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New method to make purify water and eliminate clean water shortages in the future by purifying waste water via artificial leafing.

Contaminated water can be cleaned up to varying levels of purity with a new artificial leaf. Photo: American Chemical Society For years, scientists have been pursuing ways to imitate a leaf’s photosynthetic power to make hydrogen fuel from water and sunlight. In a new twist, a team has come up with another kind of device that mimics two of a leaf’s processes — photosynthesis and transpiration — to harness solar energy to purify water. Their development, reported in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, could help address issues of water scarcity.

More than 1 billion people around the world live in areas where clean water is hard to come by, and that number will likely rise as the population grows.

One possible solution to the shortage is to clean up wastewater or other water sources that would otherwise not be drinkable or usable for agriculture. But methods to scrub contaminants from water mostly rely on conventional energy sources. To address the water problem without adding to the dependence on fossil fuels, Peng Tao, Wen Shang and colleagues developed a way to purify water by copying the way green leaves work.

Continue reading “Purifying Water with Leaf-mimicking Device” | >

Scientists were able to study brain growth using a 3D gel model in order to see how the human brain gets its folds.

New research shows that our brains are likely folded because, as they grow, a large amount of volume has to fit in a small space (AKA, our skulls). This compression is actually beneficial, the folds reduce the length of neuronal wiring, improving cognitive function.

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences teamed up with scientists in Finland and France to find out more about the folding process.

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Building building diamond lattices through DNA.

Using bundled strands of DNA to build Tinkertoy-like tetrahedral cages, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have devised a way to trap and arrange nanoparticles in a way that mimics the crystalline structure of diamond. The achievement of this complex yet elegant arrangement, as described in a paper published February 5, 2016, in Science, may open a path to new materials that take advantage of the optical and mechanical properties of this crystalline structure for applications such as optical transistors, color-changing materials, and lightweight yet tough materials.

“We solved a 25-year challenge in building diamond lattices in a rational way via self-assembly,” said Oleg Gang, a physicist who led this research at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven Lab in collaboration with scientists from Stony Brook University, Wesleyan University, and Nagoya University in Japan.

The scientists employed a technique developed by Gang that uses fabricated DNA as a building material to organize nanoparticles into 3D spatial arrangements. They used ropelike bundles of double-helix DNA to create rigid, three-dimensional frames, and added dangling bits of single-stranded DNA to bind particles coated with complementary DNA strands.

Continue reading “DNA used to assemble nanoparticles into a copy of the crystalline structure of diamond” | >

Non-hackable RFIDs

You might not realize it, but radio frequency identification (RFID) tech is everywhere these days. From the cards in your wallet, to inventory control in warehouses, it’s the technology that works behind the scenes to power the world around you. RFID has brought efficiency to complicated industries and makes our tiny devices and everyday carry items speak to each other. But RFID technology has also been very vulnerable to security attacks and information hackers – until now. A team of researchers from MIT and Texas Instruments have developed a new kind of RFID chip that they believe is impossible to hack.

The new RFID chip is made of ferroelectric crystals, which are material made up of molecules arranged in a lattice pattern across three dimensions. Thanks to this unique structure, when you apply electricity to the lattice, each cell can be polarized as either positive or negative, representing the values of a bit of information. Because the cells retain their polarization when the electric field is removed, the chips can store data even when they’re powered off. Texas Instruments developed a series of 3.3-volt capacitors for the chip’s energy source, and 1.5-volt cells for data storage.

Related: This RFID-blocking wallet keeps your cards safe and cuts down on clutter.

Continue reading “MIT engineers have developed a new kind of RFID chip that’s nearly impossible to hack” | >

Cyber is still a challenge for soldiers on the battlefield.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include comment from an industry official.

WASHINGTON — Cyber vulnerabilities continue to plague the Army’s battlefield communications, according to the Pentagon’s top weapons tester, while the service works to harden its network against cyber attacks.

The Army’s Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T), the Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular Radio (MNVR), the Joint Battle Command-Platform (JBC-P) and the Rifleman Radio were all cited as having problematic cybersecurity vulnerabilities in a report released Monday by the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E), J. Michael Gilmore.

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Tough to be a doctor these days — Could be bad news for Providers with limited or no Cyber Risk Coverage.

Providers are focusing on cybersecurity with increased urgency. Cyberattacks on health-care organizations reached an all-time high in 2015 and aren’t expected to slow down in 2016, Harry Greenspun, director for Deloitte’s Center for Health Solutions, told Bloomberg BNA. One element of a comprehensive strategy to address data security is customized cyber risk insurance. Recent case law supports standing for class action litigants alleging future injuries, which may not be covered by some policy forms. We urge providers to review their cyber risk coverage with the increasing risks and this new case law in mind.

Specifically, it is critical that cyber risk insurance is designed to both: adequately mitigate future harm to those whose private information is compromised as a result of a data breach; and satisfy the full array of damages sought by such third parties, including damages for future injuries resulting from the anticipated improper use of data. These considerations are increasingly important because the policies available in today’s market are not standardized. While many absorb some of the costs associated with notification and fraud monitoring, existing forms may not protect against damages sought for susceptibility to identity theft.

The Remijas decision

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