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Print-On-Demand Bone Could Quickly Mend Major Injuries

sciencehabit quotes a report from Science Magazine: If you shatter a bone in the future, a 3D printer and some special ink could be your best medicine. Researchers have created what they call “hyperelastic bone” that can be manufactured on demand and works almost as well as the real thing, at least in monkeys and rats. Though not ready to be implanted in humans, bioengineers are optimistic that the material could be a much-needed leap forward in quickly mending injuries ranging from bones wracked by cancer to broken skulls. Researchers at Northwestern University, Evanston, in Illinois are working on a hyperelastic bone, which is a type of scaffold made up of hydroxyapatite, a naturally occurring mineral that exists in our bones and teeth, and a biocompatible polymer called polycaprolactone, and a solvent. Hydroxyapatite provides strength and offers chemical cues to stem cells to create bone. The polycaprolactone polymer adds flexibility, and the solvent sticks the 3D-printed layers together as it evaporates during printing. The mixture is blended into an ink that is dispensed by the printer, layer by layer, into exact shapes matching the bone that needs to be replaced. The idea is, a patient would come in with a nasty broken bone — say, a shattered jaw — and instead of going through painful autograft surgeries or waiting for a custom scaffold to be manufactured, he or she could be x-rayed and a 3D-printed hyperelastic bone scaffold could be printed that same day. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Print-On-Demand Bone Could Quickly Mend Major Injuries

New California Law Allows Test of Autonomous Shuttle With No Driver

If you live in California, you may soon start to see self-driving cars on the road with no operators to be seen. California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on Thursday a bill that allows a self-driving vehicle with no operator inside to test on a public road. Currently, companies are legally able to test self-driving cars in California as long as the operators are located inside the vehicles when they are being tested. Fortune reports: The bill introduced by Democratic Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla allows testing in Contra Costa County northeast of San Francisco of the first full-autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel, brakes, accelerator or operator. New legislation was necessary because although driverless vehicles can be tested on private land like the office park, the shuttle will cross a public road on its loop through the campus. The new law means that two cube-like Easymile shuttles that travel no faster than 25 mph (40 kph) will be tested for a period of up to six months before being deployed and used by people. In an interview with Reuters in March, Bonilla said the “natural tension” between regulators concerned about safety and lawmakers trying to encourage innovation in their state necessitated a new bill. “They’re risk averse and we’re saying we need to open the door here and take steps (to innovate), ” Bonilla said, calling the driverless shuttle project “a very wise first out-of-the-gate opportunity” to show how the technology could work safely. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New California Law Allows Test of Autonomous Shuttle With No Driver

More than 400 malicious apps infiltrate Google Play

Enlarge (credit: Curious Expeditions ) Google Play was recently found to be hosting more than 400 apps that turned infected phones into listening posts that could siphon sensitive data out of the protected networks they connected to, security researchers said Thursday. One malicious app infected with the so-called DressCode malware had been downloaded from 100,000 to 500,000 times before it was removed from the Google-hosted marketplace, Trend Micro researchers said in a post . Known as Mod GTA 5 for Minecraft PE, it was disguised as a benign game, but included in the code was a component that established a persistent connection with an attacker controlled server. The server then had the ability to bypass so-called network address translation protections that shield individual devices inside a network. Trend Micro has found 3,000 such apps in all, 400 of which were available through Play. “This malware allows threat actors to infiltrate a user’s network environment,” Thursday’s report stated. “If an infected device connects to an enterprise network, the attacker can either bypass the NAT device to attack the internal server or download sensitive data using the infected device as a springboard.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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More than 400 malicious apps infiltrate Google Play

California now requires conviction before civil asset forfeiture

California police departments’ license to steal cash from innocent people has been restricted, thanks to a new bill signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown. Let’s hope the federal government follows suit. Nick Sibilla of The Institute for Justice says: Since 1994, California state law has required a criminal conviction before real estate, vehicles, boats and cash under $25,000 could be forfeited to the government. But those requirements are completely missing under federal law. So California police could instead partner with a federal agency, take the property under federal law, and reap up to 80 percent of the proceeds. To fix this, the new law requires a criminal conviction before agencies can receive forfeiture payments from the federal government on forfeited real estate, vehicles, boats and cash valued at under $40,000.

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California now requires conviction before civil asset forfeiture

Leaker fined $1.2 million for uploading screener of The Revenant

Enlarge / Leonardo DiCaprio signs autographs for fans during the Tokyo premiere for “The Revenant” in March. (credit: Yuriko Nakao via Getty Images) The pirate who in December leaked The Revenant and The Peanuts Movie  days ahead of their US releases has been ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution to 20th Century Fox and was also handed eight months of home confinement, federal prosecutors said . The defendant, William Morarity of the Los Angeles suburb of Lancaster, was working for an undisclosed studio lot when he unlawfully accessed watermarked, screener versions of the films and uploaded them to a private BitTorrent site ” Pass the Popcorn ,” according to his guilty plea  (PDF).  The Revenant was downloaded more than 1 million times and The Peanuts Movie more than 220,000 times, according to court documents . (PDF) Deirdre Fike, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said the defendant’s behavior is a killer of creativity and jobs. “Mr. Morarity used his position of trust to gain access to sensitive intellectual property, then shared that content online and incurred large-scale losses to the owner of that property,” Fike said. “The theft of intellectual property—in this case, major motion pictures—discourages creative incentive and affects the average American making ends meet in the entertainment industry.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Leaker fined $1.2 million for uploading screener of The Revenant

US builds a $100 million African drone base to fight Boko Haram

The Department of Defense announced on Friday that it is investing $100 million in a drone base located in Agadez, in central Niger. The base will serve as a central surveillance hub in the fight against both Boko Haram and roaming militant groups linked to al Qaeda. “At the request of, and in close coordination with, the Government of Niger, United States Africa Command is establishing a temporary, expeditionary cooperative security location in Agadez, Niger, ” a US Africa Command spokesperson told Reuters via email. “Agadez is an ideal, central location to enable ISR collection (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) to face the security threat across the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin region.” The US already has a military presence in both Agadez and the national capital, Niamey. With the establishment of this new drone base, which is located adjacent to an existing US airfield, those capital forces will likely transition to Agadez, centralizing America’s ISR (Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) efforts in the region. Any intel gathered by these drones will be shared among America’s regional partners including Nigeria, Chad and Mali. Via: Business Insider Source: Reuters

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US builds a $100 million African drone base to fight Boko Haram

Avast CEO on why it’s just spent $1.4BN to absorb security rival AVG

 Security firm Avast has today confirmed the completion of a $1.4 billion acquisition of fellow Czech-based antivirus company AVG. The deal will see Avast’s customer base nearly double — swelling from 230 million to more than 400 million in total, 160M of whom are mobile users. Read More

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Avast CEO on why it’s just spent $1.4BN to absorb security rival AVG

Google Rebrands ‘Apps for Work’ To ‘G Suite,’ Adds New Features

Google has renamed “Apps for Work” to “G Suite” to “help people everywhere work and innovate together, so businesses can move faster and go bigger.” They have also added a bunch of new features, such as a “Quick Access” section for Google Drive for Android that uses machine learning to predict what files you’re going to need when you open up the app, based off your previous behavior. Calendar will automatically pick times to set up meetings through the use of machine intelligence. Sheets is also using AI “to turn your layman English requests into formulas through its ‘Explore’ feature, ” reports The Next Web. “In Slides, Explore uses machine learning to dynamically suggest and apply design ideas, while in Docs, it will suggest backup research and images you can use in your musings, as well as help you insert files from your Drive account. Throughout Docs, Sheets, and Slides, you can now recover deleted files on Android from a new ‘Trash’ option in the side/hamburger menu.” Google’s cloud services will now fall under a new “Google Cloud” brand, which includes G Suite, Google Cloud Platform, new machine learning tools and APIs, and Google’s various devices that access the cloud. Slashdot reader wjcofkc adds: I just received the following email from Google. When I saw the title, my first thought was that there was malware lying at the end — further inspection proved it to be real. Is this the dumbest name change in the history of name changes? Google of all companies does not have to try so hard. “Hello Google Apps Customer, We created Google Apps to help people everywhere work and innovate together, so that your organization can move faster and achieve more. Today, we’re introducing a new name that better reflects this mission: G Suite. Over the coming weeks, you’ll see our new name and logo appear in familiar places, including the Admin console, Help Center, and on your invoice. G Suite is still the same all-in-one solution that you use every day, with the same powerful tools — Gmail, Docs, Drive, and Calendar. Thanks for being part of the journey that led us to G Suite. We’re always improving our technology so it learns and grows with your team. Visit our official blog post to learn more.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Rebrands ‘Apps for Work’ To ‘G Suite,’ Adds New Features

Women competitors must wear hijabs at chess world championship, oddly awarded to Iran

If you thought soccer’s world cup being awarded to baking-hot Qatar marked the zenith of sporting corruption, give FIDE a chance: the international chess federation’s forthcoming world championship is headed to Iran, and women players must wear the hijab to compete. UK tabloids quote leading women chess players as threatening to quit the tournament rather than obey. US women’s champion Nazi Paikidze said: ‘It is absolutely unacceptable to host one of the most important women’s tournaments in a venue where, to this day, women are forced to cover up with a hijab. ‘I understand and respect cultural differences. But, failing to comply can lead to imprisonment and women’s rights are being severely restricted in general. It does not feel safe for women from around the world to play here.’ She added: ‘If the situation remains unchanged, I will most certainly not participate in this event.’ It’s insane, but entirely in keeping with FIDE’s brainier-than-thou shiftiness, to think that Tehran is a good place to host the key event on their highly-politicized mind game’s calendar. For starters, there’s a current U.S. government travel warning telling citizens not to go there at all . (I would go, but wear a Burka)

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Women competitors must wear hijabs at chess world championship, oddly awarded to Iran