Technology
A team of engineers have built a new system that protects Internet users' privacy while increasing the flexibility for web developers to build web applications that combine data from different web sites, dramatically improving the safety of surfing the web.
The system, Confinement with Origin Web Labels, or COWL, works with Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome web browsers and prevents malicious code in a web site from leaking sensitive information to unauthorized parties, while allowing code in a web site to display content drawn from multiple web sites – an essential function for modern,…
A tool for editing the DNA instructions in a genome can now also be applied to RNA, the molecule that translates DNA's genetic instructions into the production of proteins, according to a team of researchers who demonstrated a means by which the CRISPR/Cas9 protein complex can be programmed to recognize and cleave RNA at sequence-specific target sites.
A team led by biochemist Jennifer Doudna or Lawrence Berkeley National Lab showed how the Cas9 enzyme can work with short DNA sequences known as "PAM," for protospacer adjacent motif, to identify and bind with specific site of single-…
A new imaging system is capable of obtaining up to twelve times more color information than the human eye and conventional cameras, which implies a total of 36 color channels.
The system involves a new generation of sensors in combination with a matrix of multispectral filters to improve their performance.
Color image sensors can be found in all common types of digital cameras and devices. They have an architecture that consists of a monochrome sensor (in black and white), covered with a layer of color filters (commonly, red, green and blue - RGB). This architecture only extracts…
Social network analysis could improve knowledge sharing in the healthcare sector, according to a paper which shows how knowledge management systems (KMS) can be critical in capturing, retaining and communicating project results and staff knowledge. They can prevent knowledge drain and provide training as "lessons learned" following specific occurrences and the resolution of particular problems the staff face.
The team has focused on the development of a KMS using social network analysis (SNA) to see how this combination might improve methods for organizing and sharing knowledge within a large…
After 24 hours of using Windows 10, as a tablet user, it is an incremental improvement on Windows 8.1. The biggest improvement is that my Pro 3's WiFi now works without issues. Right now Windows 10 is not a HUGE revolutionary jump that would merit skipping a whole major version number. That said Microsoft had at least two good reasons for that, one of marketing and one which is technical. For non touch users or those who follow the myth that every other Windows release will suck (without even giving them a try) Windows 10 will be the tolerable touchable Windows. The…
We are stardust - scientists and citizen scientists alike
Physics Today's Ashley Smart describes a huge recent win for citizen science: some 30,000 volunteers pored over millions of microscopic images looking for dust collected a decade ago by NASA's Stardust probe, and their efforts have helped identify candidate interstellar grains:
"Whereas the interplanetary dust that inhabits our solar system consists mostly of debris from disintegrating comets and asteroid collisions, most interstellar dust originates in the outflows of dying stars. For observational astronomers, interstellar dust is…
Giving publishing power to the people. Credit: Thinglass/Shutterstock
By Gillian Rudd, University of Liverpool
A novel written in an invented “shadow tongue” to give the feel of Early Middle English has a place on the shortlist for the Goldsmiths book prize for innovative fiction. But the odd style isn’t why Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake is being talked about. Instead, it’s his publisher, Unbound, a site that uses crowdfunding to get books published.
It’s getting harder to whip up original comments on the Booker list so it’s a shame that Kingsnorth’s novel didn’t reach the Booker shortlist (…
In video games, and in software downloads and processes, the status bar is often cheered or reviled. But they are here to stay.
And now it may be possible to 'gamify' your medical progress.
Inspired by a desire to help wounded soldiers, researchers have created a paint-on, see-through, "smart" bandage that glows to indicate a wound's tissue oxygenation concentration - because oxygen plays a critical role in healing. Mapping these levels in severe wounds and burns can help to significantly improve the success of surgeries to restore limbs and physical functions.
"Information about tissue…
I own a brand new Surface Pro 3, and if all the good touch features of Windows 8 are removed to make Windows 10 placate non-touchscreen users, I and others are going to be very disappointed. Many websites are reporting that the new Windows 10 "kills the start screen" and more or less abandons all the good touchable features of Windows 8. As one who's used windows since XP tablet PC edition, through Vista and 7 on touch screens the start menu sucks on a touch screen. So here are the main questions a long time touch, and user of Surface Pro and Surface Pro 3 has for MS.…
A new report shows early detection of cancer could one day be as easy as a simple blood test. This test, called the "lymphocyte genome sensitivity" (LGS) test, could not only detect some cancers earlier than ever before, but it may eliminate the need for some types of biopsies, as well as identify those more likely to develop cancer in the future.
"The test could allow earlier cancer detection, so helping to save peoples' lives," said Diana Anderson, co-author at the University of Bradford in West Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
To develop this test, Anderson and colleagues took blood…