Anti-Wrinkle Cream Might Be the Key to Treating Parkinson's Disease

A new study suggests that kinetin, a chemical frequently used in anti-aging creams, could be used to develop a treatment for Parkinson's Disease. Forget regenerating your youthful skin—this chemical could be used to reverse the cell-death that causes, the deadly disorder which afflicts more than a half-million people in the United States.

According to the study published Cell, researchers used kinetin to boost the activity of an enzyme called PINK1. This enzyme has been linked to brain cell death in patients with early-onset Parkinson's, and specifically, with the disorder's hallmark symptoms.

To simplify things a bit, overwhelming evidence shows that Parkinson's is at least partially caused by a mutation in PINK1, which causes the enzyme to malfunction. This malfunction, in turn, affects the cell's mitochondria, organelles which turn the energy you eat into the energy that powers your cells. From there everything goes to hell, according to UCSF, which had a scientist on the study:

In Parkinson’s disease, poorly performing mitochondria have been associated with the death of dopamine-producing nerve cells in a region of the brain called the substantia nigra, which plays a major role in control of movement. Loss of these cells is a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease and the cause of prominent symptoms including rigidity and tremor.

The study was the first to show that kinetin could be used to boost PINK1 activity to near-normal levels. To keep an EXTREMELY long explanation short, kinetin (In a slightly different form) can be used as replacement for one of the chemicals PINK1 usually works with. If you go back to your high-school biology, you'll remember that enzymes are molecules, which serve as catalysts for chemical reactions inside cells. kinetin can speed up the process, so that a cell with mutated enzymes can actually work at normal levels. (We can go into more detail in the Kinja below, if you like. I'd love to hear from some biologists!)

That's all that's all a mouthful, but what's important is that scientists have figured out how to make one of the enzymes that breaks and causes Parkinson's Disease work like it should. This is isn't a treatment yet, but it certainly is an encouraging first step firmly planted on solid science. More here.

A Tiny Flexible Tripod For Perching Your Smartphone Anywhere

No one makes a more flexible, more adaptable, more articulated camera tripod than Joby with its Gorillapod line. But the latest addition, the incredibly compact MPod Mini, is actually specifically designed to hold your smartphone for hands-free skyping, movie watching, reading, or other prolonged activities.

The MPod Mini's stubbier legs means you can't quite wrap them around everything, but it still shines on uneven surfaces where it lets you position your device perfectly level at the optimal viewing angle. And what's particularly great about the MPod Mini is the rubber jaws and flexible elastic strap it uses to hold almost any phone securely in place. It's also just $15, which is loads cheaper than hiring a small child to hold your phone for hours on end.  More here.

A Beautiful Analog Clock for Dummies Who Are Bad at Telling Time

I have a confession to make, and I'm sure I'm not alone: I'm really bad at reading analog clocks. I learned how to when I was a kid, but some 15 years of digital crutches in between has made reading old-school clocks kind of a drag. You too? Well here's a clock for the both of us.

Created by industrial designer Sabrina Fossi, the "FreakishCLOCK" conveniently has but one hand. And while that traditional red stick traces progress through any given hour, a slotted cover turns behind it, blocking everything but the current hour. Who can't handle one hand and one number, right? Yeah, maybe you can't read the exact minutes but who cares. Quarter-hours are close enough.

Aside from the comparative ease of use—which you may or may not need—the FreakishCLOCK is also prettily simple. It's almost like one of those fancy minimalist clocks with no numbers on it, except it lends a helping hand. The clock is available for about $100on Fossi's website and comes in six different flavors. More here.

Your Smartphone Can Now Be Your Eye Doctor

It was only a matter of time before smartphones made the transition from communication device to full blown Star Trek tricorder. And with the development of Peek (an acronym for Portable Eye Examination Kit), that transition is nearly complete.

Peek is a project spearheaded by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in partnership with several other medical organizations that hopes to bring better medical care to the third world. It's currently being tested on 5,o00 people in Kenya who might not otherwise have access to an eye doctor, and it's damn close to providing all of the same service. The app uses the smartphone's camera to scan the eye for cataracts and activates the camera flash to scan the back of the eye for disease. It also employs a shrinking letter on the screen to conduct eye exams in the field. Examiners keep track of the patients by storing their records on the phone, where the GPS chip also logs their location.

The product is still in the trial stages, but things look promising. The research team says that results of an on-going study on the efficacy of Peek's eye test have been encouraging, and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness calls the app "a huge game changer." You can try it yourself by contacting the Peek team directly. Or if you're really interested you could probably join the small army they hope to deploy around the developing world.

The smartphone-driven medicine doesn't stop with the eyes, though. In recent years, we've seen apps come out that can do everything from scan your body for skin cancer to monitor your heart rate to check your ears for infections. Don't get carried away. Even though your phone now does a lot of things that your doctor does, your phone is not your doctor. But in many parts of the world, it's the next-best thing. More here.

This Could Be a Yellow iPhone 5c Next to an iPhone 5

The video is further pushing the rumors that the next-gen iPhone might come in all colors of the rainbow, showing a yellow back. Compared with earlier iPhones, the housing of the new device is a little bit taller and very slightly thicker. It looks to have the same lightning connector, but for the most part it has a similar design to the iPhone 5. More here.

An Amazingly Simple Way To Test If a Battery Is Dead

It turns out that when the alkaline in a battery wears down, it produces a gas that fills the inside. So if you've got a box of random batteries you want to test, and don't have access to a voltmeter or any other device, you can simply drop them vertically a short distance onto a hard surface. A charged battery will make a solid thump sound and often remain standing, while a dead battery makes a muffled sound, bounces repeatedly, and then topples over.

What could be easier? (That doesn't involve your tongue or mild electric shocks.)

These 3D-Printed Titanium Watches Will Probably Outlive You

Titanium is one of those rare wonder materials that sounds like it could only exist in the movies as a fanciful plot device. It's real, though, and stronger and lighter than steel, which makes it a little tricky to work with. That is, unless you grind it into a powder and recombobulate it into any shape you want with a 3D laser printer—like the folks at rvnDSGN did for this lovely collection of titanium wristpieces.

Using a 3D printing process called laser sintering where the layers of titanium dust are burned into place and built up into a detailed shape over time, the tick marks indicating the minutes and seconds on these pieces are built into the actual case. Elsewhere you'll find a Swiss ETA 980.106 movement keeping time behind the scenes, a similarly durable sapphire crystal lens, and a one piece leather strap keeping it tethered to your wrist.

Not surprisingly, the watches will set you back just shy of $600, but if titanium is really as strong and durable as it's claimed to be, this might be passed down in your family for years to come. More here.

There are almost as many external battery pack options for your smartphone as there are cases, and given the multitude of options there are probably two important factors to seriously consider: capacity and design. And a leading contender for both these considerations is the new Jackery Air. The battery measures in at just slightly thicker than the iPhone 5, but its contoured housing and similary-sized dimensions means it can slip in your pocket as easily as your phone. And while the Jackery Air's 5600mAh isn't the largest you can buy, it's certainly capacious enough given the back battery's slim form factor. Charging it from dead takes about six hours, but it promises to then boost the battery life of your iPhone or smartphone up to 200 percent and it can be used with larger devices like iPads and other tablets. It's on sale now for $80 for a limited time, making it a pretty reasonable way to never have to deal with a low battery warning ever again.

There are almost as many external battery pack options for your smartphone as there are cases, and given the multitude of options there are probably two important factors to seriously consider: capacity and design. And a leading contender for both these considerations is the new Jackery Air.

The battery measures in at just slightly thicker than the iPhone 5, but its contoured housing and similary-sized dimensions means it can slip in your pocket as easily as your phone. And while the Jackery Air's 5600mAh isn't the largest you can buy, it's certainly capacious enough given the back battery's slim form factor.

Charging it from dead takes about six hours, but it promises to then boost the battery life of your iPhone or smartphone up to 200 percent and it can be used with larger devices like iPads and other tablets. It's on sale now for $80 for a limited time, making it a pretty reasonable way to never have to deal with a low battery warning ever again. More here.

Optically Levitated, Glowing Diamond Particles

See that tiny green pinprick of light? That's a speck of diamond dust trapped in the grip of a laser beam. And with its help, researchers hope to better understand the border-world between macro and quantum physics.

The team, led by University of Rochester assistant professor of optics, Nick Vamivakas, has submitted a paper for publication to the journal Optics Letters describing how they were able to successfully capture, levitate, and hold diamond nanoparticles as small as 100 nm indefinitely as well as incite the crystals to emit photons at varying wavelengths.

Researchers used laser trapping techniques wherein a highly concentrated laser beam exerts an attractive or repulsive force against a dielectric nanoparticle. And while science has been using so-called optical tweezers for some time, this is the first experiment to successfully pick up diamonds. And according to the U of Rochester press release:

The light emitted by the nanodiamonds is due to photoluminescence. The defects inside the nanodiamonds absorb photons from the second laser – not the one that is trapping the diamonds – which excites the system and changes the spin. The system then relaxes and other photons are emitted. This process is also known as optical pumping.

Getting the diamonds into position was no easy feat. The team had to spray an aerosolized nanodiamond dust solution into a 10-inch cubic box housing the lasers. Some of the nanodiamonds are attracted to the beam and will eventually become trapped though as graduate student Levi Neukirch explains: "it takes a couple of squirts and in a few minutes we have a trapped nanodiamond; other times I can be here for half an hour before any diamond gets caught. Once a diamond wanders into the trap we can hold it for hours."

Building upon this success, Vamivakas' team hopes to apply the technology towards nano sensory equipment that may help science explain some of physic's most fundamental conundrums. More here.

Kim Dotcom Is Creating a 'Cutting Edge' Encrypted Email Service

According to RT, the man behind Mega plans to start running a "highly-secure email service to run on a non-US-based server." In a blog post, Mega’s Chief Executive Vikram Kumar explained the thinking behind the new initiative:

“These [recent closures] are acts of ‘Privacy Seppuku’ – honorably and publicly shutting down (“suicide”) rather than being forced to comply with laws and courts intent on violating people’s privacy.”

So, apparently Mega is working on an email system with an "exceptional level of encryption," a project which is “exciting” but “very hard.” He explains:

“The biggest tech hurdle is providing email functionality that people expect, such as searching emails, that are trivial to provide if emails are stored in plain text (or available in plain text) on the server side. If all the server can see is encrypted text, as is the case with true end-to-end encryption, then all the functionality has to be built client side... On this and other fronts, Mega is doing some hugely cutting-edge stuff. There is probably no one in the world who takes the Mega approach of making true crypto work for the masses, our core proposition."

For his part, Dotcom insists that Mega never holds any decryption keys so customer email can never be read, even if someone wants it to be. Looks like secure email might not be dead just yet. More here.

45 Seconds Is All This Kettle Needs To Boil Water

When the craving for Ramen noodles hits, no one wants to have to wait for minutes on end before they can enjoy a bowl of salty goodness. So Tiger, maker of some of the most advanced rice cookers on the planet, has used its expertise in heating things up to create a steam-free kettle that can boil a cup of water in just 45 seconds. That's even faster than a microwave.

The secret to the kettle's high-speed boiling capabilities is a re-designed heating element inside, as well as a steamless design that traps water vapor before it can escape, condensing it back into droplets of hot water to further the heating process. And since the kettle produces piping hot water in less than a minute, it also means it's more energy efficient than other models using about 22 percent less power to boil a cup of water.

The only downside? A $130 price tag when the kettle's available starting in December. Like with most things in life, if you want it fast you'll have to pay a premium, but in this instance it may be worth it for a pot that actually does boil when you watch it. More here.

Brain Teaser Table Is More Complicated Than Ikea, But Also More Fun

Do you like a challenge when it comes to assembling flat-pack furniture? And we're not talking about deciphering the illustrations and hieroglyphs in an Ikea manual. We mean real Mensa-level stuff. If blank crossword puzzles and unsolved Sudoku grids get you really excited, you'll love the incredibly complicated furniture from Bulgaria's Praktrik.

One of its most challenging pieces is this coffee table/stool simply called the 4x6. Inspired by what's known as a Burr Puzzle, it comes as a collection of 24 pieces that requires a very specific methodology to assemble. Do it wrong, and you'll be spending hours on end trying to figure it out. But that's all part of the fun, right? More here.

This Stunning Spiral Galaxy Is Out There Right Now

M74 is an Sc galaxy, meaning that it has "loosely wound spiral arms, clearly resolved into individual stellar clusters and nebulae." This image was created with data recorded in 2003 and 2005 by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, and depicts the galaxy in all its 30,000 light-years-across glory. A major component of the data is hydrogen emissions, which create the patches of red glow. It's kind of hard to contextualize or grasp, but M74 is really out in the universe right now, just chillin'. More here.

The Pirate Bay Celebrates 10 Years With a New Blockade-Busting Browser

File sharing site The Pirate Bay set sail ten years ago. While the site and its founders have had plenty of legal trouble along the way, like Keith Richards, they refuse to abandon ship. They're marking a decade of file plundering with a typically typo-laden decree and a new way to circumnavigate torrent blockades.

On their blog, TPB marked the occasion by reassuring fans that they aren't going anywhere:

Oh look, we made it.

A decade of agression, repression and lulz.

We really didn't think we'd make it this far. Not because of cops, mafiaa or corrupt politicians. But because we thought that we'd eventually be to old for this shit. But hey, running this ship makes us feel young.

And we're gonna stay young til we die.

They also unveiled a new browser (well, a souped-up version of Firefox for Windows) that promises to bust any torrent-blocking shenanigans your ISP might attempt. While PirateBrowser utilizes some Tor functions, it doesn't make browsing anonymous the way Tor does. Still, if you were looking for a fitting way to celebrate ten years of information freedom, opening up PirateBrowser and torrenting a few files would seem appropriate. More here.

This Is What an Undersea Data Cable Actually Looks Like

When they're not being tapped by the NSA or severed by criminals, undersea cables have to cope with some pretty traumatic conditions. High pressure salt water isn't the friend of any communication link, and that's before you even think about geological shifts and other undersea activity.

So the deep-sea lines that let you watch cat videos from the other side of the world are heavily reinforced to ensure that internet outages are the exception rather than the rule. Essentially that means a lot of steel reinforcing, a whole heap of polymer shrouding, and a dash of copper shielding. Get through all of that and lurking there, just in the middle, are a few precious glass fibers that carry your data.

It might seem like overkill, but it really is worth it: When one was damaged in Myanmar earlier this year, the country's bandwidth instantly plummeted. More here.

Scientists Have Created a Malaria Vaccine That's 100% Effective

For the first time in history, scientists have completed successful human trials of a malaria vaccine that provides 100% protection against the often fatal disease.

Currently, we have no truly effective method of protecting against malaria. Even the World Health Organization had only set their sights on a vaccine with an 80% efficacy rate—and they weren't planning to have that until 2025. Because before today, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, "we have not even gotten anywhere near that level of efficacy." But this newest incarnation has surpassed everything we thought possible.

Called PfSPZ, the vaccine is made from weakened sporozoites (SPZ), the form of the malarial parasitePlasmodium falciparum (Pf) when it's in its initial infectious state. Even though the parasite is weakened, it's in its whole form, thus invoking an immune response. The six human subjects that were given five intravenous doses of PfSPZ were 100% protected when they were later bitten by infectious mosquitoes—five of the six unvaccinated control participants and three of the nine people only given four doses went on to develop malaria.

Previously, most of the malaria vaccines being experimented with only used a few of the parasite's proteins. Stephen Hoffman, head of the Maryland developing firm Sanaria, decided to test a vaccine using the whole sporozoite after researching past experiments going back to the 1970s in which strong, long-lived protection from malaria resulted from volunteers being exposed to thousands of bites from irradiated infected mosquitoes. Stefan Kappe, a malaria researcher at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute in Washington, tells Nature:

The trial results constitute the most important advance in malaria vaccine development since the first demonstration of protection with radiation attenuated sporozoite immunization by mosquito bite in the 70s. This is a pivotal success.

But part of the reason it's taken so long to get to this point is that the process of actually making the vaccine is incredibly difficult and complex. First Sanaria had to raise mosquitoes in sterile conditions "on an industrial scale." He would feed them blood that had been infected with the malaria parasite and then exposed to radiation to so that the parasite would weaken. That way, the body would recognize its presence without being infected with the actual disease.

Next, billions of these parasites were harvested from the mosquitoes' salivary glands, purified, and cryopreserved. And while all this was happening, most researchers in the field were expecting him to fail. They didn't think it would be possible to mass-produce this parasite in a way that passed the highly strict quality and safety standards that human medicine must undergo. And now, as Fauci mentioned to Nature,"To my amazement, Hoffman did it."

Now, the trial is going to need to be repeated and over a much wider range of participants in the regions where malaria is most rampant. This way, scientists will be able to determine if it's actually effective against strains different from that used in the vaccine, as well as how its effects might vary according to age, gender, etc. From what we've seen so far, though, we have every reason to hope that we may be on our way to making malaria a thing of the past. More here.

The Kindle Fire HD Is Cheaper Than It's Ever Been

In case you haven't noticed yet, Amazon's been hitting its Kindle Fire HD 7-inch with sale after sale, and right now, you can pick one up for the lowest price ever in its relatively short history—a cool $160 compared to the usual $200.

The sale's being offered for a limited time only, so if you've been making plans to get one for yourself, now's the time. Especially since all these sales would seem to hint at a good ol' fashioned inventory exodus. Amazon's inevitably going to unveil a new line of Kindles in a few months, so it's going to need to clear out the last of the Kindle Fire HDs one way or another.

Of course, you could always wait and hope that they're going to go even lower, but with how cheap these things are now, if you're serious, might not want to risk it. More here.

Groundbreaking New Particle Could Make Hard Drives 20 Times Smaller

There are many reasons why we still have size limitations on technology, but when it comes to data storage, one thing really stands out. You can only squeeze particles so close together before they start bumping into each other and screwing up the data. That's all about to change.

Scientists have finally created a long-theorized particle called the skyrmion. The best way to imagine a skyrmion is to think of a magnetic field that resembles a twisted vortex of atoms. In a normal particle, the charges of the atoms all line up in the same direction, but in a skyrmion, they're arranged in these little twister shapes that also happen to be quite stable. You can move them around and shake them up, but they won't come untwisted.

This is where they come in handy for data storage. Information is burned onto a hard disk by turning the magnetic north poles of normal clusters of atoms up or down to denote a "one" or a "zero," a digital bit. But if you push these particles too closely together, the magnetic fields begin to interfere with each other and scramble the data. This doesn't happen with skyrmions. Because of that unique vortex shape, you can squeeze the particles super close together, and the magnetic state of each bit will remain stable.

The really exciting news is that scientists think that they can make devices like optical hard drives up to 20 percent smaller using this technique. The bad news is that we're a ways away from making such devices. The idea of skyrmions has been around since the 1960s, but only in this latest study have scientists proven that they were able to actually use them to write data. Even then, they were only able to do it about 60 percent of the time.

But you know what? We used to burn data onto CDs that used to skip, like, 80 percent of the time, and look at us now. You probably can't even remember the last time you heard something skip. More here.

Facebook Is Getting Trending Topics

Want some Twitter in your Facebook? No? Too bad. According to a report by All Things D, Facebook is getting trending topics and they're rolling out today. Oh, and yes, they are literally going to be called "Trending Topics."

The new feature will take the form of a banner on the mobile site that displays across the top of a user's newsfeed, displaying information that the unwashed Facebook-masses are keen to chat about, whether or not they are friends of the user. If they click it, they'll see how their own personal friends are reacting to the trend, but they'll see content from a bunch of total strangers too.  More here.

Latest Trailer for Jobs Is Eminently Watchable

Why read the Steve Jobs biography when you can just watch Ashton Kutcher play the part in the new trailer for Jobs?

From that memorable moment when the founder himself switches on the very first Apple I to that sort of creepy bit towards the end when he's bearded and grey, you pretty much get the man's whole life story in 90 seconds. And 90 completely captivating seconds, they are.

The First 3D Printed Rifle Now Fires Multiple Rounds Without Breaking

The Canadian sucessor to the Liberator's attempt at bringing plastic firearms to the masses has apparently just gotten one step closer to his goal. After firing one semi-successful, barrel-cracking shot from his newly designed 3D-printed rifle, the Grizzly, a YouTube user going only by "Matthew" was able to fire a full 14 shots before the gun gave way. More here.

Refoldable Cardboard Furniture Makes It Cheap And Easy To Mosey On

When you're moving and you have a lot of IKEA furniture, you know what you should do. You should take it apart, transport it and then put it back together on the other end. You know this. You consider this. And then you create a last minute flash sale on Craig's List, get whatever money you can from all that MALM, and re-buy down the line. Chairigami is trying to end this cycle.

Founded by Zach Rotholz, Chairigami produces furniture made entirely out of triple-wall cardboard that is easy to unpack and repack. Flat. The company grew out of Rotholz's senior project at Yale, and started on $5,000 he had saved from his bar mitzvah. After all, seed funding is the whole reason to come of age.RELATED

Currently Chairigami is working on large orders, including one for 2,000 stools for summer camps. And Chairigami isn't the only company that makes cardboard furniture, but it's one of the first in the U.S.. Shelving starts at $65 and the couch is $100. More here.

Disposable Spy Computers Are Disturbingly Easy and Cheap to Make

Be honest, how often do you use unsecured Wi-Fi for something you shouldn't? You know, just a quick Facebook login at Starbucks. If you've done it even once, that's too much, because making a secret spy computer that can steal all that data is dumb easy. And cheap to boot.RELATED

Brendan O’Connor, security researcher, founder of the consulting firm Malice Afterthought, and mind behind the F-BOMB, has been showing off his newest toy at DEF CON. It's called creepyDOL, and it's like a budget PRISM-box for DIY hackers.

With a $25 Raspberry Pi and a handful of adapters—including Wi-Fi—each creepyDOL box costs a mere $57 in parts, and is worth its weight in stolen data. But the really scary stuff is what O'Connor can rig up the units to do as a network once they've got enough data to identify your specific gadgets.

The New York Times explains some of the creepy possibilities:

You could spy on your ex-lover, by placing the sensor boxes near the places the person frequents, or your teenage child, or the residents of a particular neighborhood. You could keep tabs on people who gather at a certain house of worship or take part in a protest demonstration in a town square. Their phones and tablets, Mr. O’Connor argued, would surely leak some information about them – and certainly if they then connected to an unsecured Wi-Fi. The boxes are small enough to be tucked under a cafe table or dropped from a hobby drone. They can be scattered around a city and go unnoticed.

Granted, O'Connor isn't doing any of this stuff, but if he could, so could just about anyone else. This kind of surveillance preys on insecurity that's pretty inherent to digital world as it is today, so it's hard to hide from. You can read more about O'Connors little toy over at The Times. And you thought it was enough to just worry about the NSA. More here.

Earth Is Just a Pale Blue Dot From Saturn

The image above is what Earth looks like from Saturn, a stunning reminder from NASA's Cassini spacecraft that we're nothing but a small speck of dust. All respect to Carl Sagan, but it's definitely hard sometimes to tell a dot from a pixel. And maybe that's even more to the point. More here.

People Are Literally Getting Palm Line Surgery for Better Fortunes

There's fate, and then there's science. But sometimes—just sometimes—the two will join in an unholy union, spawning a monster bearing the worst qualities of both. And that is where cosmetic, surgical palm line adjustment comes in. Because occasionally destiny needs a little shove in the right direction. With a scalpel.

In Japan, palm reading is still one of the most prominent methods of predicting the future. But this isn't the dark ages any more, and what with the iPhones and the virtual reality and the immediate access to hot singles in your area, we have the technology now to do practically anything. So naturally, one woman figured if you want to change your future (and your palm lines determine that future) might as well take it straight to the source.

She went to plastic surgeon Takaaki Matsuoka, who after reading about a similar surgery being done in Korea, decided to go with an electric scalpel. And as Matsuoka told the Daily Beast, this is far from hocus pocus kind of stuff:

If you try to create a palm line with a laser, it heals, and it won’t leave a clear mark. You have to use the electric scalpel and make a shaky incision on purpose, because palm lines are never completely straight. If you don’t burn the skin and just use a plain scalpel, the lines don’t form. It’s not a difficult surgery, but it has to be done right.

As for whether or not it works, Matsuoka is a bit less certain, noting that "it's not like the palm lines are really written in stone... They do change with time." Yeah, especially when you take a searing hot knife to your hand.

So far no analysis has been done on its effectiveness, but Matsuoka believes any success can probably be chalked up to the placebo effect. You'll never really know unless you find out for yourself, though, and a brand new future can be yours for the low, one-time payment of $1,000. More here.

Apple's Shiny New Chipmaker Could Give It a Major Battery Boost

Apple's just acquired Passif, a wireless chipmaker that specializes in making tiny chips that require very low amounts of energy. The deal, it seems, happened sometime in the last few months, reports Jessica Lessin.

What's that mean for Apple? Well, it could indicate that Apple is, in fact, making some type of wearable device. Or, it just means that future versions of its own Ax chips will be even more energy efficient. Battery technology clearly stinks these days and mobile devices are only going to require even more battery power. If the rumors of a wearable from Apple are true, then this shows just how serious the company is about entering the wearables market.

This marks the fourth acquisition for Apple in recent weeks. Last month it was announced that Apple had acquired both HopStop and Locationary to boost its mapping efforts. And in March Apple acquired WifiSLAM, a company that specializes in indoor location mapping via Wi-Fi signals. More here.

Apple Has Fixed the Number 1 in iOS 7's Calendar

Rejoice, humans of the Earth, for the ugly off-center 1 in Apple iOS 7's Calendar app icon has been at last, FIXED! It took almost two entire years of design rants after every update, but someone in Cupertino has at last listened and corrected what was a horrible design decision made by someone else who is no longer in Cupertino. iOS 7 beta 4 has a perfectly centered 1.

The Insides of Meteorites Are Nature's Stained Glass

On the outside meteorites look like volcanic rocks. But astronomy photographer Jeff Bartoncracks them open to reveal the glittering geodes inside.

Barton—who is the director of Sciences at Cowell, Texas's Three Rivers Foundation—calls the innards of space debris "natural stained glass." He's been collecting these gems since 2004. The photos from this set are from the Allende Meteorites, which rained on the Mexican state of Chihuahua in 1969.

To capture the stunning shots of meteorite guts, Barton cuts the rocks open with a rock saw with a diamond-coated blade. He'll then grind down a stamp-sized piece so thin light can pass through it, like sun through the windows of a cathedral. Photos are subsequently taken with polarizing filters and a DSLR attached to a petrographic microscope. Aren't they just beautiful? I wish I could wear one on a necklace. More here.

Commercial Drones Are Now Approved for Aerial Surveillance

Creepy drone spying is no longer just the purview of the military in the United States. The Federal Aviation Administration recently cleared two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for commercial use surveilling the Alaskan coast, marking a sharp turn for the future of domestic drone use.

One of the drones, an Insitu Scan Eagle 200, will be used by a "major energy company" for monitoring migrating whales and icebergs off the Alaskan coast, while the other one, an AeroVironment PUMA, will monitor oil spills up in the Beaufort Sea. These are the first of what will surely be a significant number of commercial drones use for aerial surveillance around the country.

The arrival of certified commercial surveillance drones comes as a first step to measures in the FAA Reauthorization Act that President Obama renewed last year calling for new regulations to govern the use of commercial drones by 2015. Until now, drones could only fly with an experimental airworthiness and not for commercial purposes. Although that didn't stop photographers or journalists from using the machines for specialized purposes. Itdid kickstart an entire industry of commercial drone manufacturing to make sure there are UAVs ready for purchase when the FAA gives the go ahead. More here.

This Fixie Uses Two Frames to Make One Bike

This incredible looking bicycle, known as Viks, is a fixed-gear commuter bike with a twist: it actually uses two identically shaped frames to form its body.

Made from sweeping tubes of stainless steel, the two frames flank the wheels and come together at the bottom bracket and head tube to create what—from the side (see below)—looks like a (relatively) normal bicycle. The lack of seat tube adds to the quirky look, and the single-piece fork and handlebar—also made out of stainless steel tubing—look cool if not entirely practical.

Developed by Estonian engineer Indrek Narusk , the design apparently draws on "styling cues from cafe racer-style motorcycles and classic streamlined aesthetics". The bikes are built to order, and pricing depends on customization. They ain't gonna be cheap, though. More here.

A Plastic iPhone Called The 5C May Really Be On Its Way

This image from Chinese blog WeiPhone looks like a bunch of Apple packaging in a bin. But folks it's so much more! Oh, no, actually that's exactly what it is. No one has been able to legitimize the photo yet, and it could just show some knockoff packaging, but the nomenclature makes sense at least. If the aluminum body upgrade that seems probable for September/October is called the 5S, a cheaper plastic model (also heavily rumored) could be called the 5C where C stands for "color". . . or something.

WeiPhone doesn't really have a track record for directly reporting rumors, but 9to5Macpoints out that the plastic packaging does look similar to the plastic trays in the current iPod Touch boxes. The hamster wheel that is iPhone rumors spins on. More here and here.

Someone Finally Invented 3D-Printed Inkjet Printer Cartridges

Here's Every Emoji Being Used on Twitter in Real-Time

Gosh! I wonder which emoji is trending on Twitter right now! I wish there was some sort of online tool that tracked such a thing! Oh, there is! Praise jeebus for emojitracker.com!

Why anyone would want to know which emoji is trending in real-time on Twitter is beyond any normal human being's comprehension. But here it is. According to the about page, emojitracker is "an experiment in realtime tracking of all emoji used on twitter." Also, it comes with an epilepsy warning because better safe than sorry. Right? Right.

You Can Build This Boat in Under a Minute

Foldable boats were invented to be convenient — a boat when you want one, a strangely-shaped lump in your garage when you don't. But the convenience is lost when you have to spend the best part of a perfect fishing day trying to assemble the dumb thing. Enter the aptly named Quickboat, which goes from scattered to seaworthy in three minutes if you're working by yourself, and under a minute with a helper.

Disassembled, the boat comes in two carrying bags that should fit on the roof of your family truckster. Fully clicked together, it forms a 12-foot boat with room for four. There's no motor in the bag, but the Quickboat is rated for up to 10 horsepower, for those who don't have kids who need to learn the character-building nature of rowing. And unlike other collapsible boats, the Quickboat's composite Kevlar construction makes for a rigid backbone on the water.

The boat will officially launch (that's boatin' humor, son) at the Sydney International Boat Show on August 1st, at a price just over $4,000. The company hopes to have them sailing our way in summer 2014. More here.

This Is What Photosynthesis Looks Like From Space

Google Can Now Translate Handwritten Notes

Say you have some scribbles in an unfamiliar language you want to translate. Better find a native speaker. Or you could just turn to Google Translate, which now supports handwritten translation in 45 different languages.

It's insanely simple. Go to the Google Translate page, select the language you're working with, and go to the menu on the bottom left of the input window and select the pencil icon. You can then write out what you're trying to translate, and Google will interpret. You could definitely see this being useful for translating notes or symbols from character-based languages if you don't know how to actually type the word on your keyboard.  More here.

Scientists Just Discovered a New Force That's Stronger Than Gravity

Scientists have long known that blackbodies produce radiation and that radiation creates a repulsive effect. However, according to a new study there's another force at play, one that acts a bit like gravity and attracts objects to the blackbody. They're calling it "blackbody force."

Blackbodies, celestial objects that are perfectly non-reflective, shift the atomic energy of molecules around them in what's known as the Stark effect. This occurs when the electric field created by the blackbody radiation sends photons into surrounding molecules and atoms that often create the repulsive energy we're used to seeing around blackbodies. However, if the energy level of the photon is just right and the radiating blackbody is less than about 6,000-degrees Kelvin, it creates an attractive force that's greater than the radiation pressure and, in some cases, greater than the force of gravity.

This new blackbody force only affects the smallest particles in the universe, though it has an effect on basic astrophysical scenarios. The Austrian team of scientists that discovered the force are particularly interested in how it affects cosmic dust. "These sub-micron-sized grains play an important role in the formation of planets and stars or in astro-chemistry," M. Sonnleitner at the University of Innsbruck told PhysOrg. "Apparently there are some open questions on how they interact with surrounding hydrogen gas or with each other. Right now we are exploring how this additional attractive force affects the dynamics of atoms and dust."

Scientists have so far had a hard time replicating the effect in a laboratory, but when they do, they hope it will shed light on some fundamental questions of astrophysics. At the very least, it will be pretty cool to see a new force at work, even if it only works on tiny things. More here.

This $200 Brute Force Bot Will Bust Your Phone's Pin in Hours

Your Android phone is not safe. This 3D-printed robot systematically tries all of the possible lock screen PINs for your phone until it gets in. With your standard four-digit number, your phone is compromised in under a day. If only you'd had an iPhone!

The Robotic Reconfigurable Button Basher will be presented by researchers at the Black Hat conference next week in Las Vegas. Besides being able to crack an Android device's lock screen PIN, Forbes reports that the researchers behind the open-source bot are working on adapting the technology to work on any security system that requires a PIN—say a hotel safe or an ATM.

Now, of course, there is a very simple way to counter the assault of this robot, which is to employ security systems that prevent brute force attacks by simply blocking excessive attempts at busting the code. iOS, for example, will lock you out to the point where you need outside help to get into your phone after three fails. Android, however, only locks you out for a short period before you can try again—by default, anyway. Regardless, the bot is a sobering reminder that the PIN on your phone is no match for someone who really wants to get past it. More here.

Google Android 4.3 Update: Bluetooth, Profiles, and Other Minor Stuff

Google is continuing the Jelly Bean reign with today's Android 4.3 update. It's shipping with the new Nexus 7, and is for the most part, very incremental.

Here's what's up: Google is adding restricted profiles, which are basically just more comprehensive parental controls. It forces an app to behave differently, based on what a parent has set up. So if a child is playing a game, you can say he or she can only see a couple of levels, for example.Restricted profiles also let you set limits on transactions, or web browsing, or other things you're using your device for.

Android 4.3 also features some Bluetooth updates that let you pair an Android device with low-power gadgets like fitness trackers. Got a FitBit? You can hook it up to your Nexus 7 to monitor your performance.

Additionally, Android 4.3 is getting a refresh on something called Open GL:ES 3.0. It's a big boost for graphics that mostly applies for gamers. It'll make everything on screen look better, more detailed, and render quickly in native 1080p resolution. More here.

A New Kind of Microchip Mimics the Human Brain in Real Time

A team of scientists in Switzerland has managed to cram 11,011 electrodes onto a single two-millimeter-by-two-millimeter piece of silicon to create a microchip that works just like an actual brain. The best part about this so-called neuromorphic chips? They can feel.

Don't over interpret the word "feel" though. The brain-like microchips built by scientists at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich are not a sentient beings, but they can carry out complex sensorimoter tasks that show off the network's cognitive abilities. And what's more impressive is that all of this happens in real time. Previous brain-like computer systems have been slower and larger, whereas the Swiss system is comparable to an actual brain in both speed and size. That's exactly what the team was trying to do. "Our goal is to emulate the properties of biological neurons and synapses directly on microchips," says University of Zurich professor Giacomo Indiveri.

The next step for these neuromorphic chips is to take on more and more complex tasks. In a paper published this week by the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers who built the chips suggest that they could connect the neuromorphic chips to sensory systems like an artificial retina. This is somewhat of a fascination for the community of scientists trying to build a brain-like computer. Stanford professor Kwabena Boahen rose to prominence after developing a silicon retina that behaved like a biological retina, and since then, he's been working on ways to mimic the brain using artificial circuits. More here.

This Is What Gravity Looks Like

You can't see gravity, right? It's just an invisible, natural force of attraction, created by mass, yeah? Well, almost—but in this image you can see its effects in still and breathtaking glory.

The ripples in the clouds of this images are known as gravity waves. NASA explains exactly what they are:

Offshore and to the west and southwest of Pukaskwa National Park, several distinct sets of parallel cloud bands are visible. Gravity waves are produced when moisture-laden air encounters imbalances in air density, such as might be expected when cool air flows over warmer air. This can cause the flowing air to oscillate up and down as it moves, causing clouds to condense as the air rises and cools and to evaporate away as the air sinks and warms. This produces parallel bands of clouds oriented perpendicular to the wind direction. The orientation of the cloud bands in this image, parallel to the coastlines, suggests that air flowing off of the land surfaces to the north is interacting with moist, stable air over the lake surface, creating gravity waves.

Thanks, gravity: as well as keeping us on the ground, you make the world a prettier place, too. More here.

This Might Be Your Home Security System of The Future

So what's inside? All of this:

• HD Camera w/ Night Vision and 170 degree wide angle lens

• Wi-Fi

• High quality microphone speaker
• Siren 

• RGB LEDs
• 
3-axis accelerometer

• Motion detection (Passive Infrared)
• Temperature sensor
• Humidity sensor 

• Air quality sensor

Not a bad mix but where Canary has the potential to really shine is in its software offering. By tapping into all the aforementioned sensors, the Canary app will be able to relay a plethora of information in real-time and learn a thing or two about you. More here.

There's a Beautiful Chair Hiding in Your Washing Machine

You can sit on a washing machine, but that doesn't make it a chair. A transformation like the one industrial designer Antonina pulled off does make it a chair, though. And there are even DIY instructions so you can try too, if you're into that sort of thing.

As part of a project with the incredibly appropriate title "I used to be a washing machine," Antonina carefully dissected and old washer to make not one, not two, but three different flavors of chair, each a wonderfully stark piece of furniture in its finished form.

While all washers are going to have different innards, it stands to reason most of them would be kinda-sorta similar enough to pull something like this off. It also stands to reason that none of us will really bother trying. You can hop over to Designboom to look at the plans and see what it would be like if you did, though. 

You Can Download VLC for iPhone and iPad Now

Hey now! VLC, the bestest fastest sweetest codec-iest easiest to usiest and every positive -est adjectie there is video player around, is now available (again) on iOS. If you're looking to play videos on your iPhone and iPad, VLC is probably going to be your best bet.

MacStories spent some time with the new VLC app and though it looks pretty much the same, it's supposed to be improved:

VLC has been completely rewritten to use modern audio and video output modules, multi-core decoding, and support for any file type supported by VLC on the desktop. In my tests, the app was able to quickly start playing any video file that I threw at it, such as .mp4 and .mkv files.

The app also lets you adjust playback speed, tweak brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. and supports subtitles. It's a welcome return to VLC which was kicked out of the App Store in the beginning of 2011. More here.

A Private Venture Wants to Build a Telescope on the Moon

There might not be a man on the moon right now—but there may soon be a gazing eye. A new private venture aims to build a long-range telescope on our planet's little satellite, and it could happen as soon 2016.

A partnership between Moon Express, Inc. and the International Lunar Observatory Association is all set to install the telescope on the humble lump of rock. The plan is to position the 2-meter dish antenna, known as the International Lunar Observatory, on the rim of a crater near the moon’s South pole.

The first step will be a proof-of-concept mission, which will see the partnership take a shoebox-sized device called ILO-X to the moon in 2015. If that's successful, the full-size telescope will follow early the next year.

The aim of the project is to provide new views of the universe—but the plan is to democratize star gazing, too. Data from the telescopes will be made freely available online for use by citizen scientists. But don't be entirely taken in by the good vibes—Moon Express admits that it's going to explore the area around the South pole for minerals and water while it's at it, too. More here.

How Retail Stores Track You Using Your Smartphone

A Mechanical Wooden Pencil That Will Never Go Dull

As low-tech as it may be, the pencil has managed to still keep itself relevant—despite the endless graphite-free ways we can communicate these days. That being said, it doesn't mean it couldn't use an upgrade, and Tous Les Jours has managed to combine the convenience of a mechanical pencil with the feel of a traditional wooden writing instrument.

You never have to sharpen it, and as long as you keep feeding it shafts of graphite it will never go dull. And for an added bit of whimsy, the days of the week are printed on the sides of the $7 pencil with suggestions on how to best seize the day. More here.