process – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Researchers grew a fully mature human egg in a lab

Researchers in the UK and the US have taken human eggs in their most early stage and developed them to maturity in a lab for the first time. It’s a big achievement that could open up new avenues for infertility treatment and give scientists a better understanding of how the egg development process works and how it can go wrong. While this has been done before in mice, experiments of which have resulted in live offspring, this is the first time it has been done with human eggs. The research team had previously developed a protocol wherein they could take eggs in later stages of development and bring them to maturity, and they expanded that protocol in an attempt to develop eggs from start to finish in the lab. They took samples of ovarian tissue from 10 women while they were undergoing caesarean section surgery and cultured sections of that tissue that have the ability to release an egg, structures known as follicles. The follicles were cultured in a multi-step procedure that allowed for eggs to develop. At the end of each step, follicles, and eventually eggs, that had successfully matured further were moved to the following step. The team initially isolated 87 follicles and by the end of the 21-day procedure, nine eggs reached a stage of maturity that would in theory allow them to be fertilized with sperm and develop into an embryo. While only 37 percent of the early-stage follicles resulted in a fully grown egg and only 10 percent achieved levels of maturity that could allow for reproduction, it’s still an important step in the study of egg development, or oogenesis. Ali Abbara, an endocrinology senior lecturer at the Imperial College of London who wasn’t involved with the study, told Reuters , “The technology remains at an early stage, and much more work is needed to make sure that the technique is safe and optimized before we ascertain whether these eggs remain normal during the process, and can be fertilized to form embryos that could lead to healthy babies.” Evelyn Telfer, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh and the leader of the study, told Reuters that the team is now working on optimizing this process and evaluating how healthy the resulting eggs are. One next step is to try to fertilize the eggs with sperm to see if they can result in a viable embryo — work that requires a licence that the team doesn’t yet have. This work could help improve IVF treatments in the future and could particularly help girls with cancer. They typically have pieces of their ovaries removed and preserved prior to receiving cancer treatments that might damage their follicles. However, if there’s a chance that the tissue has cancer cells, it can’t be reimplanted later on. If doctors could mature those eggs outside of her body, those eggs could still be used without introducing risk to the woman. Additionally, in cases where women have a condition that prevents the development of their eggs, this type of research could help scientists understand why that happens. “There are several conditions in which women lose their eggs much earlier in life, or they don’t grow, ” Telfer told New Scientist . “If we could understand the process…we could develop treatments for that.” The research was published in Molecular Human Reproduction . Via: Reuters Source: Molecular Human Reproduction

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Researchers grew a fully mature human egg in a lab

Tesla has finally begun manufacturing solar roof tiles

Tesla has apparently begun manufacturing its solar roof tiles at its Buffalo, New York, factory, according to Reuters . The company is also starting the process of surveying the homes of people who placed a deposit on the tiles last year for installation purposes. We’ve reached out to Tesla for confirmation. Pre-orders for the solar roof tiles began back in May ; customers paid $1, 000 as a deposit on the product, and US installation was supposed to start in the summer of 2017. However, unsurprisingly, the process was delayed. But now, it looks as though most of the kinks have been worked out, and Reuters reports that the roofs will be installed in coming months. Tesla claims that the solar roof tiles will cost less than a typical roof, around $21.85 per square foot instead of $24.50. The tiles are a solid option if you’re planning on replacing your roof in the next few years, or if you’re considering solar panels. The tiles look like regular shingles; in fact, not every shingle installed is solar, though you can’t distinguish between the two. You can customize what percentage of your roof tiles are solar in their online tool ; the max is 70 percent. Obviously, the more solar panels you install, the more expensive your roof is. The company is still taking preorders with $1, 000 deposits. You can sign up at their website if you’re so inclined. Source: Reuters

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Tesla has finally begun manufacturing solar roof tiles

Scientists on new supernova: WTF have we been looking at?

Enlarge / A more typical Type-IIp supernova. (credit: NASA SWIFT ) A supernova may be one of the most extraordinary events in the Universe, but the Universe is a very big place, and the extraordinary happens with great regularity. We’ve now observed a huge number of these events and have managed to break them down into categories based on patterns in the light they produce. Astrophysicists have built models of exploding stars that explain these properties, matching them to the mass of the original star and the process by which it exploded. We’re at the point where, after just a few observations, we can understand exactly what we’re looking at. Except when we can’t. Today in Nature , a team of researchers is announcing observations of a supernova that it simply can’t explain. In some ways, the event looks like a prosaic stellar explosion. Except it’s stayed bright over six times longer than it should and experienced five periods of enhanced brightness that we can’t explain. Different features of the supernova appear to be arising from physically distinct locations in space. And even the best model for what triggered this—something that involves a type of explosion we haven’t definitively observed previously—doesn’t account for all the observations. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

This iOS app makes creating and editing guitar tabs a breeze

One of the more tedious tasks of playing in a cover band is managing lyric and chord sheets. When you play a typical four-hour gig in a local bar, memorizing all that music is not always going to happen. You’ve got to study each song and learn your particular parts, sure, but having a cheat sheet with the verses and the chords on an iPad can really help keep you on track while you also manage your guitar, pedal effects and vocal performance. Gathering all this song data from the internet (or writing it out yourself) can take time. For me, the process usually involves finding the right transcription of the chords in the correct key online, copying the relevant bits from the web page and then creating a PDF on my computer for upload to Dropbox and my iPad so everyone can access it. An upcoming app called TabBank, currently in beta and set to release on July 27th, aims to simplify this process quite a bit, with a simple way to create and import chord sheets and tab right on an iPad or iPhone. Launching the app, you’ll see a fairly basic interface without any clutter to get in the way. You’ll get the option to create a new chart or read through the Getting Started guide, which explains that TabBank uses its own version of the ChordPro standard file type to edit your sheets. If you’re typing out your own music, you simply enter the chord name in brackets in front of the word you want it to appear over on the final product. You can even define new chords the app doesn’t already know with a line in the file that tells the app what strings and frets to use when previewing, like Cm7b5: x3434x. Tabs can be created with rows of dashes that represent the guitar strings; they will be formatted a bit more nicely when you’re done, and you can add hammer-on and pull-off notes as well. You can also format the font size into small, medium or large styles, and choose the from three different styles used for chords and lyrics. What makes TabBank extremely useful for me, however, is the way it pulls in tab and chord sheets from the internet. You’ll need to install a mobile Safari extension, and then navigate to any of your favorite portals, like Ultimate Guitar or E Chords . Once you find the version of the song you want to import, you hit the Share button in Safari and TabBank will pull in just the relevant portion of the music, ignoring all the ads and other cruft usually found on such sites. The song will then appear below the Create New Chart section in the main screen. You can tap the title and get a nicely formatted tab or chord chart in seconds, and you can edit it right in TabBank, as well. You can tap on any chord or tablature and TabBank will play it back with a basic MIDI guitar sound paired with a visual of the notes on a guitar neck. It might be helpful for newbies who need to know how to play a given chord, but it’s fairly bland when you’re trying to figure out a solo or rock riff. I pulled up AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” and, while accurate, the playback only sort of sounded like it should. This is more a limitation of MIDI and written tablature, though, and not a problem with the app itself. Once you’ve written out your chord sheet or imported one from your favorite website, you can export either a PDF or ChordPro file, which you can then share out to any other apps you like. It was incredibly easy to send a PDF to the app I use to manage lyric sheets and set lists on stage, Deep Dish’s GigBook . So far, TabBank seems like a great tool to use if you want to manage your guitar tab and chord sheets on your iPhone or iPad. Being able to get music from the web, edit it on my device and then send it to the setlist app I use saved me quite a bit of time; I look forward to using the app from here on out. The app should be out on the App Store July 27th, where it will be a free download with some in-app purchases to add printing and exporting PDFs and saving tabs from the web.

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This iOS app makes creating and editing guitar tabs a breeze

Web host agrees to pay $1m after it’s hit by Linux-targeting ransomware

(credit: Aurich Lawson) A Web-hosting service recently agreed to pay a $1 million to a ransomware operation that encrypted data stored on 153 Linux servers and 3,400 customer websites, the company said recently. The South Korean Web host, Nayana, said in a blog post published last week that initial ransom demands were for five billion won worth of Bitcoin, which is roughly $4.4 million. Company negotiators later managed to get the fee lowered to 1.8 billion won and ultimately landed a further reduction to 1.2 billion won, or just over $1 million. An update posted Saturday said Nayana engineers were in the process of recovering the data. The post cautioned that that the recovery was difficult and would take time. “It is very frustrating and difficult, but I am really doing my best, and I will do my best to make sure all servers are normalized,” a representative wrote, according to a Google translation. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Web host agrees to pay $1m after it’s hit by Linux-targeting ransomware

Facebook will hire 3,000 moderators to tackle livestreamed violence

Following a spate of suicides and murders that were streamed or hosted on Facebook for hours before they were taken down, Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the company will be hiring an additional 3, 000 people to its global community operations team over the next year. That will bring the total size of the department to 7, 500, and the manpower will be dedicated to reviewing “the millions of reports we get every week, and improv(ing) the process for doing it quickly.” Zuckerberg wrote that these reviewers will “help us get better at removing things we don’t allow on Facebook like hate speech and child exploitation, ” and that the social network will continue working with law enforcement and local community groups who “are in the best position to help someone if they need it.” In addition, Facebook will make it simpler for members to report problems and speed up the process for its reviewers to determine which posts violate community standards. The company previously opened up access to its suicide-prevention tools to all its users, and developed an AI system to identify potentially suicidal people. One of the biggest criticisms against Facebook in the recent incidents is its delay in addressing the problematic content on its video platform. Zuckerberg appears to acknowledge that issue in this post, saying “If we’re going to build a safe community, we need to respond quickly. We’re working to make these videos easier to report so we can take the right action sooner — whether that’s responding quickly when someone needs help or taking a post down.” Hiring more people over a year is a prolonged step towards alleviating the problem, but it will hopefully make for speedier response to such situations in future. Source: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook post)

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Facebook will hire 3,000 moderators to tackle livestreamed violence

How to Grow Objects With Mushroom Mycelium

You might be familiar with Danielle Trofe’s Mush-Lume lighting collection and the concept of growing objects with mushroom mycelium —we’ve covered both stories on our site before. Thanks to Trofe and Ecovative Design , I learned how to DIY my own mushroom-grown container in the comfort of the GROW studio space at Industry City, Brooklyn. Yes, I really did grow a mushroom mycelium planter in my kitchen last week—here’s a breakdown of the process. Learn the basics and then freestyle—post your creations in the comments! Trofe’s Mush-Lume lighting collection. Much to my surprise, the process isn’t complicated at all—I was intimidated by the strange live material at first, but I quickly realized how friendly it can be. All the mushroom material needs to start its new life as a planter are flour, water and patience (about a week of patience, to be exact). Just add regular flour and water to a mixture of dry chopped mushroom roots and agricultural waste (seed husks, corn stalks, etc.)—the flour acts as a food source, and the water activates the growth process. White fibers are a good sign! During the next three or four days, the mushroom mycelium will recognize the agricultural waste and flour as food and begin coming back to life. The mixture will form white fibers in the process. Break the material up again by hand (don’t forget gloves!) to prepare it for its growth into your desired shape—in this case, small planters. Before molding into a tool (a growing container), poke a generous amount of holes in the lid and a few on the bottom of the tool to allow air flow. We used plastic containers as our tools, but feel free to get creative with your material choice—wax, wood and clay are all in the clear, just make sure your material is waterproof and non-porous. During the molding process, the mushroom material feels like it won’t stay in place due to its relatively dry and crumbly texture. This is OK—the mushroom material’s bonding power is stronger than you’d think. Make sure to pack the material in tightly, but keep it loose enough to allow air flow—fungi is alive, after all. Once left to sit in the mold for four days, the mushroom mycelium needs to sit for one extra day in a sealed plastic bag, allowing the material to set itself. Air flow is key throughout this whole process—blow air into the bag and situate it in a way that none of its sides are touching the tool (except the bottom). After one day, remove the planter from the bag and its mold, and let it sit on a cookie cooling rack for one extra day. I also put mine in front of a fan to help with drying, which worked out well. You’ll notice that the planter feels strange to the touch. After racking my brain for awhile, I came to the conclusion that it feels exactly like the moldy rind that encases brie cheese. Looks like brie, but avoid giving your object a taste test! Since mushroom mycelium is live matter, it needs to be heated in order to lose its activity. I found myself feeling guilty thinking about killing the fungi I’d spent the last week nurturing. However, if this step is skipped, little mushroom spores will start growing out of your product, which is not the desired result. My finished planter coming out of the oven—note the slightly browned edges. Bake the pot at 200 degrees F for 30 minutes. I panicked when I realized my oven starts at 250 degrees F—luckily I’m a baker and thought to bake mine at 250 degrees F for 25 minutes instead, and it turned out well. When you remove the planter from your oven, you’ll notice that its moldy hand feel has been replaced by a stiff, paper mâché-like one. This means you’ve done well, and your final product is ready to function as a planter, or whatever else you have in mind. Drill or poke a small hole in the bottom of your planter to allow water drainage, and you’re all set to plant your small plant—one that doesn’t require a lot of moisture works best. Yes, it really is that easy. An example of one of Trofe’s finished products. She chose to use this one as a bowl instead of a planter, but it would be just as safe to pot her plant directly in the bowl. After awhile, your planter will start to degrade and lose its shape. No worries! Simply re-pot your plant in a larger planter while still inside of your mycelium one. The mycelium material will break down, acting as a food source for your plant as it adjusts to its new home. Want to try this process out yourself or learn more? Go for it !

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How to Grow Objects With Mushroom Mycelium

Security experts have cloned all seven TSA master keys

Key escrow – the process of keeping a set of keys for yourself “just in case” – has always been the US government’s modus operandi when it comes to security. From the disastrous Clipper chip to today the government has always wanted a back door into encryption and security. That plan backfired for the TSA. The TSA, as you’ll remember offers a set of… Read More

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Security experts have cloned all seven TSA master keys

Evernote’s free plan no longer lets you sync more than two devices

Popular note-taking and organizational app Evernote is in the process of making a few changes. Starting today, if you use its free plan, you’ll only be allowed to sync your notes between two devices. Anything more than that and you’ll be expected to pony up. If you’re already using a free Evernote account and sync between more than two devices, you’ll be allotted some time to upgrade, but you’ll definitely have to do so soon. You can choose either Plus or Premium tiers, which run $4 and $8 respectively. Previously the Plus option cost $3, whereas Premium cost $6. Plus also includes 1 GB of space for uploads each month. The reason behind the shift in pricing plans? It’s simple, really. Evernote’s CEO Chris O’Neill just wants to offer “a great product at a fair price.” “We don’t take any change to our pricing model lightly, and we never take you for granted. Our goal is to continue improving Evernote for the long-term, investing in our core products to make them more powerful and intuitive while also delivering often-requested new features. But that requires a significant investment of energy, time, and money. We’re asking those people who get the most value from Evernote to help us make that investment and, in return, to reap the benefits that result.” Via: VentureBeat

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Evernote’s free plan no longer lets you sync more than two devices

Watch this cruise ship get cut in half and made 99 feet longer

As far as behemoth man-made objects, few things are more dwarfing than a cruise ship. That’s why it’s so incredible to see such a thing in the process of being taken apart. This striking timelapse video, posted at FStoppers, shows off the entire process. Read more…

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Watch this cruise ship get cut in half and made 99 feet longer