iOS: Castro is one our favorite podcast managers on iOS because it’s easy to use, has a few clever management options, and works great for people who only listen to a few podcasts. Today, the apps gone free while adding in a bunch of new iOS 9 features. Read more…
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Castro, the Simplest iOS Podcast Manager, Adds iOS 9 Features and Goes Free
Scientists have long been perplexed by HIV’s ability to spread through the body – until now, that is. A team of medical researchers from Yale University have for the first time recorded the retrovirus’ movement through a mouse host. The team did so by marking the virus with a fluorescent dye and then injecting it into a mouse’s lymph node (as seen in the video below). The lymphatic system is the seat of the body’s immune system. “It’s all very different than what people thought, ” Walther Mothes, associate professor of microbial pathogenesis and co-senior author the paper, said in a statement. Once there, the HIV went about binding itself to macrophages, immune cells tasked with consuming foreign particles and dead cells. But that’s only a temporary viral vehicle. The HIV particle will then jump ship and attach itself to a rare type of B-cell responsible for generating antibodies, as you can see below. What’s more, these cells can move between the lymphatic system and surrounding tissues. These B-cells basically act as invisibility cloaks for the virus, shielding them from the rest of the body’s defenses. And with it, HIV particles can quickly spread through the rest of the organism. This discovery could yield clues in slowing the virus’ movements or, potentially, a way to prevent it from infecting macrophages in the first place. The Yale team’s study has been published in the journal, Science . [Image Credit: UIG via Getty Images] Via: Yale University Source: Science
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Scientists can watch HIV spread through a mouse in real time
Researchers have found a scourge for the 33 million tons of plastic dumped each year in the US: mealworms. A team from Stanford and China’s Beihang University found that the beetle larvae stay perfectly healthy eating just Styrofoam, which is normally considered non-biodegradable. Better still, the worms convert the plastic to CO2 and waste that’s safe to use as soil for crops. The scientists were as surprised by the discovery as you might be. “There’s a possibility of really important research coming out of bizarre places, ” said Stanford professor Craig Criddle. “This is a shock.” Mealworms don’t have some kind of magic digestive system, of course. Earlier research has showed that microorganisms in the stomachs of Indian mealmoths can digest the polyethylene plastic used in garbage bags. The scientists now plan to study such bacteria to see whether they can biodegrade plastics used in automotive components and microbeads that pollute water supplies. The goal is to eventually cut out the middleman (“middleworm”?) and isolate the bioenzymes used by microorganisms to break down the plastics. That could result in new methods of reducing plastic waste that’s already in the environment, and new types of bio-plastics that won’t accumulate on land or at sea. Source: Stanford University
Always trying new things to improve your News Feed browsing , Facebook now supports more immersive videos . The social network announced that 360 video will begin rolling out to that portion of the site today. Right now, they’re only viewable on the web and Android with support for iOS “in the coming months.” The more immersive videos on Facebook work similarly to what you’ve probably seen on YouTube . As the footage plays, you can use your cursor to click and move around the video on the desktop. With a mobile device, you can use your finger to navigate around the visuals or you can simply move the device itself to change perspective. This new addition also paves the way for VR content to hit the News Feed when devices like the Oculus Rift and PS VR head to consumers. There are a number of companies already pushing footage to Facebook as part of the new initiative, including Star Wars , Discovery , VICE , GoPro , Saturday Night Live and LeBron James & Uninterrupted . As you might expect, that first entry from Disney and LucasFilm is a 360-degree promo for Star Wars: The Force Awakens . And yes, we’ve embedded it down below for easy access. Facebook says the new videos aren’t just for publishers, as you’ll be able to post your multi-angle footage as well — so long as you have a multi-camera rig to proper capture it, of course. Speed across the Jakku desert from Star Wars: The Force Awakens with this immersive 360 experience created exclusively for Facebook. Posted by Star Wars on Wednesday, September 23, 2015 Source: Facebook
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Facebook’s 360-degree videos bring immersive content to your News Feed
HughPickens.com writes: Brian Booker writes at Digital Journal that carbon dating suggests that the Koran, or at least portions of it, may actually be older than the prophet Muhammad himself, a finding that if confirmed could rewrite early Islamic history and shed doubt on the “heavenly” origins of the holy text. Scholars believe that a copy Koran held by the Birmingham Library was actually written sometime between 545 AD and 568, while the Prophet Mohammad was believed to have been born in 570 AD and to have died in 632 AD. It should be noted, however, that the dating was only conducted on the parchment, rather than the ink, so it is possible that the quran was simply written on old paper. Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Quran from heaven, as he claimed during his lifetime, but instead collected texts and scripts that fit his political agenda. “This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran’s genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven, ” says Keith Small, from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. “‘It destabilises, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged, ” says Historian Tom Holland. “and that in turn has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
T-Mobile’s ‘unlimited means unlimited’ policy is good for consumers, but it’s also a boon for less scrupulous users who use cell data to replace broadband, with the help of a few dubious workarounds. Starting today, the endless data gravy train is going to stop . Read more…
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T-Mobile Will Stop Customers Abusing Unlimited Data
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was the prototypical World’s Fair. It brought together wonders of engineering, the latest technologies and consumer products, and music and art from far-off lands. Sadly, almost all of its buildings are no more—but in Chicago, three lovely fragments of one have resurfaced . Read more…
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Beautiful Pieces of the 1893 World’s Fair Discovered In Storage In Chicago
Metals, which conduct electricity, and insulators, which don’t, are polar opposites. At least that’s what we’ve believed until now. But we have discovered that a well-known insulator can simultaneously act like a conductor in certain measurements . We don’t yet know the reason for this mysterious behaviour but it is likely due to new and exciting quantum effects. Read more…
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The Material That Both Conducts Electricity – and Doesn’t
HughPickens.com writes: Cybersquatting is registering, selling or using a domain name with the intent of profiting from the goodwill of someone else’s trademark. It generally refers to the practice of buying up domain names that use the names of existing businesses with the intent to sell the names for a profit to those businesses. Now Andrew Allmann writes at Domain Name Wire that New York company Office Space Solutions, Inc. has filed a cybersquatting lawsuit against Jason Kneen over the domain name WorkBetter.com that Kneen registered in 1999 although Office Space Solutions didn’t use the term “Work Better” in commerce until 2015. “Workbetter.com is virtually identical to, and/or confusingly similar to the WORK BETTER Service Mark, which was distinctive at the time that the Defendant renewed and/or updated the registration of workbetter.com, ” says the lawsuit. But according to an Office Space Solutions’ filing with the USPTO, it didn’t use the term “Work Better” in commerce until 2015. Office Space Solutions is making the argument that the domain name was renewed in bad faith. According to Kneen, Office Space previously tried to purchase the domain name from him and after it failed to acquire the domain name, is now trying to take it via a lawsuit. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Lawsuit Filed Over Domain Name Registered 16 Years Before Plaintiff’s Use
The “living hinge” you see molded into clamshell packaging has always been the domain of plastic; metal and wood don’t like the repetitive stress of bending. But Bavarian fabrication firm Ackermann has worked out a way to do a living hinge in plywood. The trick is to laminate a sheet of synthetic leather into the center of the veneer stack. With miters precisely cut just shy of the leather layer, it yields a tough, hardware-free hinge. The leather can also be laminated to the outside of a material like MDF. Larger corner radii can be achieved by inserting a tube. As for what the practical applications are, Ackermann isn’t saying; the techniques were either developed as contract work for a client—”We provide services for craftsmen, trade fair and interior construction industries [ranging] from the simple milling of an individual component to the serial production of entire objects, ” they write—or out of pure experimentation. The company has some 120 employees and 14 apprentices, with traditional carpenters, designers, CNC operators and fabrication technicians all working side by side to master various materials. “I enjoy nothing more than the discovery of new techniques, ” says Manfred Weid, Manager of Technical Operations. “With permanent development we stay in proximity to the pulse of the times.”
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Leather-Core Plywood!