65068681
submission
concertina226 writes:
A fake Android mobile app containing malware that can spy on users' actions has been circulating for the past week, claiming to be part of the official Occupy Central pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
The app seems harmless, but once a protester agrees to install it, it secretly unpacks malware.
As the user has already granted permission to the first app, a second secret app is able to read their SMS text messages, receive messages, record phone calls and even triangulate the user's exact location using the phone's GPS.
65066743
submission
concertina226 writes:
Due to overwhelming demand from Apple users, the developers behind time4popcorn.eu, the European fork of popular movie torrent streaming service Popcorn Time have announced the service is now available for iOS devices as long as they have been jailbroken.
Users can download the controversial software for free from Cydia, the jailbroken app store alternative to the iTunes App Store, but they must first have jailbroken their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch using a jailbreaking tool such as Pangu or evasi0n.
According to the developers, demand for Popcorn Time on Apple devices was so great, 8,000 iOS users a day were trying to download the Android version of the app on to their devices and make it work since the European option began, since there was no iOS version.
"We're on the road to becoming not only the ultimate watching experience but also the safest with the free built-in VPN we've worked so hard on to ensure our user's safety," time4popcorn.eu's developers told IBTimes UK.
"All of our traffic is encrypted because there are ISPs that are blocking or slowing down BitTorrent traffic for various reasons, for example, protecting their bandwidth. Encrypting the traffic helps us bypass these barricades and ensures a better watching experience for our users."
65042207
submission
concertina226 writes:
A group of Swiss scientists have succeeded in creating a device that can convert solar energy into hydrogen fuel at a much lower cost than ever before and which could help to harness solar power and solve the global energy crisis.
Researchers from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), a Swiss federal institute of technology, split water that had been exposed to sunlight into separate hydrogen and oxygen cells using a solar cell device made from perovskite and a low-cost catalyst made from nickel and iron.
In order to produce electrical energy from water, the process requires both a catalyst able to lower the activation energy barrier of splitting water so the reaction can occur and a solar cell — an electronic device converting the energy of light into electricity via the photovoltaic effect.
Solar cells are conventionally made from silicon but they are expensive to produce and require several cells to be used for each solar water splitting reaction, as silicon is not an extremely efficient absorber of light.
Although solar cells made from perovskite don't last for longer than a few hours, the cells were able to absorb 12.3% of the energy diffused by the sun and the researchers discovered using nickel and iron catalysts is key to improving the result from the reaction.
64895965
submission
concertina226 writes:
Scientists from Penn State University have discovered how to produce and string nanodiamonds together to form ultra-thin diamond nanothreads that could bring the long-held dream of space elevators to life, following almost a century of failed attempts by the international scientific community.
The researchers have succeeded in creating diamond nanothreads with extraordinary properties of strength and stiffness that are far stronger than today's nanotubes and polymers, using a specialised, large-volume, high-pressure device to compress benzene up to 200,000 atmospheres.
The high pressures caused the benzene to spontaneously polymerise into long, thin strands made up of hexagonal rings of carbon atoms in chains, rather than the usual three-dimensional lattice structure of a diamond.
64872911
submission
concertina226 writes:
Engineering students from the University of Toronto have developed a 3D bioprinter that can rapidly create artificial skin grafts from a patient's cells to help treat burn victims.
In severe burn injuries, both the epidermis (outer layer of the skin) and the dermis (inner layer) are severely damaged, and it usually takes at least two weeks for skin cells to be grown in a laboratory to be grafted onto a patient.
As both layers of skin are made from completely different cells that have different structures, it is very difficult for the body to regenerate itself and burn victims can die if their wounds cannot be closed quickly enough.
So instead of trying to replicate a real human skin graft, the PrintAlive Bioprinter creates a type of "living bandage" from hydrogel.
64567907
submission
concertina226 writes:
Scientists from three international universities have succeeded in twisting radio beams in order to transfer data at the speed of 32 gigabits per second, which is 30 times faster than 4G LTE wireless technology in use today.
The researchers, led by Alan Willner, an electrical engineering professor with the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, successfully demonstrated data transmission rates of 32 gigabits per second across 2.5m of free space in a basement laboratory.
Millimetre waves occupy the 30GHz to 300GHz frequency bands. They are found in the spectrum between microwaves, which take up the 1GHz to 30GHz bands, and infrared waves, which are sometimes known as extremely high frequency (EHF).
64567217
submission
concertina226 writes:
Scientists from three international universities have succeeded in twisting radio beams in order to transfer data at the speed of 32 gigabits per second, which is 30 times faster than 4G LTE wireless technology in use today.
The researchers, led by Alan Willner, an electrical engineering professor with the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, successfully demonstrated data transmission rates of 32 gigabits per second across 2.5m of free space in a basement laboratory.
Millimetre waves occupy the 30GHz to 300GHz frequency bands. They are found in the spectrum between microwaves, which take up the 1GHz to 30GHz bands, and infrared waves, which are sometimes known as extremely high frequency (EHF).
64560637
submission
concertina226 writes:
The Strati, a project by Arizona-based Local Motors, was constructed in a record 44 hours at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago last week, where visitors could watch the car being printed and assembled live out of just 40 parts.
The car is based on a design by Michelle Anoe of Turin, Italy, who won an online competition to design how the Local Motors prototype vehicle would look out of over 200 entries in June.
64492139
submission
concertina226 writes:
Harvard scientists have invented a new artificial spleen that is able to clear toxins, fungi and deadly pathogens such as Ebola from human blood, which could potentially save millions of lives.
When antibiotics are used to kill them, dying viruses release toxins in the blood that begin to multiply quickly, causing sepsis, a life-threatening condition whereby the immune system overreacts, causing blood clotting, organ damage and inflammation.
To overcome this, researchers have invented a "biospleen", a device similar to a dialysis machine that makes use of magnetic nanobeads measuring 128 nanometres in diameter (one-five hundredths the width of a single human hair) coated with mannose-binding lectin (MBL), a type of genetically engineered human blood protein.
64121239
submission
concertina226 writes:
The celebrity nude photo hacking scandal could have been caused by hackers using a sophisticated piece of software designed for government intelligence agencies, together with an open-source password-cracking program.
Anon-IB is a popular anonymous internet image board that many hackers use to post stolen nude selfies and members have been advising each other how to use a programme called Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker (EPPB).
EPPB is a tool created by ElcomSoft, a security forensics firm based in Moscow and it comes in three editions – home, professional and forensic.
"All that's needed to access online backups stored in the cloud service are the original user's credentials including Apple ID or Live ID accompanied with the corresponding password," Elcomsoft writes on the EPPB product page.
"Data can be accessed without the consent or knowledge of the device owner, making Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker an ideal solution for law enforcement and intelligence organisations."
64000581
submission
concertina226 writes:
A leading child leukaemia and cancer evolution expert is controversially calling for scientists worldwide to stop trying to cure cancer and instead focus on prevention.
Professor Mel Greaves, the director of the Centre for Evolution and Cancer at The Institute of Cancer Research, said most cancers cannot be cured, so scientists should give up trying.
"With a lot of respect to oncologists, we need to get smarter. Very intelligent people who aren't scientifically minded think there must be a cause, there must be a cure and it's just not right. It's fundamentally wrong," Greaves said.
63991255
submission
concertina226 writes:
Surgeons at Xijing Hospital in Xi'an, Shaanxi province in Northwest China are using 3D-printing in a pioneering surgery to help rebuild the skull of a man who suffered brain damage in a construction accident.
Numerous international experts were called in to consult on the case as the surgery to repair Hu's skull is particularly risky and complicated.
The patient's scalp and meninges (protective membranes covering the brain) melded together after the accident and had to be carefully peeled apart before the titanium mesh can be implanted.
63952529
submission
concertina226 writes:
Yesterday in Littleton, Colorado, professional Counter-Strike gamer Jordan Mathewson (known by the username "Kootra" online) was live-streaming a game on Twitch when an fully-armed SWAT team burst into the office building he was in and arrested him.
Mathewson is the founder and a member of The Creatures Twitch channel, an online business which is headquartered in an office complex in Littleton.
The channel is currently offline, and in a YouTube video posted by a viewer who was watching the stream at the time of the raid, Mathewson can be seen being searched and then handcuffed to a chair.
63901817
submission
concertina226 writes:
In TV shows such as Prison Break, and movies throughout history, people have escaped prisons by making a mould of the necessary key by pressing it into a bar of soap, and then filling the mould with plastic from a melted toothbrush or some other fanciful, though non-believable, material.
But what if you could actually make a skeleton key out of plastic?
Jos Weyers and Christian Holler, competitive lock-pickers and security consultants, have found a way to use the traditional lock-picking technique of "bumping", where key blanks are "bumped" into the lock by tapping the end of the key with a hammer.
Even without the original key, the lockpickers have found a way to create a 3D model of a high-security key and print it onto a plastic key that works multiple times.
63721513
submission
concertina226 writes:
Doctors from the Peking University Third Hospital (PUTH) in Beijing, China, have become the first in the world to use 3D-printing in complex spinal cord surgery, after replacing a section of cancerous vertebra in a boy's neck with a piece created on a 3D printer.
The procedure to remove this form of cancer is so complex that only five hospitals in China are equipped to perform the surgery. The tumour affects the top of the spinal cord in the neck, but also the internal and external carotid arteries, and the patient's windpipe.
