January 2017 – Page 19 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Scientists confirm a ‘new’ human organ

For centuries, the mesentery (which links the intestine to the abdomen) has been treated as a group of distinct structures in your digestive system. It wasn’t anything special. However, the medical world now has to rethink that belief. Scientists recently determined that the mesentery is really one, cohesive entity — that’s right, they confirmed the existence of a ‘new’ organ. Researchers first discovered the continuous nature of the mesentery through microscopic examinations in 2012, but the past few years have shown that it has enough function to be considered an organ. This doesn’t mean that the scientific community understands exactly what the mesentery does. With that in mind, the very act of classifying it as an organ should have a far-reaching impact. On a basic level, it’s shaking up education. The medical field had to update its definitive Gray’s Anatomy textbook to account for the new findings, and students are already learning about the mesentery as a matter of course. More importantly, it’s opening up a line of inquiry that hadn’t been available before — it’s a “whole new area of science, ” the discovery team’s J. Calvin Coffey says. If scientists can learn more about how the mesentery interacts with the digestive system, they could develop better treatments for diseases and identify conditions that are specific to this part of the body. Via: Science Alert Source: The Lancet , University of Limerick

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Scientists confirm a ‘new’ human organ

The 20 best anime movies not made by Studio Ghibli

Tofugu (where my wife Carla is exec editor) has a great article about the 20 best anime movies not made by Studio Ghibli ( Totoro, Spirited Away ). https://youtu.be/xGOneMdjpw4 19. REDLINE Often times, “anime” is defined by its lack of motion . Redline punches this “limited animation” concept in its motionless face. It’s easily the busiest, most overstimulating animated film we’ve ever seen. A daredevil speedster named JP enters the Redline, a high-stakes, weaponized space race that nearly took his life. But first, he’s gotta get back into racing shape to challenge the best in the universe with pure speed and guts. Along his comeback trail, JP meets Cherry-Boy Hunter, a young female competitor who unearths old memories. Can JP return to form in time for the Redline? Is Cherry-Boy Hunter friend or foe? Can JP survive the intergalactic conspiracy that saturates the race? Sure, Redline’s plot plays like a giant stone soup of anime tropes: space, vehicles, aliens, and giant pompadours. Check, check, and check. The film took seven years and 100,000 hand drawings to create, all that hard work paid off. Down to its pop-art presentation, Redline is anime pulp fiction at its best. What it lacks in depth, it makes up for with an adrenaline-fueled circus of speed and action.

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The 20 best anime movies not made by Studio Ghibli

QuirkLogic’s Quilla is a massive 42-inch E Ink whiteboard

Canada’s QuirkLogic wants to see an end to people taking pictures of their whiteboard notes with a smartphone. That’s why it’s launching the Quilla, a 42-inch smart whiteboard that’s built around the world’s largest electronic paper display. Paired with QuirkLogic’s connected writer system, anything that you draw on the display (with the stylus) will be instantly stored for retrieval later. The product is the result of a three-year partnership between QuirkLogic and E Ink, the company that’s been pushing electronic paper displays for years. The same technology will also be available, from E Ink itself, as a standalone display that can be used by the signage industry where low-power screens are useful. The Quilla weighs 22 pounds and has a built-in battery that enables it to keep working for 16 hours on a charge. If you’re sufficiently baller, you can even daisy-chain displays together to increase your workspace rather than simply moving to another page. There’s no word on pricing, although you can expect it to be significantly more expensive than, you know, just buying a whiteboard and writing things down afterward. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017. Source: QuirkLogic

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QuirkLogic’s Quilla is a massive 42-inch E Ink whiteboard

Motiv crammed a full fitness tracker into a ring

Fitness trackers are a dime a dozen at this point, with Fitbit dominating the market. But as long as wearable gadgets have been in vogue, the concept of a “smart ring” has made the rounds in various forms. Here at CES, it looks like Motiv is the closest yet to cracking the puzzle of building a ring that’s worth wearing. Motiv’s ring is basically a tiny Fitbit: it packs in a heart rate sensor and can track your steps, sleep and “active minutes” with a goal of getting its users to be active for at least 150 minutes per week. The ring itself is very light, fairly unobtrusive and comes in grey and rose gold. Motiv says its has an “ultralight titanium shell” that felt a little cheap to me — hopefully it’ll prove to be durable. The battery is charged with an included magnetic charging dock that plugs into any standard USB port; Motiv is actually including two so you can throw one on your keychain and forget about it. Naturally, the ring syncs to a smartphone app where you can get data on what it measures. The ring has heart rate tracking built-in; that’s how it knows when you’re working out hard enough to count minutes towards your daily activity goal. A Motiv spokesperson said that the ring uses active minutes because it’s a less abstract goal than 10, 000 steps or a certain amount of calories burned, and it does seem like something with the potential to encourage slightly more active exercise. But it also works as a pedometer if you’re used to tracking steps over other metrics. All this data is stored in the app, which uses a card interface to keep you updated on your goals, showing you high-level overviews of your day and week. If you want to dig down into the data, though, the app lets you scan minute by minute to see exactly what were you up to, whether you were awake or asleep. My big question about the Motiv is its manufacturing feasibility — we’ve been burned by smart rings before that just couldn’t figure out the battery tech necessary to work. Motiv’s spokesperson told me that the company designed its curved battery itself; he also said that the device is in production after a lengthy beta period. The model he was wearing appeared to be functional, so it seems like the ring should make it onto the market this spring as planned. If you’re interested and willing to take a bit of a gamble on an unproven company, pre-orders for the $199 Motiv started today. To get the sizing right, Motiv will send buyers a kit with fake rings in it so you can try them on and see what fits best. The Motiv may not do anything differently than the Fitbit, but if you’re interested in having an extremely low-profile device this may be worth a look. Of course, we’ll need to put one through a full review to really recommend it, but on the surface the Motiv is intriguing at the very least. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

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Motiv crammed a full fitness tracker into a ring

Intel gives its NUC mini-PCs new processors, new ports and a new design

When you’re looking for a tiny desktop, Intel’s NUC computers are something of a standard. These bare-bone PCs have made a name for themselves as affordable, reasonably powerful and adorably small. Now they’re even better: Intel is gifting its line of tiny computers with new seventh-generation desktop CPUs , a fresh design and Thunderbolt 3 ports. All told, Intel is introducing five new NUC models: two using the new Core i3 desktop CPUs, two with Core i5 processors and a single machine with a Core i7. There are also two different case sizes: a larger version that supports 2.5-inch SATA storage devices, and a shorter enclosure designed for PCI Express SSDs . It’s a little confusing, but at least they all look the same, sharing the same dark finish. Intel’s NUCs are, by definition, compact. But they offer plenty of connectivity too. Each model boasts four USB 3.0 ports, as well as connections for Ethernet, HDMI and audio, not to mention a microSD card reader and a Thunderbolt 3.0 capable USB-C socket. Not bad. Now if only Intel would tell us how much they’ll cost. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017. Source: ArsTechnica

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Intel gives its NUC mini-PCs new processors, new ports and a new design

How to Get Google Play on a Kindle Fire and Install Any Android App you Want

Kindle Fire tablets are some of the best, cheapest Android tablets around, but they’re limited to Amazon’s app store, which is more than lacking compared to the thousands of apps available on the Google Play Store. With a little tweaking, though, you can run any Android app on them. You can even get the entire Google Play Store on some devices. Read more…

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How to Get Google Play on a Kindle Fire and Install Any Android App you Want

Holy Cow: Amazon’s Plan for Flying Warehouses

We talk about storing data in the cloud, but Amazon is looking into storing physical goods up there. The company has filed a patent for an ” Airborne fulfillment center utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles for item delivery:” In essence, the scheme is to have warehouses suspended from blimps, floating at 45, 000 feet (which is higher than/out of the way of commercial flight paths) over metropolitan areas and loaded up with delivery drones. When a customer orders something, it’s attached to a drone, then dropped out of the sky. The UAV may be deployed from the AFC and descend under the forces of gravity toward a delivery location using little to no power. Only as the UAV approaches earth does it need to fully engage the UAV motors to maintain flight and complete delivery of the item. After dropping off the package, the drone doesn’t fight its way back up to 45, 000 feet; Amazon reckons this would not be “an efficient use of power, ” so instead the drone flies off to a “replenishment shuttle.” This would be a smaller airship “that is configured to transport inbound items (e.g., UAVs, inventory, workers, supplies, fuel) to the AFC and retrieve outbound items (e.g., overstock inventory, transshipments, workers, waste) from the AFC.” As crazy as this plan sounds, the patent filing makes a lot of good points as to why it should be implemented. The airship isn’t tethered to a fixed location so can float around as needed or to avoid inclement weather. The company also envisions stocking them up over “temporal events” like football games, where they’d be loaded up with relevant product (sports paraphernalia, food products). And with the airship system, “items may be delivered within minutes of a user placing an order.” Ironic things I’d like to order from an AFC: Led Zeppelin’s eponymous first album, a book on the Hindenburg disaster and of course, a drone.

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Holy Cow: Amazon’s Plan for Flying Warehouses

Acer’s 21-inch gaming laptop will cost you a staggering $8,999

You knew Acer’s wonderfully overdone Predator 21X gaming laptop was going to cost a pretty penny, but probably not this much. The PC maker has revealed launch details for its 21-inch desktop replacement, and the system will cost a mind-numbing $8, 999 when it ships in February — you may have to choose between this and a nice used car. There are plenty of reasons for the over-the-top price tag, at least. In addition to the signature 21-inch curved 1080p display and mechanical keyboard, you’re getting an overclockable 7th-generation Core i7-7820HK processor, 64GB (!) of RAM, dual GTX 1080 graphics chips, Tobii eye tracking , as many as four 512GB solid-state drives in a RAID stripe and a 2TB hard drive. You probably won’t need to consider a replacement for a long, long while. And don’t worry if this is absolute overkill, as there’s a vaguely affordable model in the mix. Acer is updating the Predator 17X (below) at the same time, and it arguably delivers more than enough power for most laptop gamers. The 17.3-inch rig doesn’t have a ship date yet, but it will sell for $2, 599 with the same Core i7 processor as its larger sibling, 64GB of RAM, a single GTX 1080 graphics chip and either super-fast NVMe or RAID-striped SATA solid-state drives. Unless you absolutely crave the perks of the 21X, you’ll probably be fine with this model. To cap things off, the company is also introducing a slew of Predator-badged displays, highlighted by the Z301CT. The ultra-wide HD curved screen boasts Tobii eye tracking and an extra-fast 200Hz refresh rate. It’s not a throwaway purchase at $899, but there’s enough here that it might be worth checking out when it arrives in February. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017. Source: Acer

Intel unveils its 7th-gen CPUs for desktops and high-power laptops

Intel hasn’t forgotten about desktop aficionados. Only a few months after debuting its seventh-generation CPUs for ultraportables , the chip giant is rounding things out with new processors for more powerful machines. There’s the “H-series, ” targeted at “performance laptops and mobile workstations, ” and the “S-series, ” which are meant for more traditional desktops. They’ll complement the two other lines of seventh-generation CPUs, which cover ultra-thin designs (the “Y-series”) and faster ultraportables (the “U-series”). Naturally, you can expect the new desktop chips to perform better than their predecessors. Intel claims the S-series i7-7700K CPU is 25 percent faster than the i7-4770K (which, it’s worth noting, is three generations older). There’s likely a much smaller performance gap when comparing it to Intel’s fifth and sixth-generation CPUs. The company also claims the i7-7700K can “create, share and stitch” 4K 360-degree videos 35 percent faster than the 4770K. That’s a particularly niche use case to call out right now, but it might become more important as 360-degree video takes off. When it comes to the H-series chips, Intel says they’ll perform about 20 percent faster than a comparable fourth-gen chip (the i7-4700HQ) and handle 4K 360-degree videos 65 percent faster. You’ll see the H-series in bulkier gaming and desktop-replacement laptops, and it sounds like they’ll pair pretty well with modern mobile GPUs like NVIDIA’s 10-series and AMD’s Polaris lineup (which recently made an appearance in Dell’s latest Alienware laptops ). The highest-end S-series CPU, the $339 i7-7700K, will feature a base clock speed of 4.2GHz with boost speeds up to 4.5GHz. In comparison, the 6700K was clocked between 4GHz and 4.2GHz. The new chip still packs in four cores and eight threads (thanks to Hyperthreading) and it includes Intel HD 630 graphics. For the first time, Intel is also offering an unlocked Core i3 model, the $168 7350K, a dual-core CPU with four threads running at 4.2GHz. It’s something overclockers will appreciate, since they can tweak its speed settings to their heart’s content. And beyond that model, Intel claims all of its new seventh-gen chips will overclock better than previous models, thanks to several features that will stabilize the chips when pushing them beyond their listed speeds. The CPUs will also run on the company’s new 200-series chipset, which will support up to 24 PCI Express 3.0 chipset lanes and 10 USB 3.0 ports (along with a wealth of other technical upgrades). Together with the new CPUs, Intel is also debuting an intriguing new technology called Optane Memory, which plugs into M.2 connections on motherboards to speed up systems. It’s not clear, exactly, how it all comes together, but Intel claims it’ll deliver SSD-like system speeds when used with a traditional hard drive. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s actually a better option than using an M.2 SSD with a hard drive, though — especially as SSD prices have fallen considerably over the years. Just like with the earlier seventh-gen CPUs, you can expect Intel’s new desktop chips to handle 4K video pretty efficiently. That won’t mean as much for battery life savings, but it could make them much more useful for playing 4K on home theater PCs. Basically, there’s a lot to look forward to if you’re buying a new desktop this year. But the new chips are more compelling if you’re upgrading from a system that’s a few years old, rather than something from last year. That’s a tad disappointing, but at the very least it’ll lead to some good deals on last year’s high-end CPUs. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

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Intel unveils its 7th-gen CPUs for desktops and high-power laptops

Dinosaur eggs reveal one possible reason why they went extinct

The eggs of some dinosaurs took much, much longer to hatch than the eggs of their avian relatives and descendants — and it could have contributed to their demise. A team of researchers from various institutions examined the embryonic tooth from a soccer-ball-sized egg. It was laid by a 30-foot-long duck-billed non-avian dinosaur called Hypacrosaurus that’s closely related to reptiles like crocodiles. By calculating the daily growth markers in the teeth, they discovered that the animal’s eggs take around six months to hatch. It’s also likely that the bigger the egg, the longer the incubation time. In comparison, ostrich chicks burst out of their shells after only 42 days, and smaller birds have even shorter incubation periods. A longer incubation time means non-avian dinosaurs were definitely at a disadvantage when an asteroid or a comet slammed into our planet 65 million years ago. Since it took much longer for them to reproduce and to replace the population that perished in the impact, their incubation period could be one of the factors that led to their extinction. Meanwhile, the birds that already existed in that era that didn’t need the same amount of time to hatch thrived and led to the birds we know today. That said, their long incubation period is only one of the factors why they died out. Lead researcher Gregory M. Erickson of Florida State University said: “These animals were profligate wasters of energy. They were big and warmblooded and even the smallest dinosaurs took over a year to mature. The dinosaurs found themselves holding some bad cards. They had a dead man’s hand.” Source: The New York Times

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Dinosaur eggs reveal one possible reason why they went extinct