Close to a decade ago a clever inventor came up with a safety feature for power tools that could detect when a blade made contact with human flesh and instantly retract it to prevent injury. Unfortunately, it destroyed the tool in the process. Read more…
Link:
Flesh-Detecting Table Saw Instantly Drops the Blade Without Destroying It
Doctors have been employing 3D-printed tissue for years now. But even though the hype around 3D bioprinting has raised expectations that it will save lives and shorten donor wait lists, fully functional printed organs are not feasible yet. While we won’t be seeing blood pumping printed hearts any time soon, getting a new nose could become easier. Professor Marcy Zenobi-Wong’s team of researchers, led by Matti Kesti, at ETH Zurich’s Cartilage Engineering and Regeneration laboratory, has found a way to bioprint a joint or nose cartilage that is designed to grow with the body over time. Current cartilage transplant procedures rely on two-dimensional cell generation that doesn’t evolve as the patient’s joint regains function in the future. 3D bioprinted cartilages, on the other hand, are expected to reproduce and become a part of the body’s mechanism. In the case of reconstructive surgery on a smashed nose, a digital 3D model is created while a biopsy removes cartilage cells from the patient’s body — knee, ear or even pieces of the busted nose. The cells are then spawned with suitable biopolymers, either extracted from seaweed or generated by the human body, to create a hydrogel consistent with the suspension of the printer. The biopolymers act as a shaping mold for the cells until the cartilage cells in the body break them down. Over time, according to the research team, it would become virtually impossible to differentiate between the transplant and the original cartilage in the body. “We hope that in the future our technology could be used to overcome the need for cartilage donor tissue, ” Kesti told us. “The bioprinted cartilage piece could be printed based on the patient defect and need so that the personalized shape and size is regained.” Even though this technology has the potential to personalize medicine and create body-replicating magic, bioprinting and research is an expensive and exhaustive process that prevents cellular 3D printer cartridges from being widely available in hospitals just yet. “The potential of 3D bioprinting in future is that it is the ultimate technology to regenerate patient specific shape of tissue or even organs, ” says Kesti. “There is no better way to make the shape than 3D printing so it is worth investigating the technology.” His lab, equipped with a majestic bioprinter that can create a cartilage in roughly 16 minutes, is now ready for pre-clinical trials. If the cellular concoction becomes a viable option for human trials, it could make bioprinted cartilage implants far more successful than their silicone counterparts. [Image credit: Cartilage Engineering & Regeneration Group , ETH Zurich] Comments Source: ETH Zurich
Read the original post:
Researchers can now 3D-print nose cartilage in 16 minutes
You may see yellow taxis as virtually synonymous with New York City transportation, but you might have to reconsider that image before too long. New Taxi and Limousine Commission data shows that Uber cars now outnumber cabs on NYC streets, with 14, 088 black and luxury vehicles versus 13, 587 taxis. It’s not hard to see why the ridesharing service has grown so quickly since its arrival in 2011, mind you. Uber drivers can earn much more in the right circumstances, and they don’t have to worry about fixed schedules, complicated licensing or cheapskates who don’t pay. This milestone probably won’t thrill city officials, who are worried that Uber is both depriving them of tax revenue (since drivers don’t need medallion licenses) and playing fast and loose with regulations. However, it’s doubtful that there’s any going back now — Uber is huge enough in New York that commuters would notice if it went away. [Image credit: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images] Filed under: Transportation , Internet Comments Source: New York Post
Visit site:
Uber cars now outnumber yellow cabs in New York City
The last time we checked in with Eric “Wingman” Peterson was August of 2014, where he was running Cloud Imperium Games’ Austin office and overseeing development on Star Citizen’s persistent universe. However, just a few months after that, Peterson left Cloud Imperium to develop his own game: a reboot of the mid-’90s first-person shooter game Descent. Peterson has formed Descendent Studios , hired a development staff, and is currently overseeing a Kickstarter to pull together a minimum of $600,000 to finance development of the game, which is titled Descent Underground . Critically, Descent Underground has something that previous attempts to resurrect the Descent franchise have lacked: a licensing agreement with IP-holder Interplay. Kickstarter teaser for Descent Underground , formerly code-named “Ships That Fight Underground.” Old name, new presentation Descent was published by Interplay more than 20 years ago, in 1994. The first-person shooter developed by Parallax Software had players zipping around underground in a series of cavernous (and sometimes claustrophobic) mines filled with mad killer robots. Players navigated the underground environment in a Pyro GX spacecraft, which led to the game’s main selling point: it wasn’t just a regular FPS, but one which offered “six degrees of freedom.” In other words, you could move in any direction (X, Y, and Z) and turn in any direction (roll, pitch, yaw). Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Read the article:
Classic FPS Descent to be rebooted by Star Citizen alums
Microsoft has announced that it will give be giving free upgrades of Windows 10 to anyone who uses Windows right now—even if they’re currently running pirated copies of the operating system. Read more…
Excerpt from:
All Windows 10 Upgrades Will Be Free—Even Pirated Copies
Despite global efforts to put the kibosh on infamous torrent site The Pirate Bay (TPB), the lair of internet swashbucklers is proving almost impossible to sack. Swedish police succeeded in taking the site down late last year, only for it to reappear the following month. And stronger than ever it seems, thanks to a new distribution partner that inadvertently circumvents most ISP-level blocks. When TPB rose from the ashes, it drafted in middleman CloudFlare to help deal with the colossal amount of traffic coming to the site. CloudFlare’s service manages the dialogue between users and website hosting servers, reducing bandwidth burden and protecting against DDoS attacks and other threats. A convenient side effect of the service, however, is that its routing magic effectively hides information from ISPs, making it much more difficult for them to block access to TPB’s main portal (thepiratebay.se). This has meant that where ISP-level blocks have existed previously, many of them no longer work, making TPB even easier to find than, well, it already is. With CloudFlare, websites can afford extra security to users with Full SSL (Strict) encryption. Long story short, this strips certain identifiers from the traffic data ISPs use to block websites like TPB; since the information is routed through CloudFlare, website IP addresses are also hidden behind the delivery network. In the UK, where all major ISPs were strong-armed into blocking TPB in 2012, this has all but turned back time, with thepiratebay.se now accessible for Virgin, EE, BT and TalkTalk customers. Sky is the only popular provider still managing to block the site; you aren’t notified, as such, but the page won’t load anyhow. The UK isn’t the only country that blocks TPB at an ISP level, of course, so it’s likely the loophole exists in the European, Asian and Middle Eastern countries that employ the same piracy-squashing tactics. Realistically, this doesn’t change the status quo much, but highlights the futility of the ongoing campaign against TPB and internet piracy as a whole. Proxy sites already render ISP-level blocks ineffective, and though they themselves are now being targeted , they are restricted and reborn in equal measure. Not that they’re currently needed when the main page itself is open for business, of course. The loophole may not remain open indefinitely, however, since CloudFlare is only said to be a temporary partner. Some users are troubled by the thought of their data passing through US-based CloudFlare’s networks, and in response, TPB has said the company’s assistance is only being used to handle traffic volumes for the time being. Then there’s the potential for legal action against CloudFlare, or additional accountability being placed on ISPs in places like the UK, forcing them to improve their blocking tactics. We’ll have to see how it plays out, but there’s little doubt TPB’s enemies are currently scrambling to figure out their next move. [Image credit: Getty Images/Flickr RF] Filed under: Internet Comments Via: ITPro , TorrentFreak
Continued here:
The Pirate Bay’s new network is making ISP blocks useless
While almost all the attention paid to the HTTPS-crippling FREAK vulnerability has focused on browsers, consider this: thousands of Android and iOS apps, many with finance, shopping, and medical uses, are also vulnerable to the same exploit that decrypts passwords, credit card details, and other sensitive data sent between handsets and Internet servers. Security researchers from FireEye recently examined the most popular apps on Google Play and the Apple App Store and found 1,999 titles that left users wide open to the encryption downgrade attack. Specifically, 1,228 Android apps with one million or more downloads were vulnerable, while 771 out of the top 14,079 iOS apps were susceptible. Vulnerable apps were those that used—or in the case of iOS, could use—an affected crypto library and connected to servers that offered weak, 512-bit encryption keys. The number of vulnerable apps would no doubt mushroom when analyzing slightly less popular titles. “As an example, an attacker can use a FREAK attack against a popular shopping app to steal a user’s login credentials and credit card information,” FireEye researchers Yulong Zhang, Zhaofeng Chen, Hui Xue, and Tao Wei wrote in a blog post scheduled to be published Tuesday afternoon. “Other sensitive apps include medical apps, productivity apps and finance apps.” The researchers provided the screenshots above and below, which reveal the plaintext data extracted from one of the vulnerable apps after it connected to its paired server. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
See original article:
HTTPS-crippling FREAK exploit hits thousands of Android and iOS apps
Deathspawner writes: When NVIDIA announced its GeForce GTX TITAN X at GTC, no one was surprised that it’d be faster than the company’s previous top-end card, the GTX 980. But what did impress many is that the company said the card would sport a staggering 12GB of VRAM. As Techgage found, pushing that 12GB is an exercise in patience — you really have to go out of your way to come even close. Additional reviews available at PC Perspective and AnandTech. The latter notes, “…from a technical perspective, the GTX Titan X and GM200 GPU represent an interesting shift in high-end GPU design goals for NVIDIA, one whose ramifications I’m not sure we fully understand yet. By building what’s essentially a bigger version of GM204, heavy on graphics and light on FP64 compute, NVIDIA has been able to drive up performance without a GM204-like increase in die size. At 601mm2 GM200 is still NVIDIA’s largest GPU to date, but by producing their purist graphics GPU in quite some time, it has allowed NVIDIA to pack more graphics horsepower than ever before into a 28nm GPU. What remains to be seen then is whether this graphics/FP32-centric design is a one-off occurrence for 28nm, or if this is the start of a permanent shift in NVIDIA GPU design.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Follow this link:
NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX TITAN X Becomes First 12GB Consumer Graphics Card
SAN FRANCISCO—In a city replete with not only local buses, and the famously-hated tech company buses that shuttle hundreds of workers daily 40 miles south, a new startup is set to debut a private luxury commuter bus line, charging $6 for a roughly three-mile ride. At its Wednesday launch, Leap will only operate four buses (with one more in reserve) during commuting hours, focusing on giving rides from the Marina neighborhood in the city’s north, going southeast to downtown in the morning, and the reverse in the evening. There’s no fixed schedule—the buses are just constantly rolling at 10 to 15 minute intervals, and passengers can check the iOS or Web apps to see when they will arrive. (Ars first profiled Leap in March 2014.) Leap is betting that riders are willing to pay nearly three times what a ride on a local Muni bus costs, and a fair bit less than what a taxi (or its newer cousins, Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar) would charge for a similar journey. What makes it worth that price? Free Wi-Fi, comfortable seats (limited to just 27, no standing passengers), USB ports, plus food and drinks. Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Read More:
A $6 commute with Wi-Fi, USB ports, and coconut water
Facebook Messenger now lets you send payments to your friends —exactly as you would with Venmo or Paypal. Except it’s way easier, because just about EVERYONE already has Facebook. Read more…
More:
You Can Send Money To Your Friends Through Facebook Messenger Now