While exoplanets are seemingly a dime a dozen , their looks have been mysteries; they often exist only as measurements. Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have partly solved that riddle by pinpointing the visible color of an extrasolar world for the first time. By measuring reflected light, they can tell that HD 189733b (conceptualized above) is a cobalt blue, much like Earth’s oceans. Not that we can claim much kinship, though. The planet is a gas giant 63 light-years away — its blue tint comes from an atmosphere likely full of deadly silicate. As disappointing as that may be, the discovery should at least help us understand planet types that don’t exist in the Solar System. Filed under: Science , Alt Comments Source: ESA

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Hubble researchers identify color of an exoplanet for the first time (video)

No one likes waiting for a file transfer to finish, and thankfully SanDisk is doing something about it. The company’s new “Extreme” line of microSD cards (16GB, 32GB, 64GB capacities) promises to deliver speeds of up to 80MBps. Benchmarks done by Android Police have the 64GB card hitting 78MBps when used in a dedicated card reader. Putting the card in a smartphone, however, yields far different results. Most smartphones, save for the Exynos 5 Octa version of the GS4, don’t support the newer UHS-1 standard for increased transfer speeds. When tested in a Galaxy Note II, SanDisk’s new card “only” achieved 14MBps read speeds and 14.6MBps write speeds — that’s still between 50% and 100% faster than a previous generation 64GB SanDisk microSD card. So now we just need phones to catch up, and for handset makers who are averse to microSD cards altogether to change their tune . Comments Source: SanDisk , Android Police

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SanDisk’s Extreme microSD cards promise 80MBps, live up to that claim

We’ve seen a number of efforts to build a better artificial skin , or ” e-skin , ” over the years, and a team of researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology now say they’ve made a breakthrough that could lead to some of the most sensitive e-skin yet. The key development is a new type of flexible sensor that would not only allow the artificial skin to detect touch, but humidity and temperature as well. Those sensors are comprised of gold-based nanoparticles that are just five to eight nanometers in diameter and laid on top of a substrate — in their research, the scientists used PET, the type of plastic you’d normally find in soda bottles. That substrate conducts electricity differently depending on the way it is bent, which means researchers can adjust its sensitivity just by increasing its thickness. As you might expect, this is all still in the early stages, but the researchers see plenty of possibilities for the future, from bringing a sense of touch to artificial limbs to using the same technology to monitor stress on bridges. Filed under: Science , Alt Comments Via: PhysOrg Source: American Technion Society

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Researchers say new development could give artificial skin a wider range of senses

At Dropbox’s first DBX developer conference in San Francisco, CEO Drew Houston announced a new Dropbox Platform for developers, which is essentially a suite of tools to make it easier for apps to access data across devices and operating systems. Built on top of the Sync API, Houston says the new Dropbox Platform is designed to “replace the hard drive” and that “sync is the new save.” The platform is comprised of “Drop-ins, ” which provide cross-platform UI components, “Chooser, ” which gives apps instant access to files in Dropbox, and “Saver, ” which provides one-click saving to the cloud. Dropbox also announced the Datastore API, which lets you sync data like contacts, to-do items and game state — so you can save your Angry Birds level across your different gadgets for example. Some of the third-party companies that have signed onto the new Dropbox Platform include Shutterstock, PicMonkey, Asana, Yahoo! Mail, Animoto, 1Password, CloudOn, FedEx and Fargo. As part of the announcement, Dropbox also announced a Developing… Comments

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Dropbox announces the Dropbox Platform, syncing between third-party apps