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Oct 16, 2020

A virtual reality game that integrates tactile experiences using biometric feedback

Posted by in categories: entertainment, privacy, robotics/AI, virtual reality, wearables

Over the past few decades, technological advances have enabled the development of increasingly sophisticated, immersive and realistic video games. One of the most noteworthy among these advances is virtual reality (VR), which allows users to experience games or other simulated environments as if they were actually navigating them, via the use of electronic wearable devices.

Most existing VR systems primarily focus on the sense of vision, using headsets that allow users to see what is happening in a or in another simulated environment right before their eyes, rather than on a screen placed in front of them. While this can lead to highly engaging visual experiences, these experiences are not always matched by other types of sensory inputs.

Researchers at Nagoya University’s School of Informatics in Japan have recently created a new VR game that integrates immersive audiovisual experiences with . This game, presented in a paper published in the Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life, uses a player’s biometric data to create a spherical object in the VR space that beats in alignment with his/her heart. The player can thus perceive the beating of his/her heart via this object visually, auditorily and tactually.

Oct 16, 2020

What it’s really like to do science amid COVID-19

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, science

Nature looks how researchers and students in four countries are coping with the return to campus amid the pandemic.


From Germany to India, researchers are grappling with how to run labs and lessons under extraordinary restrictions.

Oct 16, 2020

Underwater Ocean Turbines: A New Spin on Clean Energy?

Posted by in category: energy

Circa 2014


A team of scientists is building underwater turbines to capture energy from ocean currents.

Oct 16, 2020

Norway blames Russia for cyber-attack on parliament

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Moscow said there was no evidence for the accusation, calling it a “serious and wilful provocation”.

Oct 16, 2020

Microsoft takes down hacking network with potential to disrupt election

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cybercrime/malcode

The Russian hacking network was behind a ransomware attack that ensnared hundreds of hospitals. Its next target could’ve been elections.

Oct 16, 2020

Fancy Bear Imposters Are on a Hacking Extortion Spree

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Nice looking website you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if someone DDoS’d it.

Oct 16, 2020

Are hackers holding the data of Ontario’s 200,000 nurses hostage on the dark web?

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Ten days after it learned it was targeted by a ransomware attack, the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) is still trying to figure out if the personal information of its 300 employees and 195,500 members has been compromised, officials tell CBC News.

“We are aware of a claim on the dark web regarding data theft from CNO,” the nursing regulatory body told CBC News in a statement.

Oct 16, 2020

Chinese Hackers Charged in Decade-Long Crime and Spying Spree

Posted by in category: futurism

From defense contractors to videogame companies, the indictment details an astonishing array of victims.

Oct 16, 2020

Iranian state hacker group linked to ransomware deployments

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Amidst rising tensions between Israel and Iran, security researchers fear new escalation.

Oct 16, 2020

A patient has died after ransomware hackers hit a German hospital

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cybercrime/malcode

For the first time ever, a patient’s death has been linked directly to a cyberattack. Police have launched a “negligent homicide” investigation after ransomware disrupted emergency care at Düsseldorf University Hospital in Germany.

The victim: Prosecutors in Cologne say a female patient from Düsseldorf was scheduled to undergo critical care at the hospital when the September 9 attack disabled systems. When Düsseldorf could no longer provide care, she was transferred 19 miles (30 kilometers) away to another hospital. The hackers could be held responsible by German police, the BBC reports.

A tragic first: “If confirmed, this tragedy would be the first known case of a death directly linked to a cyberattack,” Ciaran Martin, formerly the chief executive of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, said in a speech at the Royal United Services Institute. “Although the purpose of ransomware is to make money, it stops systems working. So if you attack a hospital, then things like this are likely to happen. There were a few near misses across Europe earlier in the year, and this looks, sadly, like the worst might have come to pass.”