Plug and play is preparing to launch.
DARPA hopes to shrink traditional military machines into single ‘chiplets’ to build a library of components to aid everything from smart drone building to instant language translation. Shown, an artist’s impression of the components that could be shrunk onto a single chip.
Mayo Clinic researchers have developed the first liquid biopsies from blood tests and DNA sequencing that can detect ovarian cancer long before a tumor reappears.
The advance, reported by the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine, provides a promising new way to monitor and treat recurrences of ovarian cancer — a hard-to-detect disease that claims many lives.
Lead researcher Dr. George Vasmatzis, Ph.D., of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic, said the development could lead to earlier intervention and more effective, individualized treatment for the often-fatal condition.
Even the shopping malls are going VR.
Mall of America is using leading-edge technology to enhance the on- and offsite customer experience.
The Bloomington, Minnesota-based center is the latest retail participant to adopt virtual reality (VR) technology. A new, VR-based immersive experience allows customers to “see” retail, entertainment and live events within the mall.
The tour of the mall first transports viewers to the Sea Life indoor aquarium. Other virtual attractions include the Nickelodeon Universe indoor theme park and the JW Marriott’s Cedar + Stone restaurant. Radisson Blu hotel, and a live choir in the mall’s rotunda event space.
Luv it; and this is only the beginning too.
In the continued effort to make a viable quantum computer, scientists assert that they have made the first scalable quantum simulation of a molecule.
Quantum computing, if it is ever realized, will revolutionize computing as we know it, bringing us great leaps forward in relation to many of today’s computing standards. However, such computers have yet to be fabricated, as they represent monumental engineering challenges (though we have made much progress in the past ten years).
This is a true question especially since China launches their new Quantum Satellite communications in the next few weeks. I do believe some will be protected; however, the broader majority will be a stretch.
The encryption of today will be broken by the computers of tomorrow, even retroactively.
The Postnova TF2000 is an advanced thermal field flow fractionation (TF3) system that provides a highly efficient method of separating and characterising complex polymer samples such as natural or synthetic rubbers, starches and paints from approximately 10 kDa up to 100 MDa and more in organic and aqueous solvents.
The TF2000 uses a temperature gradient as the driving force for its separation of polymers and particles. Molecules affected by the thermal gradient undergo diffusion which enables separation by both their molar mass and chemical composition. This unique feature allows the separation of different materials having the same molar mass. The separation can be further optimized by the use of different eluents and various temperature programs.
“Computational design tool transforms flat materials into 3D shapes” — I could use this many times over.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL) have developed a new computational design tool can turn a flat sheet of plastic or metal into complex 3D shapes. They say the tool enables designers to fully and creatively exploit an unusual quality of certain materials — the ability to expand uniformly in two dimensions.
In this case, the researchers were making hexagonal cuts into flexible, but not normally stretchable plastic and metal sheets to give them the ability to expand uniformly, up to a point. But the design tool could be useful for a variety of synthetic materials, known as auxetic materials that share this same distinctive quality.
Origami-style folding techniques have already helped produce devices such as cardiac stents, which must be maneuvered into the narrowed artery of a heart patient and then expanded to hold the artery open, and solar arrays that unfold after being launched into space. Auxetic materials could be used in similar ways, while also exploiting their additional capabilities.
Perfecting Synthetic biology — this definitely is advancement forward in the larger Singularity story.
In both higher organisms and bacteria, DNA must be segregated when cells divide, ensuring that the requisite share of duplicated DNA goes into each new cell. While previous studies indicated that bacteria and higher organisms use quite different systems to perform this task, A*STAR researchers have now found a bacterium that uses filaments with key similarities to those in multicellular organisms, including humans.
Robert Robinson from the A*STAR Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology has a long-standing interest in what he calls the “biological machines” that move DNA around when cells divide. He and his co-workers had gleaned from gene sequencing analysis that there was something distinctive about the DNA-moving machinery in the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis.
Along with an international team of colleagues, the A*STAR researchers used electron microscopy and biochemical analysis to investigate the way small circular strands of DNA called plasmids moved in this bacterium. They identified a novel form of bacterial filament that combines to form tubules with some similarities to the microtubules observed in higher organisms. Bacterial systems previously studied also use protein filaments to move DNA, but they do not share such obvious similarities to those of higher organisms. The new-found similarity in Bacillus thuringiensis is of great interest from an evolutionary perspective as it suggests that evolution has furnished at least some bacteria and multicellular organisms with different machineries but similar methods to manipulate DNA.
Some folks will be freaked out by this while others will luv it.
A visitor tries out an HP Spectre XT laptop computer featuring an Intel Ultrabook processor at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) 2012 consumer electronics trade fair on August 31, 2012 in Berlin, Germany. (Getty Images — Representational Image)
