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Submission + - Progress reported in creating "homo minutus" -- a benchtop human to test drugs (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado
Science_afficionado writes: Vanderbilt University scientists reported significant progress toward creating "homo minutus" — a benchtop human — at the Society of Toxicology meeting on Mar. 26 in Phoenix. The advance is the successful development and analysis of a human liver construct//organ-on-a-chip that responds to exposure to a toxic chemical much like a real liver. The achievement is the first result from a five-year, $19 million multi-institutional effort led by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), to develop four interconnected human organ constructs — liver, heart, lung and kidney — that are based on a highly miniaturized platform nicknamed ATHENA (Advanced Tissue-engineered Human Ectypal Network Analyzer). The project is supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Similar programs to create smaller-scale organs-on-chips are underway at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institutes of Health.

Submission + - Ubuntu Users Gain Back Privacy On Desktop (benjaminkerensa.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu Users won a little bit of their privacy back on the desktop as Canonical has decided to move online searches out of being the default behavior on the desktop amid three years of criticism from their community.

Submission + - NSA Infiltrated RSA Deeper Than Imagined 1

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Reuters is reporting that the U.S. National Security Agency managed to have security firm RSA adopt not just one, but two security tools, further facilitating NSA eavesdropping on Internet communications

The newly discovered software is dubbed 'Extended Random', and is intended to facilitate the use of the already known 'Dual Elliptic Curve' encryption software's back door. Researchers from several U.S. universities discovered Extended Random and assert it could help crack Dual Elliptic Curve encrypted communications 'tens of thousands of times faster'.

Submission + - Oyster Wears Glass Armor (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The windowpane oyster sports a shell so transparent and durable that some Indian and Philippine cities use the coverings as an affordable alternative to window glass. Yet windowpane oyster shells are made up of 99% calcite, a usually brittle material, with a small amount of organic material. A team of researchers wondered how the shellfish’s fingernail-thick armor could survive multiple blows while remaining transparent, a feat unmatched by humanmade materials. When forcefully jabbed with a diamond, the windowpane oyster shell resists shattering by dispersing 10 times more impact energy than raw calcite, the team reports . Peeking at the shell’s crystal structure using an electron microscope, the researchers discovered the oyster’s secret. When stressed, the shell’s crystal structure twists symmetrically, causing an atomic reorganization that forms a boundary quarantining any fractures that might form. This process, called deformation twinning, dissipates energy horizontally and allows the shell to survive multiple hits. The researchers say their work provides a natural template for developing sturdy, transparent materials for windshields and even see-through military armor.

Submission + - Festo BionicKangaroo gets a jump on Hannover Messe (design-engineering.com)

Submitted by yyzmcleod
yyzmcleod writes: German automation firm, Festo, announced that the company will be debuting another of its nature-inspired robots — the BionicKangaroo-- at the Hannover Messe industrial trade show in April. The 3D-printed, meter-tall robot can jump up to 80cm and is controlled via a armband remote that senses the operator's arm gestures.

Submission + - New Scheme Makes it Impossible to Hack Individual Passwords (github.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering have devised a new scheme called PolyPassHash for storing password hash data so that passwords cannot be individually cracked by an attacker. Instead of a password hash being stored directly in the database, the information is used to encode a share in a Shamir Secret Store. Without recovering a threshold of shares, the attacker cannot crack passwords. The solution is fast, easy to implement (with C and Python implementations available), requires no changes to clients, and makes a huge difference in practice. For example, three random 6 character passwords that are stored using standard salted secure hash can be cracked by a laptop in an hour. With a PolyPassHash store, it would take every computer on the planet longer to crack these passwords than the universe is estimated to exist.

Submission + - Microsoft Launches Office For iPad: Includes Word, Excel, And PowerPoint

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At an event in San Francisco today, Microsoft Office General Manager Julia White unveiled Office for iPad, featuring Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The new suite, which supports viewing but not editing for free, will go live in Apple's App Store at 11:00AM PDT (2:00PM EST). Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for iPad feature a ribbon interface just like the one featured in Office for Windows and OS X. The trio of apps are much more powerful on the tablet than the smartphone, but naturally aren't comparable to the desktop versions.

Submission + - Wisdom of Crows Demonstrates Wisdom of Aesop 1

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Using New Caledonian crows captured from the wild, scientists have demonstrated the corvids' ability to master the task of retrieving food by displacing water, inspired by the classic Aesop fable of the "Crow and the Pitcher". Per the researchers: 'In their understanding of physics — how objects displace water — the crows were comparable to 5-to-7-year-old children ...' Reuters provides an approachable summation of the news, here.

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