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‘Biopen’ lets doctors 3D print cartilage during surgery

If you need knee replacement surgery in the future, doctors may be able to create a custom-made joint from your own stem cells. A team from St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, have developed the Biopen, a type of 3D printer that uses “ink” made from hydrogel and stem cells. While 3D printing stem cells isn’t new , the exact shape of a patient’s cartilage often can’t be known until they’re cut open. Using the device, surgeons can precisely customize the joint to the patient with surgical “scaffolds, ” then permanently harden the biogel using ultraviolet light. Built from medical-grade plastic and titanium in consultation with doctors, the Biopen is supposedly up to the challenges of an operating room. “The development of this type of technology is only possible with interactions between scientists and clinicians — clinicians to identify the problem and scientists to develop a solution, ” says Professor Peter Choong, Director of Orthopaedics at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne. The process yields a very high 97 percent survival rate for the cells. Doctors developed a Biopen prototype several years ago (see the video, above), but refined it considerably, according to a new research paper . The same device could be used in other forms of surgery where custom tissue regeneration is needed, but there’s no word yet on when it will be tested on patients or commercialized. Via: IB Times Source: Pubmed (subscription)

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‘Biopen’ lets doctors 3D print cartilage during surgery

For the first time, a paraplegic has walked without a robotic suit

A paraplegic has walked without robotics using his own brain waves, thanks to research done at Southern California’s UC Irvine . Scientists used a computer to “link” 28-year-old Adam Fritz’s brain to his legs over a Bluetooth connection, bypassing the severed region of his spinal cord. An EEG then picked up signals from his brain, which were relayed by a “brain-control interface” (BCI) computer to electrodes on his knee, triggering walking movements. Though Fritz was supported and only walked haltingly for 12 feet, the research is being heralded as a milestone — so far, paralyzed patients have only be able to walk using suits like that from Ekso Bionics . It wasn’t just a matter of strapping on the EEG cap and taking a stroll. Prior to the attempt, Fritz underwent extensive physical rehab to strengthen his muscles and learned to control a virtual avatar using the BCI device. He also made similar movements in the lab while suspended slightly above the floor. During a conversation with Sky News , Fritz dubbed the interface a “mind walker, ” and said, “it’s complete concentration. You have to think about every single step when you’re doing it.” Despite the success, the team said there’s still a lot of work to be done before patients can gain any mobility. The next step is to reduce the EEG components enough that they can be implanted in the brain, which could give patients more precise control the and the ability to “sense” pressure. Meanwhile, Fritz described the experience as “incredible, ” saying, “when you’re first injured, you’re sitting in hospital hoping you’ll walk again, but when it actually happened it was a dream come true.” Source: JNER

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For the first time, a paraplegic has walked without a robotic suit

Chatroulette users stumble into a live-action zombie shooter

Chatroulette often brings surprises, but usually not good ones. However, several users were recently greeted with an amazing real life, live-streaming Doom-style first person shooter ( FPS ) game complete with undead characters and a creepy graveyard setting. To play, they talked the hero character through the scenes, giving commands like “Run! Run, fat boy, run!”, “Go for the head shot!” or “Check what’s in that pot!” The “game” was replete with sound effects, blood and guns, including a “rhino turret” and rocket launcher. The reaction of the players was beyond hilarious, with many adapting surprisingly quickly to the scenario (“Hit him again to make sure he’s dead!”). The UK production team from Realm Pictures released a companion making-of video, and it’s hard to believe they only spent £900 (about $1, 450) on the whole thing. There were video and sound effects experts who did their stuff on-the-fly, along with makeup people, a gun touch-up painter (they used nerf guns), and a cosplayer. The main actor wore a motorcycle helmet with a GoPro camera, light and Teradek HDMI transmitter. 30 intrepid extras from a nearby town played the zombies. The producers added plenty of on-the-nose FPS touches like overly-dramatic gun-cocking, comic health avatars and useless hand gestures. The show’s director, who also played the hero witih a Batman-style voice, tried to lead players into making the correct decisions. Many didn’t catch on, resulting in a gruesome death, but those with some experience in the genre eventually got to the final scenario, an encounter with the “Boss.” You’ll definitely want to see how that plays out below. Filed under: Gaming Comments Via: Reddit Source: Realm Pictures (YouTube) Tags: Chatroulette, FirstPersonShooter, FPS, live-action, livestream, omegle, RealmPictures, video

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Chatroulette users stumble into a live-action zombie shooter

Google gives the world a peek at its secret servers

Google has given everyone a rare look inside its server rooms and detailed how keeps up with the massive growth of its search business. In a blog post , Google Fellow Amin Vadat said that the company’s current network, Jupiter, can deliver a petabit per second of total throughput. That means each of its 100, 000 total servers can randomly speak to each other at a speed of 10Gb/s, a hundred times faster than the first-generation network it created in 2005. To get there, Google did something surprising — it built its own hardware from off-the-shelf parts. It was back in 2004 that Google decided to stray away from products by established companies like Cisco and build its own hardware using off-the-shelf chips from companies like Qualcomm. The aim was to put less onus on the hardware and more on software, something that’s impossible with off-the-shelf switches. Vadat said hardware switching is “manual and error prone… and could not scale to meet our needs.” Using software switching was not only cheaper but easier to implement remotely — critical for a company whose bandwidth requirements have doubled (or more) every year. Google considers its servers as a key advantage over rivals like Microsoft and Amazon, so why is it talking now? For one, it’s recently started selling its cloud services to other businesses, so it’s keen to brag about them. It’s also being pragmatic — its data requirements are now so huge that it needs academic help to solve configuration and management challenges. That’s why it’s presenting the paper at the Sigcomm networking conference in London, and if you’re in the mood for a (much) deeper dive, you can read it here . Filed under: Peripherals , Internet , Google Comments Via: WSJ Source: Google Tags: DataCenters, google, GoogleCloud, Growth, Servers, Switches

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Google gives the world a peek at its secret servers

Intel targets gamers with sixth-gen ‘Skylake’ CPU launch

With mobile annihilating the mainstream PC industry, Intel knows gaming is buttering its bread . The chip giant launched its sixth-gneration “Skylake” desktop processors today with two enthusiast quad-core models: the Core I7-6700K and i5-6600K. The 14-nanometer chips are unlocked for maximum overclocking (all the “K”-series will be), and if you’re not into that, the two new chips have fairly high base frequencies: 4.0GHz for the Core i7-6700K and 3.5GHz for the i5-6600K. Compared to similar current-gen models, prices are reasonable — suggested retail is $350 for the i7-6700K and $243 for the i5-6600K, with street prices likely lower. Unfortunately, the i7-6700K offers just a modest performance increase (10 percent) over last-gen Haswell i7-4790K CPUs and little, if any, advantage over the current Haswell-E i7-5820K chip. However, the Skylake models are the first 14-nanometer performance CPU’s that Intel has launched, since the lower-powered Broadwell 14-nanometer desktop chips aren’t aimed at gamers. The smaller transistors should help overclocking, and rumor has it that the i7-6700K can be pushed to 5GHz, which may give it an edge over current tech. At any rate, with 10-nanometer “Cannonlake” CPUs now delayed , Skylake is it until next year. Intel also revealed a new platform for the chips, the Z170 chipset. Like Haswell-E, the Skylake models use DDR4 RAM, which is much faster than DDR3 memory, but also way more expensive. (Skylake chips won’t run on Haswell-E X99 motherboards, which also use DDR4 RAM.) However, the Z170 chipset has a dual memory controller, so you can use use cheaper DDR3L memory on motherboards that support it . Another plus to the platform is new Intel HD 530 graphics, which run 20-40 percent faster than last-gen Intel HD. It also has 16 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, giving you more USB 3, graphics and storage options. And Intel just happens to have a new PCI Express 3.0-based 800GB 750 series SSD drive with read speeds up to 2, 200 MB/s. Many folks expected Intel to launch more of its Skylake lineup today, including mainstream and mobile CPUs, so what happened? That was just a rumor in the first place, but Intel has narrowed down the timeline. It’ll reveal more information at the Intel Developers Forum on August 18th, and launch the rest of the sixth-gen Skylake lineup sometime in Q3 2015. The mainstream chips will also see a modest performance bump over current-gen tech, but are expected to sip less power, giving future Macbooks, ultrabooks, laptops and tablets improved battery life. Down the road, it may also reveal more high-performance desktop Skylake CPUs, hopefully including an ” Extreme ” model. Filed under: Desktops , Gaming , Intel Comments Tags: Core i7-6600K, Core i7-6700K, enthusiast, gaming, Haswell, intel, Sixth-generation, Skylake

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Intel targets gamers with sixth-gen ‘Skylake’ CPU launch

Apple reportedly wants to turn Siri into your receptionist

Apple is testing a service that will let Siri take your calls, record them and transcribe them to text, according to Business Insider . The company is reportedly referring to it as iCloud Voicemail, and it’s similar to the existing visual voicemail service. However, instead of playing a pre-recorded message to your caller when you can’t pick up, Siri will take over the chore. It can then let certain contacts know where you are and why you can’t take the call, provided you give permission. The voice message will then be shunted over to Apple’s servers and transcribed into text. It works in much the same way that Siri transcribes your voice commands, but it’s unclear if the system would require carrier support. Currently, Apple’s visual voicemail service (which can also back up messages to iCloud) only works with select operators. It’s also not clear if it’d be free, as certain carriers charge extra for that. Nevertheless, it sounds like a good idea — as BI pointed out, lots of folks aren’t fond of voicemail, but the less tech-inclined still prefer to leave them. Employees of the company are reportedly testing the service, and if it’s reliable enough, it’ll be launch next year along with iOS 10. As always, however, take such rumors with a large chaser of skepticism. Filed under: Cellphones , Internet , Apple Comments Source: Business Insider Tags: apple, Siri, transcription, voice to text, Voicemail

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Apple reportedly wants to turn Siri into your receptionist

LG bets big on flexible displays for cars and phones

More and more smartphones , TVs and wearables like Apple’s Watch now use OLED displays, but only two companies mass produce them — Samsung and LG. LG is trying to stay on top of demand by building a new 1.05 trillion won ($900 million) flexible OLED plant in Korea. Starting in 2017, the 6th-gen line will spit out four times as many screens as the current-gen plant thanks to a larger “substrate” sheet size. The plastic-based displays are aimed at smaller next-gen devices that can benefit from the bendability like automotive displays, cellphones and wearables. Most of LG and Samsung’s high-end smartphones and smartwatches already use OLED displays (P-OLED and AMOLED, respectively). Some — like LG’s G Flex 2 “banana” phone and the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge — specifically take advantage of the flexibility. But, it’s other companies — the Vivo X5 , Oppo R7 and 2nd-gen Motorola Moto X all have OLED-based displays, for instance — that are creating demand for the technology. LG said it will eventually build another plant for larger, TV-sized displays that uses the same 6th-gen tech. Samsung also recently pledged $3.6 billion toward OLED production. Filed under: Displays , LG Comments

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LG bets big on flexible displays for cars and phones

XBMC’s Kodi media player officially hits the Play Store

Kodi’s media player got a name change last year and now it has something even better — official Android status. The app formerly known as XBMC is now available on the Google Play store for all takers. It actually arrived to the store last month in beta form , but prior to that could only be sideloaded on Android. Version 15 (codenamed Isengard) now supports Android 5-specific features like 4K and variable refresh rates on certain Android TV devices, like NVIDIA’s Shield . Another new trick on all platforms is “adaptive seeking” that lets you search material faster by tapping a key several times. There’s also new audio and subtitle lists, an updated add-on manager, improved video queuing and better live TV closed-captioning. It has other minor tweaks and fixes (check the source), and the XBMC foundation said that the next release would support DirectX 11. You can grab the app now on Google Play, but just remember that Kodi is a deep app, so leave yourself some time (and possibly some help ) to get it working. Filed under: Cellphones , Home Entertainment Comments Source: Kodi

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XBMC’s Kodi media player officially hits the Play Store

Intel delays next-gen chips as Moore’s law begins to crack

Intel says it’s next-gen ” Skylake ” will be delayed by six months, marking the second time in a row it hasn’t released a CPU on a two-year “Moore’s Law” cycle. That continues a trend, as last year’s 14-nanometer Broadwell chips were similarly delayed , and even Haswell and Ivy Bridge were behind schedule. Intel said that the setback for the new 10-nanometer chips was caused by the increasing complexity in building transistors that small. Addressing the elephant in the room, CEO Brian Krzanich said that “the last two technology transitions have signaled that our cadence today is closer to 2.5 years than two.” In other words, Moore’s Law needs a reboot. To address the lack of chips in the pipeline, Intel said that it’s going to release new 14-nanometer “Kaby Lake” chips based on the Skylake architecture. Krzanich said that “we expect that this addition to the roadmap will deliver new features and improved performance, and pave the way for a smooth transition to 10-nanometer.” Neverthless, he admitted that Intel is now on a “tick-tock-tick” cycle rather than a “tick-tock” as before. That bodes poorly for an already-struggling PC industry, as consumers will have less reason to get excited about new products. Intel also admitted that PC demand was weaker than expected, and expects it to get worse by year’s end. Nevertheless, it thinks the July 29 launch of Windows 10 will provide a tonic. “A lot of the really good features of Windows 10, things like Windows 10 Hello where you have facial log in, and you don’t have to use all your passwords, the Start screen… the touch usages of gaming, as the new games come to this product — those are going to run with PCs that have the latest features, ” Krzanich said. Despite the gloomy PC talk, Intel still managed to pull in a better-than-expected $13.2 billion for the quarter, thanks to a new focus on data centers, internet-of-things and memory. [Image credit: Getty images] Filed under: Peripherals , Intel Comments Source: Intel

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Intel delays next-gen chips as Moore’s law begins to crack