#The latest tech weapons the US might deploy in Syria Military action against Syria may have been put on hold, at least for now.
Agent Defeat Weaponsthe US military has for many years been working on weapons designed specifically to target sites believed to house weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical or biological weapons.
and upgrades to the fleet designed to address that issue won't be completed until next year. Despite this,
High Power Microwave Weaponsimagine a weapon that can knock out all the computers in a Syrian military command centre without killing a single person.
In the short film, Champ was seen taking out a bank of computers. While the system is likely to be still several years away from being fielded,
and first identified that same year, is believed to have been a demonstration of the US's abilities to wage war by attacking enemy computer systems.
Some cyber attacks use malware (malicious software) to gain access to enemy systems in order to either steal sensitive information or gain control of them.
Information can be harvested using key logging software that tracks keystrokes, for example. Spoofing involves forging packets of data
usually using bot-nets#large numbers of compromised computers. If you would like to comment on this article
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#Why Bluetooth use is on the rise Bluetooth has been with us for around 15 years.
Named after Denmark's King Harald Bluetooth Blatand, who reigned in the 10th century AD, it is a technology that everyone is aware of on their computers and phones,
yet not many people choose to use. As a means of allowing devices to talk to each other cheaply and wirelessly over short distances,
it has tended to stay largely in the shadows, leaving the limelight to the technologies it connects.
Now however, with the rapid growth in the use of mobile and sensing technologies along with the release of an updated version of the system,
and predictable technology,#says Professor Roch Guerin, Chair of Computer science and Engineering at Washington University, St louis."Bluetooth targets lower transmission ranges and data rates than wi-fi,
Bluetooth Smart, launched in 2011, includes a smarter power management system that allows it to turn on,
As a result, machines using Bluetooth that previously ran for a few months on a coin cell battery,
"Bluetooth classic is for sending steady streams of voice and audio,#says Suke Jawanda, Chief Marketing Officer of the Bluetooth Special interest Group (SIG),
which owns and licenses Bluetooth technology.""Bluetooth Smart is about sending packets of bits and data to applications.#
#Life changinghealthcare is cited frequently as one area that hasn't witnessed the radical transformations underway elsewhere as a result of the ongoing digital mobile revolution.
The growth of novel personal medical sensing technologies, many of which use Bluetooth, could soon change this.
Earlier this year, a Silicon valley-based start-up called Scanadu sought to raise $100, 000 on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo.
In fact donors pledged over $1. 6 million, making it the most funded project in the site's history.
The product description may have helped: the Scanadu Scout is described perhaps best as something approaching a real version of the medical tricorder wielded by Star trek doctor Leonard"Bones#Mccoy.
This data is transmitted via Bluetooth to users'phones or tablets. With recent advances in technology such as Bluetooth, we are now able to build medical devices that weren't possible just a decade ago#.
#at an affordable price using existing infrastructure of smart phone telecoms#says Scanadu's CEO Walter de Brouwer."
"For people who live far from hospitals, in places like Africa, this could be life changing.#
once embedded under the skin monitors substances in the blood such as glucose and cholesterol so that chronic diseases like diabetes or the effects of treatments such as chemotherapy can be monitored.
which is sent wirelessly via Bluetooth to an Android app, can be forwarded automatically to doctors. Bluecell is still a few years from commercialisation."
"We chose Bluetooth because of its wide distribution in consumer devices, #says Jacopo Olivo, one of the researchers."
"It's an interesting way that Bluetooth can interact with the biotech industry.##Other personal health sensors that use Bluetooth include the Cardiopad,
an electrocardiography (ECG) machine developed to monitor heart activity in patients in remote areas of Cameroon,
and sends that information directly to an ipad app via Bluetooth. By cross-checking this data against a database
Sensors could be linked via Bluetooth to sprinkler systems to automatically optimise moisture levels. The ability to use just the right amounts of water and fertiliser to produce a good harvest without wasting resources can improve crop yields and rural incomes.
Bluetooth is also being used to help those in agriculture in other ways. Kenyan mobile tech company Virtual city has developed Agrimanagr
an app designed to speed up and automate the flow of information and reduce costs for farming businesses.
electronic scales are used to transmit the weight of produce via Bluetooth to a mobile phone which records this in farmers'accounts on a cloud-based server.
#Going digital and printing receipts"cuts out fraud#and increases the value to farmers 9-13%,#he adds.#
#This system could of course be done without Bluetooth, but being wireless makes it easier.""Out in the rural areas,
With Bluetooth, our devices do that, and can work for 12 hours without electricity.##Bluetooth can also provide new ways of communicating in rural settings where internet access is unavailable or out of reach for the poor.
Gary Marsden, a computer scientist at the University of Cape town, developed Big board, an electronic notice board that disseminates information wirelessly and for free.
The system displays a series of icons representing information on various topics on a screen.
Users take a picture of an icon they are interested in with their phone and send it via Bluetooth to a nearby device which sends them the information they want.
Files can be pictures text, video or audio. Potential applications include distributing information on health, job offers or entertainment.
In a pilot project Big board was used to inform voters about the manifestos of politicians standing in the 2007 Kenyan presidential election.
He also developed Com-Me, a collection of hardware and software components to help people with limited access to electricity
and the internet create and share content. This includes a solar-powered phone charging station and a Bluetooth-based local version of Dropbox
designed to allow off-grid communities to share and store information in a variety of formats.
Bluetooth Smart, like its older sibling, may be a relatively straightforward radio wave-based transmission technology. But as we devise more and more ways to benefit from ever greater connectivity between the people, other living organisms, objects and our environments,
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#Electric cars: A universal plug for all models? Electric vehicles promise us a future of guilt-free travel.
The second site will open in Petten The netherlands and Ispra, Italy, in 2014. Walking through the Chicago facility (see video above),
Often to our frustration, so many of our devices like laptops and phones have different chargers for different models,
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#Exoplanets: New missions hunting for alien worlds As mountains go, Cerro Armazones may not be much to look at.
but in November 2012, it suffered a computer malfunction, which made it impossible to send any data back to Earth.
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#Nanotubes: Can we make speakers as thin as paper? It's time for one of those imagined futures
In 1917 Harold Arnold and IB Crandall of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and Western electric Company showed that they could create sound by simultaneously passing alternating and direct currents through a very thin platinum foil.
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#Smart cards that top-up health Zack Oloo and Sam Agutu have been friends since they met at school 43 years ago.
They followed similar career paths, working their way up Kenya's health insurance industry until each ran successful brokerage businesses in the sector.
and finance healthcare through use of mobile phones, mobile money and smart cards. While all employers are required by law to enroll their employees into the National Hospital Insurance Fund,
So in 2009 Changamka launched a"smart card#that enabled Kenyans to save small amounts over time to cover the costs of outpatient services,
the mobile money service that allows the nearly 75%of adult Kenyans who subscribe to it to use their phones to store money
Medi-Save users could then transfer extra money into an account linked to their card number simply by sending a text message.
which work the same way as the previous system except now providers bill patients via a secure website,
##Changamka, in collaboration with one of Kenya's largest insurance companies British American Insurance and telecom provider Safaricom, launched a microinsurance scheme called Lindi Jamii in November last year.
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#Artificial food: Incredible or inedible? Pass the salt. And the pepper. And while you're at it, the ketchup too.
Funded by Google cofounder Sergey Brin, the five-year project took cells from organic cows,
By the time the story was adapted loosely for the big screen in the 1973 film Soylent Green,
Nasa recently admitted that as part of a programme"to turn science fiction into fact#they are funding work to develop a 3d food printer.
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#Organs on chips: How to make a microchip that breathes Drug testing is a costly business.
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#Artificial leaf hopes to power the world Imagine if you could draw energy from almost unlimited sources found in nature#water and light.
The catalysts are cheap, earth-abundant materials and form by self-assembly, which should make manufacture cheaper.
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#Berlin start-ups: Cool and commerce coming together? When new businesses based on the computer chip began to cluster in Santa clara Valley,
it did not take long for someone to come up with the name Silicon valley. That set a pattern,
Parse, was bought recently by Facebook for $85 million. Of course, Berlin is many leagues behind Silicon valley.
From Adobe through to Yahoo, via Apple, Intel, Google and Oracle, the Valley, as its occupants call it,
The average annual cost of a workstation in an office in Berlin including maintenance costs,
such as the social game developer Wooga or Research Gate, a networking website for scientists. The darling of the scene is Soundcloud
an audio sharing platform that has 200 million users every month. Alex Ljung, its cofounder and chief executive, moved the company from Stockholm to Berlin
But this resistance is beginning breaking down, on both sides, according to David Knight, editor-in-chief of Berlin tech scene blog Silicon Allee."
and cafes offering wi-fi, are now seeing the effect of this. In Prenzlauer Berg, Factory,
which received##1 million in funding from Google, has rented space to over 15 companies, including Soundcloud.
Florian Lanzer is trying to build a website selling green products to people who are committed not necessarily environmentalists.
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#Maker Faire: How the DIY tech force has become strong DIY technology has taken traditionally place in a bedroom, garage or on a kitchen table.
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#Juicebox: Squeezing new life into old computers By supercharging PCS that seem past their sell-by date,
one company wants to put more working machines in classrooms and in developing world countries.
These days, virtually every new gadget we buy seems destined to become obsolete faster than we can tear it from its shiny packaging.
New smartphones and tablets are released barely months after their previous versions, and the hardware and software quickly become incompatible.
Tablets won allow you to swap out parts, new laptops won let you remove batteries,
and the whole lifecycle of technology is becoming shorter, less sustainable, and more expensive for consumers.
But what if you could help extend the lifespan of technology that already exists? Give it a little boost, perhaps?
Its Juicebox promises to make ld computers run like new Now, I know what some early adopters may be thinking.
For those who believe that the age of tablets, smartphones, Google glass and the loudhas heralded the demise of desktop PCS,
Robert Hornik, Assistant Principal at East New york Family Academy in Brooklyn, remembers weekend trips to far-flung corners of New york city to hunt for old desktops from other city agencies like the Police
Pension fund that were giving them away for free. e had about 20 computers working at best, out of about 100, for a school with 450 students and 50 teachers, he recalls. hey were mostly the big, boxy computers,
like the Dell GX270, all about 8-10 years old. With an entire technology budget of just $12, 000 per year, including one part-time IT person (an undergraduate at a local university),
new desktops at around $500 a pop was not an option. chools usually acquire computers in big batches all at once in hope that they don have to get them anytime again soon, hich of course,
Computers eventually breakdown, wear out, or become overloaded with junk and must be replaced over time with spare parts
and hardware on a limited budget resulting in a jigsaw puzzle of infrastructure, like at Hornik school.
Then, when the computers start to get sluggish, preventing even basic browsing and application use, getting them all back up to the same speed becomes practically impossible.
Power up Neverware Juicebox fixes this problem by turning school PCS into a hin client Inside the physical box is a server with virtual machines
and computing power that many computers share across a single network. So, instead of each computer being stuck with ageing components,
suddenly all the computers have access to this powerful central store that does all the eavy lifting allowing the computers to run like new.
The Juicebox can supercharge any PC or even laptop even if it missing a hard drive and the whole system is completely wireless.
Since Hornik installed Neverware Juicebox over a year ago, East New york Family Academy now has over 100 working computers almost four in every classroom,
with two fully functioning computer labs. They haven slowed down a bit. he Neverware system gave us a big break.
We were able to make all those old computers work Hornik says, adding nd lightning fast.
This idea of esktop virtualization has been around for over a decade, says Neverware 27-year-old founder Jonathan Hefter. his is something banks
and Fortune 500 companies around the world are using, he says, and something that cloud computing now offers. ut no one has created a simple cost-effective methodology,
It is simply a hardware solution. hat Jonathan is doing with Neverware is necessary, but not necessarily sufficient, worries Steven Hodas. very school will be where it was 5 years ago
when it got that brand new shipment of computers. Basically, it a great point of departure, he explains. ut
Just because computers are working better and kids can browse, research, and use programs faster,
says Jim Lynch, Director of Green Tech at Techsoup Global. ith the growth of internet and electricity in Africa,
the actual hardware lifespan of a PC is around fifteen years because most of the weaker parts are interchangeable.
test it, put a new OS on it, and then it will run like it came out of the box.
Energy challenge International organisations, like World Computer Exchange and Techsoup Global, facilitate the refurbishing, but Neverware Juicebox could also play a new,
Africa has a paltry recycling rate for mobile phones (just 1%in Nigeria, for example), and a similar recycling rate for PCS, says Lynch.
according to recent research creating an enormous amount of wasted hardware. By boosting the performance and extending the lifespan of old PCS in developing countries,
and effort in sourcing and shipping in new or donated PCS. ne of the problems with donated computers is that getting them through the port isn straightforward.
Wherever the potential impact of Neverware promise to make old computers run like new lies,
for Hefter the bottom line is clear. t seems silly that schools are replacing their computers every 4 years
#Unmasking organised crime networks with data Military software engineers have developed a program that can predict the social structures of street gangs.
A team at the West point Military academy in the US state of New york has released just details of a software package it has developed to aid intelligence gathering by police dealing with street gangs.
Mapping highly influential members of a social network has been done many times before for example in viral marketing and in studies of infectious diseases.
and his co-workers, have drawn on the large literature about mapping social networks. This body of work which has grown rapidly over the past decade,
One of the features of Orca is an algorithm a set of rules that assigns each member of the network a probability of belonging to a particular gang.
The gyroscopes are under full computer control; no driver input required. The company says it is confident that the C-1 will stay upright
with one seat and a large bank of computer processors taking up most of the internal space, but the final design calls for two seats, one behind the other."
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#New designs to breathe life back into our cities By the middle of this century,
and we are likely to see a change in our experience of cities thanks to augmented realities a new way of seeing via our smart phones and Google glasses.
I founded the Avatar (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research) group in 2004 to explore how the rapidly changing technologies would affect architecture.
and using 3d desktop printers to mix chemistries as a form of wet fabrication, which is a very flexible material.
people are exploring technologies that could transform one group of substances into another on a building site.
In each store, owners are given an Android-powered tablet with software that allows them quickly and easily order inventory all at the touch of a button.
Weather stations are equipped with small sim cards that wirelessly transmit data every five minutes to a cloud-based server.
Sub-saharan africa has the fastest-growing mobile market in the world, increasing at an average of 44%annually since 2000, according to the worldwide mobile communications industry association GSMA.
ow, with information via mobiles, farmers are better able to bargain prices against middlemen, and can in some cases increase 25-35%of their profits.
and operating and application software for automated execution of user-selected protocols. The System will provide a flexible small scale process suitable for GMP manufacturing of autologous and other patient-specific products where small scale is full scale,
resulting in more aggressive cells that can spread to other sites or cause regrowth of primary tumors.
thereby allowing the tumor to spread to a new organ site. They used a large screening approach
and does synthesis at the inert C-H sites.""We had demonstrated already that we have a tool box of reagents
and catalysts that allow us to control which sites in a molecule will undergo C-H functionalization,
"Davies says.""Novartis wanted to explore whether this chemistry was robust enough to be carried out on really complex compounds like alkaloids."
The results outlined in the paper demonstrate the efficiency of rhodium catalysts to selectively install a new carbon-carbon bond into complex alkaloids in a highly controlled manner.
Protein kinase c (PKC) is a group of enzymes that act as catalysts for a host of cellular functions, among
tumor growth in a mouse model was reduced, demonstrating that normal PKC activity inhibits cancer. One possible explanation, said the researchers,
In models of tumor promotion, a sub-threshold dose of a carcinogen is painted on mouse skin,
Co-first author Alice Eunjung Lee, Phd, from the lab of Peter Park, Phd, at the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical school, developed the study's retrotransposon analysis tool,
Mitchell believes the technique will be transformative in providing improved cancer diagnostics that can both predict treatment outcomes and monitor patient responses to therapy.
Robust mutation panels vastly improve monitoring since cancer cells are constantly deleting chromosomal DNA and liquid biopsies with only one or two mutations will allow cancer cell escape variants to go undetected,
Epub 2014 Nov 14. In the interaction between gum disease and HIV, five SCFA byproducts from two prevalent oral bacteria--Porphyromonas gingivalis (Pg) and Fusobacterium nucleatum (Fn)--are involved in activating resting immune T-cells carrying latent (inactive
#UCSD Study Shows Why Protein Mutations Lead to Familial Form of Parkinson Disease Researchers at the San diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San diego, have shown for the first time why protein mutations
Using SDSC data-intensive Gordon supercomputer to find hidden rules of the conformational changes of asyn
Through computer modeling, researchers showed that asyn mostly can bind the membrane with four main sites, or zones.
While binding was shown to be superficial by three of the sites, one site Zone 2 had a particular affinity for the membrane.
Researchers found that asyn contacting the neuron membrane in that site immediately and deeply penetrated it,
which led to the creation of ring oligomers in the membrane, and eventually opened pores that allowed an uncontrolled influx of ions that ultimately killed the cell.
The resulting compound, called DBIBB, protected mouse embryonic skin cells from radiation-induced DNA damage and enhanced the survival of radiation-exposed blood cells, intestinal cells,
#Wearable sensor clears path to long-term EKG EMG monitoring Researchers from North carolina State university have developed a new, wearable sensor that uses silver nanowires to monitor electrophysiological signals, such as electrocardiography
Her study is published in the Advance Online Publication (AOP) on Nature Photonics's website on January 19, 2015."
even delivering neurons that flash as they fire in the living brain. Yet imaging techniques that can capture these dizzying dynamic processes have lagged behind.
Hillman and her collaborators have used already the system to observe firing in 3d neuronal dendritic trees in superficial layers of the mouse brain.
And now for a closer look at the Asian markets Katie Sargent joins us he is on the telephone from Singapore.
A few thoughts here for the same Zales comes on the heels of Movado and Tiffany which both some good outlook.
Great outlook there. So we've already seen Zales on the upside as well. And Heinz we've already got the glimpse from at the CEO yesterday just talking about emerging markets and growth there for the catsup company.
Apple was awarded just over $1 billion last week after a California jury found that Samsung had copied critical features of the iphone and the ipad.
Apple now seeking to have pulled eight devices from U s. store shelves including the very popular very very popular galaxy smart phones.
A lot of people actually like those smart phones but this was such Connell such a big you know victory for Apple.
an MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), in 2009. His team used that earlier version to fuse adult cells with embryonic stem cells,
This technique allows the researchers to follow hundreds of cell pairs over time and monitor
In 2012, Saitou team reported in Science creating mouse pups from oocytes created by turning back the clock on adult skin cells.
and Azim Surani of the University of Cambridge reported they had replicated the in vitro part of Saitou mouse work.
Other groups have found the transition from mouse to human cells difficult. One reason: standard mouse embryonic stem (ES) and ips cells are aïve, unlike standard human ES and ips cells,
more responsive to attempts to differentiate into any number of mature cells. But Hanna had created some of the first naïve human ES cells in a Nature study published in 2013.
One key difference between the mouse and human work: in human cells, a protein called SOX17 performed critical tasks that in mice are performed by SOX2. t will be interesting to test in the future a variety of conditions
the surgeon excises additional tissue from the surgical site to ensure that no additional cancer cells remain. he greatest benefit of Marginprobe is that we can perform this additional tissue removal during a patient initial surgery,
After two years of trial, Adobe recently launched Kickbox, a program to help encourage innovation.
likes it so much theye made it available as a free download under a Creative Commons license.
Software company Fullcontact really wants its employees to take a break. Pushing back against today 24-7 workaholic society
which repairs broken phones and sells phones, offers a full menu of perks: meals, choose your own hardware,
field tripsnd a company yacht. Watertown, Massachusetts-based UX design outfit Fresh Tilled Soil sends employees to envy-inducing places
so they can refresh and have some fun while working and it fully covered by the company.
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