Friday, February 22, 2013

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Cornell 3D prints human ear

Posted: 22 Feb 2013 04:39 AM PST

A team of Cornell University researchers is taking 3D printing to a whole new level, with a human ear printed using a 3D printer and injections of living cells. Scientists hope 3D printing will one day allow doctors to grow all sorts of customised body parts.

While it does sounds like something straight out of a B-movie, the technology involved in creating artificial body parts is slowly developing, although there is a long way to go, the HuffPo reports. The ear was grown with cartilage from a cow, which is easier to obtain than human cartilage, unless you use your own.

Study co-author Dr. Jason Spector of Weill Cornell Medical Center is already working on the next step and trying to work out how to cultivate enough of a child's remaining ear cartilage in the lab to grow an entirely new ear, without the cow parts.

The actual task of scanning the ear is a bit more straightforward. The team used a 3D camera that rapidly rotates around a child's head to come up with a 3D model. There is no need for radiation or CT scans. From the model, the 3D printer produces a soft mold of the ear, which is then injected with a special collagen gel that is full of cow cells that produce cartilage. Over the course of a few weeks, cartilage grows to replace the collagen and at three months a flexible and workable outer ear is created.

The team believes the process could be even faster if living cells could be used as the printer ink. The next step is to use a patient's own cells in the 3D printing process. 

GPS cow-tags to make cowboys obsolete

Posted: 22 Feb 2013 04:05 AM PST

Cowboy hats and barbed wire could be going out of style in the American west, thanks to solar powered GPS sensor tags designed to for livestock.

Dean M. Anderson, a USDA scientist whose research focuses on virtual fencing, has come up with a system that could allow farmers to keep track of their livestock using GPS tags, and they look like oversized novelty dog collars. The technology allows farmers to manage where their cattle graze, while Facebooking at the same time. It also makes farms more environmentally sustainable, as it could render huge barbed wire fences obsolete.

"It never made sense to me that we use static tools to manage dynamic resources," Anderson told Venue. "You learn from day one in all of your ecology classes and animal science classes that you are dealing with multiple dynamic systems that you are trying to optimize in relationship to each other."

Anderson believes smart GPS tags are simply a more effective way of managing livestock than static fences. Virtual fences programmed to best suit farmers' needs at any given moment are the way to go. They can be changed in no time, at no cost whatsoever.

However, Anderson's system is still not on the market and there is plenty of work to do. One challenge is power supply, although Anderson believes a combination of solar panels and high tech batteries should do the trick. The other problem is working out how to stimulate cattle and keep them from crossing the virtual fence. Dog training collars rely on a mild electric shock, preceded by an audio warning, but different species respond to stimuli quite differently.

The system could be applied to all sorts of livestock, which means it is only a matter of time before someone mislabels their horses as calves. 

Apple is also ran behind Samsung

Posted: 22 Feb 2013 03:22 AM PST

While the global market for tablets surged 78.4 percent last year, it looks like Apple is being left behind.

Research firm IDC said tablets made up 10.7 percent of the global market last year for "smart connected devices". Now IDC analysts have continued to suck on the bong, giggle and claim that "smart connected devices" should include smartphones, notebooks and PCs before looking for a sandwich.

Last year, IDC says, the market leader was Apple, but this year Samsung overtook Cupertino with an overall market share of 20.8 percent.

Overall, the market for these devices grew 29 percent to 1.2 billion, according to IDC, with growth in tablets and smartphones at a 46 percent rise which offset declines in PC sales.

Due to IDC's unique methods which puts tablets in the same class as PCs, which are never upgraded in a recession, this has meant that IDC can make some startling leaps of logic which mark the whole report.

For example, IDC can say that although tablet sales sizzled, they have not yet eclipsed sales of traditional PCs. Well, no, but neither have they eclipsed the sales of Jelly Babies.

IDC data showed a 3.4 percent drop in portable PC sales to 202 million and a 4.1 percent decline in desktop PC sales to 148.4 million.

These were dwarfed by the 722 million smartphones sold last year, IDC said. Of course they were also dwarfed by the sales of Smarties last year. If you think the comparison is not like for like, try to use Adobe CS 5.5 on a smartphone - after a few moments you will probably find that running it on a Smartie is more effective.

Smartphones and tablets are growing at a pace that PCs cannot keep up with, said enthused IDC analyst Ryan Reith. This is assuming that they are in the same race. It is more likely that PCs are in a race on a different track in another part of the country.

When IDC starts looking at the situation more reasonably, rather than just peddling this "tablets have replaced PCs" line, there are figures that are actually interesting. For example, the price of tablets has fallen by 15 per cent in the last year and is expected to go lower.

Smartphone prices averaged $US408 and are generally replaced more often than other devices.

In the overall market for connected devices, Samsung rose to the top position with at least 20 percent of the market in each category, and an overall market share of 20.8 per cent, overtaking last year's leader Apple.

Apple held 18.2 per cent of the market for 2012, up from 16.3 per cent in 2011. The maker of the iPhone and iPad saw 44 percent growth for the year but was unable to keep pace with Samsung, which more than doubled its sales.

Coming in at number three was Lenovo with a 6.5 percent market share in all devices, followed by HP with 4.8 percent and Dell at 3.2 percent. 

Aussie hacker busted for new Xbox leak gag

Posted: 22 Feb 2013 02:27 AM PST

An Aussie hacker found out that Microsoft has no sense of humour when he leaked details of Microsoft's new Xbox and listed a prototype on eBay as a gag.

Perth man SuperDaE, who describes himself as a freelance security analyst, got his paws on some internal Microsoft papers and a Durango development kit.

He leaked information about the Xbox on Twitter and was visited by a Microsoft employee who wanted the Durango back.

Microsoft really just wanted to know where all the gear was and did not seem to be in a hurry to get it back straight away, SuperDaE said.

However, Aussie police, the FBI and assorted goons showed up at his house with a search warrant and a battering ram.

They tore the place apart and took everything that was remotely electronic including SuperDaE's computers, mobiles and banking cards.

The coppers confirmed to the Sydney Morning Herald that the Technology Crime Investigation unit was conducting a multi-jurisdictional investigation into computer related offences.

SuperDaE said he fears what most Australians do - that the FBI is going to transport him to the US where he will face one of their legendary kangaroo courts and be sentenced to 1000 years in jail.

Ironically, Microsoft, the cops and the FBI did not get their hands on the Durango which SuperDaE had the foresight to hide. He said that will remain a guarded secret. We guess he needs some leverage. 

RIAA blames Google for failing business model

Posted: 22 Feb 2013 02:24 AM PST

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which generously gave the world  Justin Beiber, Celine Dion, V-Nasty, Chief Keef, The Cast Of Glee, The Lighthouse Family, Black Eyed Peas, Ke$ha, Miley Cyrus, Paris Hilton, Rebecca Black, and One Direction, claims Google is the reason why people are not buying music any more.

The RIAA claims that Google has failed in its attempt to lower the search results rankings of piracy websites and this is the reason why music sales have dropped.

In a report, the RIAA claimed that Google's current anti-piracy moves have had no demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy.

These sites appearing at the top of Google's search results surely is the reason why people turn to piracy instead of spending a fortune on overpriced singles by artists whose talent has to be measured using special quantum means.

Last August, Google indicated that it would start lowering the search result rankings of websites with high numbers of "valid" copyright removal notices.

The RIAA flooded Google with millions of copyright removal notices every month, but the RIAA believes those websites haven't suffered enough.

"The sites we analysed, all of which were serial infringers per Google's Copyright Transparency Report, were not demoted in any significant way in the search results," read the RIAA's report, "and still managed to appear on page 1 of the search results over 98 percent of the time in the searches conducted".

Legitimate websites such as Amazon only appeared in the top ten results for just over half of the RIAA's searches. "This means that a site for which Google has received thousands of copyright removal requests was almost eight times more likely to show up in a search result than an authorized music download site," the report said. "Whatever Google has done to its search algorithms to change the ranking of infringing sites, it doesn't appear to be working."

You can read the report here.

Things are getting better at HP

Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:16 AM PST

HP's latest results have caused the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street to gag on their grande non-fat vanilla latte with no foam.

While most of them expect the maker of expensive printer ink to flop around like a fish out of water for the next few years, it appears HP's latest bunch of figures were better than expected. Still rubbish, but a better standard of poo than Wall Street expected them to be standing in

CEO Meg Whitman launched a years-long turnaround and it seems to be paying off, even though the market for PCs is still drier than a speakeasy on Mercury and the figures look as anorexic as a Paris fashion show.

HP's fiscal first-quarter revenue shrank six percent to $28.4 billion in a flat to shrinking personal computing market, but it beat the $27.8 billion Wall Street analysts believed was possible.

Net income fell 16 percent to $1.23 billion from $1.47 billion a year earlier.

Forrester analyst Frank Gillett told Reuters that despite signs of progress, the business atmosphere is challenging for HP.

HP's data centre business could recover faster than its PC business, he predicted.

Revenue fell across all of HP's main business divisions with the networking department seeing sales rising four percent during the quarter.

Sales in the personal systems division, which includes PCs, slid eight percent to $8.2 billion, while printing revenue fell five percent to $5.92 billion.

The surprise results are coming at a cost. HP is laying off 29,000 employees over the next two years and has written off $10.8 billion, mostly related to the writedown of Autonomy.

So far 15,300 employees have left HP and more are expected to go in the future.

The outfit has lost over two thirds of its market value since 2010, and so far has failed to find it. Looking down the back of the sofa has yielded nothing.

Since Whitman took the helm in September 2011, the values of shares have fallen by 25 percent. You can now pick a second hand one in reasonable condition up on eBay for $17.10. 

Sony's PS4 vision raises privacy, DRM questions

Posted: 21 Feb 2013 09:01 AM PST

Sony's New York PlayStation 4 event simultaneously disappointed and intrigued. Many were hoping for more details on the next-gen machine, or at least a glimpse of it - what the world got instead was too vague for some and the footage from upcoming games did not entirely placate that. What there is to work with, though, is interesting - Sony's vision appears to be playing the long game, in building a completely connected ecosystem.

Under the bonnet, the PS4 will be running a setup not dissimilar to a speedy PC. AMD got the contract for the CPU and GPU, with an 8core 64-bit x86 Jaguar as the CPU, and a Radeon GPU with 18 compute units which Sony claims can handle an enormous 1.84TFLOPS in processing power. Additionally it will ship with 8GB of GGDR5 RAM which should manage 176GB/sec of bandwidth, as well as USB 3.0, Bluetooth 2.1, optical out, and a legacy analogue AV, Engadget reports. It is not known how much storage the devices will ship with. 

Aside from the great spec, what is particularly interesting is the direction in which Sony is keen to take gaming. Sony revealed enough,but not too much, to - we suspect - twist Microsoft's arm into an announcement in the near future.

Much bluster was made of the new DualShock controller's track pad, and its share button, a feature that lets users record video and upload it in real time for friends to see on social networks. Sony must be feeling confident. Even years-old games like past Battlefields and earlier Call of Duty titles still drop connections frequently on the Playstation 3. This cannot just be a software problem.

It is true that networking is improving, but Sony's vision for an always on connected device may not be immediate or noticeable for large sections of gamers at launch. To expect connections to carry the weight of 20 gig downloads while playing the game is asking a lot, especially in heavy-use households. Imagine multiple PS4s bringing this burden on a connection in a single household - while others put further demands on the network: seeding and uploading torrents, streaming HD content on Netflix, another stream on a tablet and the bandwidth begins to get pretty crowded. Introduce the fair-use bandwidth capping of some of the bigger ISPs in, and to expect a seamless experience by Christmas 2013 is a lofty goal. Sony was confident enough to make a two hour song and dance about the upcoming console - so it must know something we don't.

Much as cloud computing has been foisted upon the consumer, a connected PS4 ecosystem will, in the words of a Sony representative in this illuminating video on IGN, follow you as you go. Games will find new ways to connect with you outside of the living room,and this is being marketed to the public as something it wants. That may be the case, but we will have to wait and see the real world reaction. There is something slightly eerie about an always-on gaming network that you carry with you at all times, reminscent of the least season of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror. 

It looks like anonymity will be going out the window, too. In one obvious way, integration with Facebook (already possible on the PS3) and the Sony Entertainment Network appears more pervasive, from the snippets we have seen. Sony wants the real you playing on its servers. With the consumer pushback against Mark Zuckerberg's data harvesting operation, it will be interesting to see the reaction. What benefits does this have for Sony? Aside from keeping its customers as a captive audience across multiple devices, if Sony is as successful as it wants to be with broadening out the scope of its network, opportunities for gathering personal data and consumption habits will be easier than ever for the company to pick at. Unlike Facebook, users would be paying hundreds of dollars for the privilege.

The Playstation 4 raises more questions about Digital Rights Management. That is, piracy and privacy. Microsoft last year was revealed to have filed a patent on image recognition technologies that could place basic demographics of the viewer or viewers, opening up worrying possibilities for DRM that the company fully acknowledged in its patent.

The above IGN video makes reference to that, too - that your PS4 would know more about your living room than perhaps you'd be comfortable with. A developer says this will be useful in marketing items that are more relevant to a user's interests, based on past behaviour. But what creepy domino effect could this ultimately set into action? Eli Pariser's argument of an online "filter bubble" comes to mind. That the more cultivated and personalised our experiences are, while giving the illusion of being open, make us more closed off than ever before. Sony's vision so far is intriguing. For now, it is difficult to do much more than wait for more information, not to mention Microsoft's riposte.
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