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Jan 11, 2017

Dark Web Offers Tools for Vengeance to Disgruntled Workers

Posted by in categories: law, security

It seems the dark web is now making it easier for disgruntled employees to take their revenge to the next level, we learn from the KrebsOnSecurity article, “Rise of Darknet Stokes Fear of the Insider.” The article cites Gartner analyst Avivah Litan; she reports a steep increase in calls from clients concerned about vindictive employees, current or former, who might expose sensitive information on the dark web. Not surprisingly, companies with a lot of intellectual property at stake are already working with law-enforcement or private security firms to guard against the threat.

How, exactly, is the dark web making worker retaliation easier than ever before? Writer Brian Krebs explains:

Noam Jolles, a senior intelligence expert at Diskin Advanced Technologies, studies darknet communities. I interviewed her last year in ‘Bidding for Breaches,’ a story about a secretive darknet forum called Enigma where members could be hired to launch targeted phishing attacks at companies. Some Enigma members routinely solicited bids regarding names of people at targeted corporations that could serve as insiders, as well as lists of people who might be susceptible to being recruited or extorted.

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Jan 11, 2017

A World-Renowned Futurist Reveals The Hotel Of The Future

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, virtual reality

His vision is definitely achievable.


The future of airport transfer—in a pod.

World-renowned global futurist Dr. James Canton envisions hotel experiences that include supersonic travel and DNA-driven spa treatments, so what can we expect in the next decade? Canton, a former Apple Computer executive, author and social scientist, worked in conjunction with Hotels.com, to present the Hotels of the Future Study at a recent conference in San Francisco. In the study he describes hotels with everything from RoboButlers and virtual reality entertainment to hotel restaurants based on gourmet genomics and the emergence of neurotechnology to make sleep more refreshing. Canton, who has advised three White House Administrations and over 100 companies, believes these megatrends will shape the future of the hotel experience and that the RoboButler is the change we will most likely see first. Although, he also notes that plans are already underway for a supersonic hyperloop route from Los Angeles to New York City.

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Jan 11, 2017

Why we need to keep an eye on whether a blood infection in cattle is linked to breast cancer in humans

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food

Pretty wild; blood infections in cattle may have a possible link to breast cancer in humans.


Meredith Frie, Michigan State University

Humans began domesticating animals for food over 10,000 years ago, cultivating a close relationship with animals over the following millennia. Like humans, animals can get sick, and sometimes infections pass between humans and animals. Some of these infections, like ringworm, are mostly harmless, while others, like bovine tuberculosis, are extremely serious.

But how do we find out if these infections pose a risk to humans? I study dairy cows infected with bovine leukemia virus (BLV), which is found in most of the dairy herds in the U.S. Scientists are trying to figure out if BLV infects humans and, if it does, whether there is a link between BLV and breast cancer.

Continue reading “Why we need to keep an eye on whether a blood infection in cattle is linked to breast cancer in humans” »

Jan 11, 2017

Hong Kong’s Air is Now Filled with Smog Blown From China

Posted by in categories: environmental, health

Bigger question is what happens when it begins to impact it’s other neighbors including Japan and Tiawan?

Bigger question is what happens when it begins to impact it’s other neighbors including Japan and Taiwan?


Hongkongers were forced to breathe China’s airpocalypse smog over the weekend when monsoon winds from the northeast pushed the poisonous air from the mainland down to the city.

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Jan 10, 2017

Smart Highway Market Explores New Growth Opportunities By 2026

Posted by in categories: electronics, transportation

For my many self driving fans. Here is an idea that they could look into as part of this infrastructure is to have the sensors in the pavement be able to sense a car broken down on the side of the road and notify nearby tow trucking company hired by the city or county as well as the same sensors able to pick up on vehicle impacts on the road to contact police/ hwy. patrol and emergency responders as cameras cannot be everywhere to monitor.


Press release — Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd — Smart Highway Market Explores New Growth Opportunities By 2026 — published on openPR.com.

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Jan 10, 2017

2D materials enhance a 3D world

Posted by in categories: particle physics, solar power, sustainability

In the past decade, two-dimensional, 2D, materials have captured the fascination of a steadily increasing number of scientists. These materials, whose defining feature is having a thickness of only one to very few atoms, can be made of a variety of different elements or combinations thereof. Scientists’ enchantment with 2D materials began with Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov’s Nobel Prize winning experiment: creating a 2D material using a lump of graphite and common adhesive tape. This ingeniously simple experiment yielded an incredible material: graphene. This ultra-light material is roughly 200 times stronger than steel and is a superb conductor. Once scientists discovered that graphene had more impressive properties than its bulk component graphite, they decided to investigate other 2D materials to see if this was a universal property.

Christopher Petoukhoff, a Rutgers University graduate student working in the Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), studies a 2D material, made of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). His research focuses on the 2D material’s optoelectronic applications, or how the material can detect and absorb light. Optoelectronics are ubiquitous in today’s world, from the photodetectors in automatic doors and hand dryers, to solar cells, to LED lights, but as anyone who has stood in front of an automatic sink desperately waving their hands around to get it to work will tell you, there is plenty of room for improvement. The 2D MoS2 is particularly interesting for use in photodetectors because of its capability of absorbing the same amount of light as 50nm of the currently used silicon-based technologies, while being 70 times thinner.

Petoukhoff, under the supervision of Professor Keshav Dani, seeks to improve optoelectronic devices by adding a 2D layer of MoS2 to an organic semiconductor, which has similar absorption strengths as MoS2. The theory behind using both materials is that the interaction between the MoS2 layer and the organic semiconductor should lead to efficient charge transfer. Petoukhoff’s research, published in ACS Nano, demonstrates for the first time that charge transfer between these two layers occurs at an ultra-fast timescale, on the order of less than 100 femtoseconds, or one tenth of one millionth of one millionth of a second.

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Jan 10, 2017

Apple Granted Liquid Metal Related Patent for Embossed Apple Logo on Products

Posted by in category: innovation

Luv my liquid metals and liquid circuits technology.


The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 55 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple’s granted patent relating to bulk-solidifying amorphous alloys which is also known for marketing purposes, liquid metal. One tiny aspect of this patent covers how liquid metal can be applied to Apple Products to set their embossed logo as noted in our cover graphic.

Granted Patent: Rapid Discharge Forming Process for Amorphous Metal (Liquid Metal)

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Jan 10, 2017

New active filaments mimic biology to transport nano-cargo

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, nanotechnology, particle physics, robotics/AI

Very interesting read. The researchers created a completely artificial microscopic transport system mimicking the human body. With this technology we’re going to be able to address many areas of healthcare as well as some areas of AI.


Inspired by micro-scale motions of nature, a group of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, in Chennai, India, has developed a new design for transporting colloidal particles, tiny cargo suspended in substances such as fluids or gels, more rapidly than is currently possible by diffusion.

Fluid friction determines micro-scale inertia in fluid. This means, for instance, blood cells swimming within blood encounter roughly the same amount of drag that a human would experience attempting to swim through molasses.

Continue reading “New active filaments mimic biology to transport nano-cargo” »

Jan 10, 2017

Synthetic gene circuits: Insulin self-regulation

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, innovation

Nice breakthrough.


A self-adjusting synthetic gene circuit senses and reverses insulin resistance in animal models of diabetes and obesity.

People with type 2 diabetes — an obesity-associated disease that is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide — develop insulin resistance. The condition can be counteracted by adiponectin, a cytokine secreted by adipocytes that promotes insulin sensitivity and regulates glucose metabolism via the receptors AdipoR1 and AdipoR2 (ref.). In fact, by mimicking adiponectin, the AdipoR-activating small molecule AdipoRon improves glucose and lipid metabolism in mice. Owing to the capacity of adipocytes to regulate insulin and glucose pathways, considerable efforts have been devoted to taking advantage of adiponectin for clinical applications. Writing in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Martin Fussenegger and colleagues demonstrate the therapeutic benefits of a self-adjusting synthetic gene circuit designed to sense and reverse insulin resistance in animal models of diabetes and obesity.

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Jan 10, 2017

Nanowire ‘inks’ enable low-cost paper- or plastic-based printable electronics

Posted by in categories: materials, nanotechnology

Duke University chemists have found that silver nanowire films like these conduct electricity well enough to form functioning circuits without applying high temperatures, enabling printable electronics on materials like paper or plastic. (credit: Ian Stewart and Benjamin Wiley)

By suspending tiny metal nanoparticles in liquids, Duke University scientists can use conductive ink-jet-printed conductive “inks” to print inexpensive, customizable RFID and other electronic circuit patterns on just about any surface — even on paper and plastics.

Printed electronics, which are already being used widely in devices such as the anti-theft radio frequency identification (RFID) tags you might find on the back of new DVDs, currently have one major drawback: for the circuits to work, they first have to be heated to 200° C (392°F) to melt all the nanoparticles together into a single conductive wire.

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