Author: kenmay

Microsoft’s Play Anywhere reaches PC and Xbox on September 13th

You won’t have to wait too long to see how well Xbox Play Anywhere works in practice. Microsoft has confirmed to Polygon that the cross-purchase, cross-play feature will go live on both Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 PCs on September 13th. You’ll still need games that support it, of course, but you can count on at least strong first-party support. Microsoft informs MCV that all the games it publishes from now onward will use Play Anywhere — in theory, that means the next Halo will be a PC title. The real unknown is whether or not many third-party games will follow suit. Source: Polygon , MCV

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Microsoft’s Play Anywhere reaches PC and Xbox on September 13th

Regenerative tooth fillings could put an end to root canals

You really don’t want a root canal, and not just because it’s potentially painful. Emptying the tooth of the infected tissue at its heart potentially weakens it, since you can’t grow that organic material back or put toxic fillings in its place. Researchers may have a solution, though. They’ve crafted fillings that get the tooth’s own stem cells to regenerate and repair tissue. This doesn’t mean that your pearly whites would return to normal, but the substance could heal the tooth enough to spare you a root canal or prevent fillings from going south. You’re not going to have this option for a while, but it’s designed to be practical. You can cure the filling with light, so your dentist wouldn’t have to resort to exotic techniques to rescue your teeth. And importantly, it might be less expensive overall — you might not need a cap or crown to reduce the chances that the tooth will break after the surgery. Via: Popular Science , Gizmodo Source: University of Nottingham

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Regenerative tooth fillings could put an end to root canals

Solar road technology comes to Route 66

Solar Roadways’ dreams of sunlight-gathering paths are one step closer to taking shape. Missouri’s Department of Transportation is aiming to install a test version of the startup’s solar road tiles in a sidewalk at the Historic Route 66 Welcome Center in Conway. Okay, it won’t be on Route 66 just yet, but that’s not the point — the goal is to see whether or not the technology is viable enough that it could safely be used on regular streets. You should see it in action toward the end of the year. The tiles will be familiar if you’ve followed Solar Roadways before. Each one combines a solar cell with LED lighting, a heating element and tempered glass that’s strong enough to support the weight of a semi-trailer truck. If successful, the panels will feed the electrical grid (ideally paying for themselves) and make the roads safer by both lighting the way as well as keeping the roads free of rain and snow. They should be easier to repair than asphalt, too, since you don’t need to take out whole patches of road to fix small cracks. Of course, “if successful” is the operative term here. The real litmus test comes if and when Solar Roadways subjects the tiles to the legions of cars traveling on Route 66 and beyond. Missouri has a strong incentive to make that happen, though. As the Transportation Department’s Tom Blair observes , it would be odd to push self-driving cars in the state’s Road to Tomorrow initiative when the streets aren’t as smart as the vehicles using them. Via: Inhabitat , CleanTechnica , The Verge Source: Kansas City Star , News Tribune

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Solar road technology comes to Route 66

Cyborg locusts with tattooed wings can sniff out bombs

“Men, bring out the sniffer locusts.” That’s something a bomb squad chief could say in the future, thanks to a team of engineers working to turn the insects into cyborgs that can be sent anywhere to sniff out explosives. It won’t be an easy feat — the researchers, who hail from the Washington University in St. Louis, will have to equip the insects with several pieces of technology. Good thing they have a powerful backer: the Navy. Team leader Baranidharan Raman has received a three-year $750, 000 grant from the Office of Naval Research to make his dreams a reality. Raman has been studying how the bug processes smell for years now. He and his team found that locusts can identify particular scents, such as those they’re trained to detect, even in the presence of other odors. Raman believes the cyborg bugs will be much more effective than robots, because their antennae have a ton of natural sensors. “Why reinvent the wheel? Why not take advantage of the biological solution?” he asked. “That is the philosophy here. Even the state-of-the-art miniaturized chemical sensing devices have a handful of sensors. On the other hand, if you look at the insect antenna, where their chemical sensors are located, there are several hundreds of thousands of sensors and of a variety of types.” To turn ordinary locusts into bomb-sniffing machines, the engineers plan to implant an electrode into their brains to hijack their antennae and read electrical activity. Since operators need to get whatever info the bugs collect, the researchers are also developing a tiny backpack that can transmit data. The receiver’s red LED lights up in the presence of explosives, while the green LED lights up in the absence of any. Finally, the engineers plan to tattoo the bugs’ wings with biocompatible silk that can convert light into heat. A laser, probably installed on the backpack, will allow an operator to control the cyborg bug. Focus the laser on the left wing to make the insect go left, and vice versa. It will function much like a remote-controlled drone. If Raman and his team don’t hit a snag along the way, they could be testing the first prototypes within a year’s time and could be done within two. Via: BBC Source: Washington University in St. Louis

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Cyborg locusts with tattooed wings can sniff out bombs

Juno has begun its tour of Jupiter after a five-year journey

Juno’s five-year journey has come to an end, and soon, it will start taking measurements and capturing images of the largest planet in our solar system. The spacecraft, which aptly carries Lego figures of the Roman god Jupiter, his wife the goddess Juno and Galileo, has entered Jupiter’s orbit after firing up its engines before midnight and performing a 35-minute maneuver. That was much harder to accomplish than it sounds — it had to be at the right speed to be captured by the gas giant’s gravity, or it would have slipped right past it. In the end, everything went well, and the spacecraft’s arrival was off only by a second . “With Juno, we will investigate the unknowns of Jupiter’s massive radiation belts to delve deep into not only the planet’s interior, but into how Jupiter was born and how our entire solar system evolved, ” NASA chief Charlie Bolden said in a statement. Besides entering Jupiter’s orbit, the probe has also successfully turned toward the sun. Now that NASA is sure the spacecraft’s solar arrays can capture enough sunlight to power it, Juno’s initial 53-and-a-half day orbit has begun. We won’t have to wait long to see and hear more about the planet either: Bolden says the probe’s science phase will officially begin in October, but it will start collecting data much earlier than that. Juno is slated to orbit Jupiter 37 times within the next 20 months to uncover its secrets. Those include understanding how it (and similar planets) formed and evolved, figuring out if it has solid core, mapping its magnetic field, measuring the amount of water, oxygen and ammonia in its atmosphere, as well as observing its majestic auroras. After it’s done, NASA plans to crash Juno into the gas giant to avoid collision with the planet’s biggest moons. Success! Engine burn complete. #Juno is now orbiting #Jupiter , poised to unlock the planet’s secrets. https://t.co/YFsOJ9YYb5 — NASA (@NASA) July 5, 2016 #Juno turned back toward the sun, has power and started its tour of #Jupiter in an initial 53.5-day orbit pic.twitter.com/iwRSSOwPwX — NASA (@NASA) July 5, 2016 #Juno is in Jupiter’s orbit! See how the team is feeling and find out what’s next at 1am ET: https://t.co/KX5g7yYnYG pic.twitter.com/TlcOjCVE4E — NASA (@NASA) July 5, 2016 Fun trivia: Google is celebrating Juno’s successful arrival with a cute animated Doodle. Source: NASA (Twitter)

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Juno has begun its tour of Jupiter after a five-year journey

This ‘Hourglass’ Liquid Battery Runs on Gravity

Scientists at MIT have designed an ingenious new concept for a battery that operates on the same fundamental principal as an hourglass—it relies on gravity to generate energy. They described the device in a recent paper for Energy and Environmental Science . Read more…

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This ‘Hourglass’ Liquid Battery Runs on Gravity

Linux Mint 18 ‘Sarah’ Released, Supports Generic GTK X-Apps

Slashdot reader Type44Q writes: The Linux Mint team announced the immediate availability of their latest release, Mint 18 “Sarah, ” in Cinnamon and MATE flavors. These follow on the heels of their respective beta versions, which have been out for nearly a month. “Linux Mint 18 is a long-term support release which will be supported until 2021, ” the team announces on MATE’s “new features” page, adding they’ve improved their update manager, included support for the Debian syntax of “apt”, and are working on the “X-Apps” project to “produce generic applications for traditional GTK desktop environments…to replace applications which no longer integrate properly outside of a particular environment.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux Mint 18 ‘Sarah’ Released, Supports Generic GTK X-Apps

Fossil fuel use in US is at its lowest percentage in over a century

(credit: US EIA ) With the 4th of July weekend about to begin, the US Energy Information Administration decided to look back to our nation’s founding. So it plotted the country’s energy use starting from 1776 . Most of the result isn’t a surprise: biomass had a long run before fossil fuels took over and stayed on top. But recent years have seen the biggest change since nuclear was added to the mix. Biomass spent nearly a century on top of the US energy mix before being displaced by coal, although it never went above providing four quadrillion Btus (each Btu is a bit over 1,000 Joules). But biomass never entirely went away, and its resurgence this century puts it at its highest level ever. With nuclear holding steady and renewables surging to nearly the same level as hydropower, fossil fuels are on the verge of dropping below 80 percent of the US’ energy mix. Fossil fuels haven’t been that low a percentage for over a century. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fossil fuel use in US is at its lowest percentage in over a century

Top 10 Places to Download or Stream Movies For Free, Legally

It’s easy to find movies to download or stream, but if you’re flying straight and narrow or want to support and watch films that are free, public domain, or whose creators want them free and openly shared, here are some great sites to bookmark—and visit when you want something new to watch. Read more…

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Top 10 Places to Download or Stream Movies For Free, Legally