mesulam and his colleagues studied patients with a rare form of language-affecting dementia called primary progressive aphasia (PPA.
Mesulam, who is a leading expert on PPA, realized that PPA patients with damage to Wernicke area did not exhibit the same same trouble with word meaning as stroke victims with similar brain damage.
So he and his colleagues performed language tests and brain MRIS on 72 PPA patients with damage inside and outside of Wernicke area.
but their underlying fiber pathways, necessary for communication between different language centers in the brain,
we saw a different map of language by comparing two different models of disease, one based on strokes that destroy an entire region of brain, cortex as well as underlying pathways,
and the other on a neurodegenerative disease that attacks mostly brain cells in cortex rather than the region as a whole, Mesulam said in the press release.
Mesulam told Motherboard o
#Diagnosing Ebola in 15 Minutes As West Africa has battled Ebola over the last year, clinicians have been restricted to time-consuming,
PCR-based assays to diagnose infection. The test required an entire vial of a patient blood,
using both tests to assess 106 suspected Ebola patients at two clinics in Sierra leone as well as 284 previously collected blood samples.
but overall the results bode well for Reebov continued use as a quick Ebola diagnostic in West Africa. his is an important proof-of-principle that the test can really be used in a field setting, infectious disease doctor Charles Chiu of the University of California, San francisco,
Reebov is based a paper test that detects Ebola antigens. In addition to being easy to use in field or clinical settings,
Compared with an estimated cost of $100 for a PCR-based diagnosis Reebov runs just $15 per test. e were surprised by the performance, coauthor Nira Pollock,
an infectious disease doctor at Boston Children Hospital, told Science. t was more sensitive than I expected for a rapid antigen diagnostic test. his test can be done in very austere environments,
even off the back of a truck; it doesn require electricity or a sophisticated lab or an experienced technician, added Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane University in New orleans,
Louisiana. e need to be prepared better for the next Ebola outbreak, and I think with this test we will be. h
#Three Monkey Brains, One Robotic Arm Linking the brains of multiple animals into a single rainetmay be key to efficiently solving problems with brain-machine interfaces (BMIS), according to two new studies
from the group of Miguel Nicolelis at the Duke university Medical center in Durham, North carolina. In the first, the researchers used electrodes to link the brains of three monkeys to a computer
and allowed each animal to contribute their thoughts to controlling an image of a robotic arm on a screen in front of them.
In a second study, on rats, the team linked the rodentsbrains not just to a computer
but to one another, using electrodes to both record and stimulate neural activity, then trained the rodents to synchronize their thoughts.
The results of both sets of experiments, published yesterday (July 9) in Scientific Reports, represent the first iving computersand demonstrate that animal brains may be useful in performing tasks,
Andrea Stocco of the University of Washington in Seattle told New Scientist. e are sampling different neurons from different animals
Nicolelis and his colleagues created the monkey brainet by implanting electrode arrays into the animalsmotor cortices.
The researchers then showed the animals images of a robotic arm on the screen and gave each monkey control over certain parts of its movementither a single axis (x or y) or two dimensions (x-y, y-z,
Perhaps such a brainet could help an experienced user train someone with a new limb to control it,
the engineers and physicists at the University of Pennsylvania were able to grow compound lenses with controllable sizes,
Previous work had showed how smectic liquid crystal, a transparent, soap-like class of the material, naturally self-assembled into flower-like structures
when placed around a central silica bead. Each etalis a ocal conic domain a structure that can be used as a simple lens. ur first question was
transmitting an elastic energy cue that causes the crystal focal conic domains to line up in concentric circles around the posts.
said Shu Yang, a professor in Penn Engineering departments of Materials science and engineering and Chemical and Biomolecular engineering.
#Lab on chip device to shed light on how cancer spreads 19 may 2015these rare circulating tumour cells (CTCS) can be found at low levels in a cancer patient bloodstream
the spread of cancer from one part of the body to another. The new device-which is described in a Nature Methods paper is expected to enable researchers to capture clusters of these cells
The 3-by-1-inch plastic chip through which a blood sample is passed consists of thousands of triangular microposts arranged in such a way that clusters passing between two posts will become trapped on the apex of a third central post and held
melanoma or prostate cancer successfully captured CTC clusters in from 30 to 40 percent of samples from each group.
an observation that could have important implications with the increased attention to immune-system-based cancer therapies. e are only at the beginning of our quest to understand the role and biology of CTC clusters,
from Strathclyde Department of Biomedical engineering, has developed the innovative system, known as Majicast, to manufacture lower limb prosthetic sockets that fit prostheses securely to patientsresidual limbs.
To cast for a new prosthesis, the residual limbs of the amputee are immersed in a tank of water one at a time,
with a membrane material wrapped around them. The person body weight is used then to load this-similar to loading a prosthesis during gait.
This pressure casting deforms the soft tissue under a uniform load. When a limb is subject to uniform external pressure,
and money for this is scarce. The academics are now working with members of Dutch-based social enterprise organisation Proportion to help people in Colombia,
offering high-quality artificial legs to people who have lost limbs, often through injuries from landmines. n
#Semiconductor crystals could be key to extending Moore Law IBM researchers have developed a process for growing crystals made from semiconductor materials,
which they claim can then be integrated onto silicon chips in a crucial step forward for the future of computing.
The Zurich-based team believes that its work, published in Applied Physics Letters, will allow integrated circuits to continue reducing in size and cost,
while simultaneously increasing performance. This will enable an extension of Moore Law, an observation made by Intel cofounder Graham Moore in 1965 that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits doubled every year.
Although Moore speculated that the trend would continue indefinitely there has been concern that existing technologies are reaching the limits of their capabilities. he whole semiconductor industry wants to keep Moore Law going,
said Heinz Schmid, a researcher with IBM Research Gmbh at Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland and the lead author of the paper. e need better performing transistors as we continue down-scaling,
and transistors based on silicon won give us improvements anymore. To combat the limitations imposed by silicon,
the team fabricated single crystal nanostructures made with III-V materials, including alloys of indium, gallium and arsenide.
III-V semiconductors are believed to be a potential future material for computer chips but their integration onto silicon has been unsuccessful up until now.
The crystals were grown using a technique called template-assisted selective epitaxy (TASE) using metal organic chemical vapour deposition.
It allowed the team to develop defect-free crystals, and to lithographically define oxide templates and fill them via epitaxy, making nanowires, cross junctions,
nanostructures containing constrictions and 3d stacked nanowires. According to Schmid, more work is required before the same level of control can be exerted over III-V materials as currently exists for silicon,
but the new method is the key to integrating the technology with silicon platforms. hat sets this work apart from other methods is that the compound semiconductor does not contain detrimental defects,
and that the process is fully compatible with current chip fabrication technology, he said in a statement. mportantly the method is also economically viable. n
#Researchers produce'nanoribbons'with mortar and pestle A newly discovered solid-state chemical reaction could help advance the production of nano-strucutures,
researchers have claimed. Graphene nanoribbons which can be used to boost a materialselectronic properties and strength hold promise for a number of applications.
However, it fair to say that the harsh chemical reactions required to produce these exotic structures have held back the deployment of the technology.
Now, researchers at Rice university in the US have found a new way of producing the material by grinding modified nanotubes with a mortar and pestle.
According to materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan this breakthrough reported in the current issue of Nature Communications-has been achieved by mixing two types of chemically modified nanotubes which,
when they come into contact during grinding, react and unzip into nanoribbons. The team claims that the new process could lead to significant advances in nanomaterials development. f we can use nanotubes as templates,
functionalise them and get reactions under the right conditions, what kinds of things can we make with a large number of possible nanostructures and chemical functional groups?
said Ajayan. In their tests, the researchers prepared two batches of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, one with carboxyl groups and the other with hydroxyl groups attached.
When ground together for up to 20 minutes with a mortar and pestle, the chemical additives reacted with each other,
triggering the nanotubes to unzip into nanoribbons, with water as a byproduct. The experiments were duplicated by participating labs at Rice, at the Indian Institute of technology and at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
They were performed in standard lab conditions as well as in a vacuum, outside in the open air and at variable humidity
temperatures, times and seasons. Intriguingly, despite the promise of the work, the researchers still don know precisely what happening at the nanoscale. t is an exothermic reaction,
so the energy enough to break up the nanotubes into ribbons, but the details of the dynamics are difficult to monitor,
said Ahmad Kabbani, a professor of chemistry at the Lebanese American University, Beirut. here no way we can grind two nanotubes in a microscope
and watch it happen. Not yet, anyway, he added
#Squid skin display mimic has promise for camouflage and alert systems Squid are the psychedelic champions of the animal kingdom,
rippling ever-changing patterns of colour across their skin to communicate with each other, dazzle their prey and camouflage themselves against predators.
They do this using dedicated pigment-containing cells in their skin called chromophores, which they can expands
and constrict at will, changing both the colour and texture of their skin. Researchers at Bristol University department of engineering mathematics have designed now synthetic chromophores which,
they say, prove that it is possible to create an artificial skin that could blend in with backgrounds
or flash display signals to attract search -and-rescue operations. The skin the team has developed is made from a soft electroactive dielectric elastomer,
coated with black carbon grease. Applying a current makes this elastomer expand and contract. Arranging these artificial chromatophores in a linear array, the team devised mathematical algorithms to control how the cells react to changes in state of neighbouring cells,
to see if this could mimic any of the patterning seen in squid. The team succeeded in mimicking a squid display known to marine biologists as assing clouds where bands of colour spread in waves across the skin;
the animals use this to distract and divert predators. ur ultimate goal is to create artificial skin that can mimic fast acting active camouflage
and be used for smart clothing such as cloaking suits and dynamic illuminated clothing, said Aaron Fishman, one of the leaders of the project and a visiting professor at the department. he cloaking suit could be used to blend into a variety of environments,
such as in the wild. It could also be used for signalling purposes, for example search and rescue operations
when people who are need in danger to stand out. The artificial chromophore made from a soft,
rubbery polymer with carbon grease electrodes, expand and contract in response to elextric current In a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface,
and the mathematics they developed to control it. In future, they say, they will work on improving propogation of patterns,
and devise new algorithms to simulate patterns in two-dimensional chromophore arrays o
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