A new MacGyver-esque mobile phone hack could bring cheap, on-the-spot disease detection to even the most remote villages on the planet. Using only an LED, plastic light filter and some wires, scientists at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute have modded a mobile phone into a portable blood tester capable of monitoring HIV, malaria, leukemia and detecting diseases. Blood tests today require either refrigerator-sized machines that cost tens of thousands of dollars or a trained technician who manually identifies and counts cells under a microscope. These systems are slow, expensive and require dedicated labs to function. And soon they could be a thing of the past
A new working model of the mysterious 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator, dubbed the Antikythera Device, has been unveiled, incorporating the most recent discoveries announced two years ago by an international team of researchers
A Winnipeg business owner is on the hook for a $52,000 phone bill after his voice-mail system was hacked and hundreds of calls were made to Bulgaria. Alan Davison, who owns HUB Computer Solutions, noticed something was wrong when feature 36
— a message unknown to him — kept popping up on his phone
Toshiba said Thursday that it will show off a new line up of NAND-flash-based solid state drives with the industry’s first 2.5-inch 512GB SSD. The drive is based on a 43 nanometer Multi-Level Cell NAND and claims to offer a high level of performance and endurance for use in notebooks as well as gaming and home entertainment systems
In a detailed open letter to Senator Conroy, the System Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) said today that it couldn’t support the proposed net filtering scheme on technical grounds
Microsoft has released a critical security patch to plug vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, a move that comes amid malicious attackers taking advantage of the security flaws
Researchers at Rice University have demonstrated a new data storage medium made out of a layer of graphite only 10 atoms thick. The technology could potentially provide many times the capacity of current flash memory and withstand temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius and radiation that would make solid-state disk memory disintegrate
Today, Yahoo upped the ante when it comes to protecting search engine users’ privacy, announcing a new data retention policy providing for anonymisation of search queries — as well as page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks — after 90 days. This announcement comes on the heels of Google’s announcement in September that it would be anonymising its logs after 9 months
Yahoo has began weaving social-networking features into its popular free email service as it vies to be the preferred launching point for internet surfers. Yahoo says it is providing tools that let people use its email service to build interactive communities based on friends and interests
Scientists have discovered what they say is a completely unexpected new giant dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago in Argentina. At 5 to 6.5 metres long, depending on its tail size, Austroraptor cabazai is among the largest of the slender, carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs called raptors, said Fernando Novas, the lead researcher behind the discovery
Australia’s biggest online entertainment retailer, EzyDVD, has been put into receivership. Receiver Ferrier Hodgson says the Adelaide-based company has 70 full-time staff in South Australia and about 150 casual employees nationally
Artificial injectable bone that flows like toothpaste, and hardens in the body, has been invented by British scientists. This new regenerative medicine technology provides a scaffold for the formation of blood vessels and bone tissue, and can also deliver stem cells directly to the site of bone repair
The Times of London reported on Sunday that Amazon is making its staff work seven days a week and threatening them with the sack if they take time off sick
. Seattle-based Amazon disputes the report as inaccurate. A Sunday Times reporter took a temporary seasonal job with Amazon and worked there for seven days as a packer, the Times report said
A security flaw in all versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer leaves users wide open for attack, with millions of computers already infected. Microsoft did not say when a patch might be available. Simply opening a Web page in IE can infect an unprotected computer. Proper security protection, not a browser switch, is the best defence
Dell is moving to replace traditional styrofoam packaging with old milk and laundry detergent bottles in a bid to reduce its carbon footprint and shave $US8 million from packaging expenses. The computer manufacturer has set itself a goal of eliminating 10 per cent, or 9 million kilograms, of its global laptop and computer packaging material over the next four years. Dell will replace the styrofoam packaging it uses to ship all its laptops and desktop computers with 100 per cent recycled High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) thermal-formed cushions
Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but Australian scientists are using it to diagnose dementia, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, found that patients under the age of 65 suffering from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common form of dementia, cannot detect when someone is being sarcastic
MIT today announced that a group of scientists has developed nanotechnology that can be placed inside living cells to determine whether chemotherapy drugs are reaching their targets or attacking healthy cells. The sensors, which can detect chemotherapy drugs as well as toxins and free radicals, are carbon nanotubes that scientists have wrapped in DNA so they can be safely injected into living tissue, according to a release from the university
The investment community delivered a savage vote of no confidence in the management of Telstra yesterday after the telco was dramatically kicked out of the tender for the federal Government’s $15 billion national broadband network. The move, which casts doubt over Telstra’s future earnings and profit margins, came as tensions emerged between the company’s board and management, as almost $6 billion was wiped off the company’s market value yesterday
Back in the 60’s, archive space at the BBC was hard to come by, forcing the broadcaster to delete some of its own material. Now, a TV show that fell victim to this regime has been resurrected, with the BBC using a pirate recording of the show’s audio to bring it back to life
The blocking mechanism used to censor Wikipedia in the UK has been described as fragile
and easy to evade
by Cambridge University security expert Richard Clayton
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