Tag: technique

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

Malicious apps with >1 million downloads slip past Google defenses twice

Enlarge / One of the fee-based services ExpensiveWallpaper apps subscribed users to. Researchers recently found at least 50 apps in the official Google Play market that made charges for fee-based services without the knowledge or permission of users. The apps were downloaded as many as 4.2 million times. Google quickly removed the apps after the researchers reported them, but within days, apps from the same malicious family were back and infected more than 5,000 devices. The apps, all from a family of malware that security firm Check Point calls ExpensiveWall, surreptitiously uploaded phone numbers, locations, and unique hardware identifiers to attacker-controlled servers. The apps then used the phone numbers to sign up unwitting users to premium services and to send fraudulent premium text messages, a move that caused users to be billed. Check Point researchers didn’t know how much revenue was generated by the apps. Google Play showed the apps had from 1 million to 4.2 million downloads. Packing heat ExpensiveWall—named after one of the individual apps called LovelyWall—used a common obfuscation technique known as packing. By compressing or encrypting the executable file before it’s uploaded to Play, attackers can hide its maliciousness from Google’s malware scanners. A key included in the package then reassembled the executable once the file was safely on the targeted device. Although packing is more than a decade old, Google’s failure to catch the apps, even after the first batch was removed, underscores how effective the technique remains. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Malicious apps with >1 million downloads slip past Google defenses twice

Sony and IBM created 330TB data tapes for a massive analog archive

Storing data on magnetic tape is back, baby. Sony has announced that thanks to a partnership with IBM Research in Zurich, the pair have developed a magnetic tape cartridge capable of storing 201 gigabytes of data per square inch for a total of 330 terabytes per cartridge. Previously, IBM’s analog storage maxed out at 123 gigabytes per square inch. The trick here is that IBM and Sony are using sputtered media made up of several layers of nano particles to extend tape length. IMB says this technique uses a process similar to printing integrated circuits. What’s more, 330TB of data storage isn’t the maximum storage limit. In the video below, IBM Research’s Dr. Mark Lantz says that tape storage could reach even higher capacities in the future. The last time IBM announced it’d made advancements in the space was in 2015. At the time, cartridge capacity was 220 terabytes and 123 gigabytes per square inch. When the research started in 2006 , density was a paltry 6.67GB per square inch with total cartridge capacity of 8TB. What’s here is “an archival tier for cold data, which is not frequently accessed, ” according to Lantz. Specifically, this would be a boon for cloud storage companies. Lantz says we’ll be seeing these types of increases for awhile, and will double cartridge capacity every two years for at least ten years. That should be enough to keep your selfies backed up to your favorite non-local storage provider for awhile. Source: Sony

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Sony and IBM created 330TB data tapes for a massive analog archive

IBM squeezes 30 billion transistors into a fingernail-sized chip

Who said Moore’s Law was dead? Certainly not IBM or its chip partners Globalfoundries and Samsung. The trio has developed a transistor manufacturing process that should pave the way for 5-nanometer chips . While the team etched the chip using the same extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) used for the breakthrough 7nm chip , it ditched the common FinFET (fin field effect) transistor design in favor of stacks of silicon nanosheets. The switch makes it possible to fine-tune individual circuits to maximize their performance as they’re crammed into an incredibly small space. How small? At 5nm, the group says it can squeeze 30 billion transistors into a chip the size of a fingernail (see below) — not bad when the 7nm chip held 20 billion transistors a couple of years ago. IBM sees the technique helping its own cognitive computing efforts as well as the Internet of Things and other “data-intensive” tasks. However, it’s also painting a rosy picture for the future of mobile devices — it imagines phones having “two to three times” more battery life than current devices . That’s likely optimistic (phone makers tend to focus on speed over longevity), but it won’t be shocking if future hardware is both faster and wrings out a little more from every charge. Just don’t expect to see real-world examples of this for a while. We haven’t even seen devices shipping with 7nm chips (they’re not expected until 2018 at the earliest), so it could easily be a couple of years or more before 5nm arrives. Still, that 5nm is even on the roadmap is important. Chip designers won’t have to reinvent the wheel to get meaningful improvements, and you won’t have to worry about device performance growing stale for at least the next few years. Source: IBM

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IBM squeezes 30 billion transistors into a fingernail-sized chip

Thieves now use “Shimmers” to grab Chip/PIN card data

 Just when you thought it was safe to slip your card in a slot ATM skimmers have gotten just a bit smarter. New devices called Shimmers can now read your card number and, in certain instances, access your card’s chip. While the technique isn’t new – Shimmers began appearing in 2015 – they are still a huge security hole and far more dangerous than standard skimmers.… Read More

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Thieves now use “Shimmers” to grab Chip/PIN card data