Toggle light / dark theme

A new technique has been developed to implant high-performance magnetic memory chip on a flexible plastic surface without compromising performance.

It looks like a small piece of transparent film with tiny engravings on it, and is flexible enough to be bent into a tube. Yet, this piece of “smart” plastic demonstrates excellent performance in terms of data storage and processing capabilities. This novel invention, developed by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS), hails a breakthrough in the flexible electronics revolution, and brings researchers a step closer towards making flexible, wearable electronics a reality in the near future.

The technological advancement is achieved in collaboration with researchers from Yonsei University, Ghent University and Singapore’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering. The research team has successfully embedded a powerful magnetic memory chip on a flexible plastic material, and this malleable memory chip will be a critical component for the design and development of flexible and lightweight devices. Such devices have great potential in applications such as automotive, healthcare electronics, industrial motor control and robotics, industrial power and energy management, as well as military and avionics systems.

Read more

New method for tracking single cells; definitely could be interesting for genetic mutation research such as cancer, Parkinson, etc.


As far as the scientists are concerned, the new possibilities that these programs offer should be available to as many researchers around the world as possible. Therefore the software is freely available, and can be downloaded from the following link: http://www.bsse.ethz.ch/csd/software/ttt-and-qtfy.html

Technical obstacles were removed as far as possible. “Our focus was on making the application also available to researchers who do not have background IT know-how,” Schroeder explains. And the application appears to work well: Two high-ranking publications can be traced back to the spyware for cells.

Story Source:

Dark Net v. Law Enforcement — who is winning and who is struggling.


The Dark web is a privileged place for cyber criminals that, under specific conditions, could operate in anonymity.

The United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has published its annual report that contains a specific mention to the illicit trade of goods and drugs in this hidden part of the web.

The crooks seem to be one step ahead many countries’ law enforcement agencies that in many cases are not able to target black markets in the dark web.

Their back.


Cyber Mafias The internet has always been the most preferred platform for carrying out illicit activities. The underground black markets are not a new phenomenon in the virtual world. However, these black markets are now becoming more sophisticated and organized. Darkness is one such underground marketplaces which are rising and becoming uglier. Though law enforcement agencies have brought down the number of such illegal platforms, the Darknet markets are up and running. Darknet markets are growing bigger than ever with over $50 million UDS transactions reportedly flowing through these marketplaces and it is a big challenge in front of security agencies and governments to finish this underground industry from its roots.

Decoding Darknet

As the name suggests, the Darknet market, also known as Cryoto market is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darkness such as Tor and I2P. These markets primarily indulged in illicit activities such as drug peddling, trade of cyber-arms and weapons, counterfeited currencies, stolen credit card details, forged documents and other illicit goods. Though Darknet started gaining popularity from 2006 onwards, the traces of underground market lie in the early 70s when students at Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology created, dubbed as the first Darknet marketplace, ‘ARPANET’ to purchase cannabis. Since then, many such dark markets have mushroomed such as Cyber-arms Bazaar, ShadowCrew, the Farmer’s Market, Silk Market 2.0, Agora, AlphaBay etc.

Read more

Today’s high-speed wired communication networks use lasers to carry information through optical fibers, but wireless networks are currently based on radio frequencies or microwaves. In an advance that could one day make light-based wireless communications ubiquitous, researchers from Facebook Inc.’s Connectivity Lab have demonstrated a conceptually new approach for detecting optical communication signals traveling through the air.

The team described the new technology, which could pave the way for fast optical wireless networks capable of delivering internet service to far-flung places, in Optica, The Optical Society’s journal for high impact research.

Bridging the Digital Divide

Facebook’s Connectivity Lab develops technologies aimed at providing affordable internet services to the approximately 4 billion people in the world who cannot currently access it. “A large fraction of people don’t connect to the internet because the wireless communications infrastructure is not available were they live, mostly in very rural areas of the world,” said Tobias Tiecke, who leads the research team. “We are developing communication technologies that are optimized for areas where people live far apart from each other.”

Read more

A new finding in experiments studying the dry preservation of living cells — a potentially revolutionary alternative to cryopreservation — has defined a clear limit where continuing dehydration kills cells. The data, combined with molecular dynamics simulations, provides insight into an important processing factor that has limited recent attempts at dry preservation.

“What we have done is identified what appears to be a materials constraint in our method of dry preservation. I think this new understanding suggests some interesting avenues to pursue in developing a successful process,” said Gloria Elliott, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, one of the study’s authors.

The findings, reported in the July 8 issue of Scientific Reports, analyzes changes in the molecular arrangements of trehalose (a sugar) and water molecules during a typical dehydration process that they use to immobilize cells in a stable trehalose glass for long-term storage.

Read more