vinces99 (2792707) writes “Imagine a world in which your wristwatch or other wearable device communicates directly with your online profiles, storing information about your daily activities where you can best access it – all without requiring batteries. Or, battery-free sensors embedded around your home that could track minute-by-minute temperature changes and send that information to your thermostat to help conserve energy. This not-so-distant ‘Internet of Things’ reality would extend connectivity to perhaps billions of devices. Sensors could be embedded in everyday objects to help monitor and track everything from the structural safety of bridges to the health of your heart. But having a way to cheaply power and connect these devices to the Internet has kept this from taking off. Now, University of Washington engineers have designed a new communication system that uses radio frequency signals as a power source and reuses existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to provide Internet connectivity to these devices. Called Wi-Fi backscatter, this technology is the first that can connect battery-free devices to Wi-Fi infrastructure. The researchers will publish their results at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication’s annual conference this month in Chicago. The team also plans to start a company based on the technology. The Pre-print research paper. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Harvesting Wi-Fi Backscatter To Power Internet of Things Sensors
sciencehabit (1205606) writes “Pregnant women who smoke don’t just harm the health of their baby—they may actually impair their child’s DNA, according to new research. A genetic analysis shows that the children of mothers who smoke harbor far more chemical modifications of their genome — known as epigenetic changes — than kids of non-smoking mothers. Many of these are on genes tied to addiction and fetal development. The finding may explain why the children of smokers continue to suffer health complications later in life. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Uber is a great way to get a ride without having to hail a cab. When you finish a ride, you get a chance to rate your driver and your experience. However, the drivers get to rate you too. Here’s how to find out your rating, which is normally a closely-kept secret. Read more… 
Eight hours of sleep. Six hours of sleep. Seven hours of sleep. It seems like every year we see a study that claims that some amount of hours is better than another. The Wall Street Journal collects together a few studies that show data suggests that seven hours might be the sweet spot these days. Read more… 
Well, this is disconcerting. According to an announcement today from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), vials of the smallpox virus were found in a lab in Maryland that was not only unapproved to be handling the live pathogens—it was unequipped . Read more… 
In some parts of the world a mosquito bite is a minor inconvenience that might result in a few days of uncomfortable itching. In other parts, though, the pests spread deadly diseases like malaria and dengue fever. So for the 2014 World Health Day, ad agency Leo Burnett created the world’s first mosquito-repelling newspaper in Sri Lanka. Read more… 
