Author: esimantiras

In 2024, Biosensors Are Becoming More Accessible: What It Means for You

Posted on by esimantiras

In 2024, Biosensors Are Becoming More Accessible: What It Means for You

source: cnet.com  |  image: medicaldevice-network.com 

New biowearables are giving people with Type 2 diabetes more options. Those without diabetes can get even more insight into their health.

Deep in your body, under your skin, are measurable elements of your health that affect your risk of developing some of the most common diseases worldwide. Some of these things, like blood oxygen and sleep quality, can be detected through a traditional wearable or smartwatch. But some of the other useful data people can actually act on to become more healthy has either been restricted to prescription devices or simply hasn’t been available in the US. Think your blood sugar levels.

Improvements in biosensing technology are inching closer to changing the wearable status quo. At CES this year, companies came forward with the latest developments in biosensors, which have been in the works for years but only recently started to shape into something the “average” consumer could benefit from. This includes the one in three US adults in “prediabetes” territory, where blood sugar levels are high but not yet high enough to constitute a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis. 

Could biosensors, which dig for and retrieve even more information than what we’re used to, benefit someone in a window of opportunity, where choices made today could turn around or reverse a future health condition? If they’re able to reach more people, possibly. 

“People are familiar with wearables, and we see biowearables as the next step in that technology,” said Marc Taub, divisional vice president of technical operations for Abbott’s diabetes care business. The devices can give people “insight into their bodies they never had before,” Taub said during a digital health panel at CES last week.

What are biosensors? 

Biosensors are a wearable you stick to a part of your body, like your arm, to lift health data using a tiny sensor. Continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, for people with Type 1 diabetes have been the main product. 

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Satya Nadella on the bigger vision behind Microsoft’s new battery

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Satya Nadella on the bigger vision behind Microsoft’s new battery

source: fastcompany.com  |  image: pexels.com

Working with a national lab, the software giant used AI to tackle the flaws of today’s lithium batteries—and pave a new path for scientific discovery.

 

Recently, Microsoft built a clock.

Well, “built” may be overstating things. Members of the company’s quantum computing team found a small digital clock in a wood case on Amazon—the kind you might mistake for a nicer-than-usual trade show tchotchke. They hacked it to run off two experimental batteries they’d created in collaboration with staffers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Then they dressed up its enclosure by adding the logo of Azure Quantum Elements, the Microsoft platform for AI-enhanced scientific discovery that had been instrumental in developing the new battery technology.

The point of this little DIY project was to prove the batteries worked in a visceral way: “You want to have a wow moment,” explains Brian Bilodeau, the head of partnerships, strategy, and operations for Azure Quantum. And the person the quantum team hoped to wow was Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Not that getting Nadella’s attention was such a daunting prospect. Throwing vast amounts of Azure high-performance computing (HPC) resources at a big, hairy technical challenge such as materials research is the sort of challenge he’s predisposed to take a personal interest in. Still, the tangible evidence of success made for a memorable moment: “I was very, very excited to see it come through,” Nadella remembers.

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News Release: DHS S&T Announces Track 3 of the Remote Identity Validation Tech Demo Challenge

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News Release: DHS S&T Announces Track 3 of the Remote Identity Validation Tech Demo Challenge

source: dhs.gov (contributed by FAN, Steve Jones)  |  image: wikipedia.com

S&T Header banner

News Release: DHS S&T Announces Track 3 of the Remote Identity Validation Tech Demo Challenge

WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) announced the launch of Track 3 of the Remote Identity Validation Technology Demonstration (RIVTD). Held in partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Homeland Security Investigations Forensic Laboratory, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), RIVTD is a series of technology challenges to evaluate the ability of systems to authenticate identity documents, assess the “liveness” of selfie photos, and evaluate identity verification using images taken with smartphones and similar devices.

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It’s official: Apple’s Find My network now lets you track twice as many devices

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It’s official: Apple’s Find My network

now lets you track twice as many devices

source: techradar.com (contributed by FAN, Steve Page)  |  image: pixabay.com

Apple has quietly confirmed that it has doubled the number of devices that you can track in its Find My app. While no official announcement was made by Apple itself, the change was first reported by Nicolas Alveraz (@nicolas09F9) and shared in a post on X (formerly Twitter). 

In a support document published on January 11, Apple revealed that you can now add up to 32 items in Find My instead of the previous limit of 16 items. This includes AirTags, first-party headphones, selected Beats headphones, newer MagSafe wallets, and third-party accessories and gear such as e-bikes. 

It was confirmed by MacRumors that Apple increased the Find My item limit when iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 was launched in September 2022, but Apple never mentioned the change publicly until now. 

In the Apple document, it details that some AirPods will count as more than one item when paired to Find My. With the exception of the AirPods Max, regular AirPods and AirPods Pro (1st gen) count as two items, and the AirPods Pro (2nd gen) count as three items. With AirPods and the 1st gen AirPods Pros, users can track each AirPod individually, thus marking it as two items. When tracking 2nd gen AirPods Pros, you can use Find My to track the charging case, making it the third item. 

Apple introduced AirTags in 2021, making it easier for you to track your personal belongings as well as other Find My-compatible devices. However, avid Apple users voiced their concerns as they found themselves reaching the original 16-item limit quickly. This meant users would have to strategically decide which items to pair, which became increasingly difficult when Apple opened Find My pairing to third-party products shortly after. 

How to add an AirTag to your Find My network 

This now-official increase to the Find My device limit means that Apple super-users can track more devices and products without the fear of quickly reaching the limit. 

Not sure how to pair more products to your Find My network? Adding AirTags, for example, to the network is pretty easy. 

Hold your AirTag near your iPhone, and from there a pop up will appear on your screen for you to tap ‘Connect’. You’ll then have to name your AirTag from the options that appear in the scrolling list and tap ‘Continue’. 

Once you’ve tapped ‘Continue’ again, register your AirTag with your Apple ID by tapping ‘Done’.  

 

How to Be More Anonymous Online

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How to Be More Anonymous Online

source: wired.com. |. image: pexels.com

 

Being fully anonymous is next to impossible—but you can significantly limit what the internet knows about you by sticking to a few basic rules.

 

On the internet, everyone wants to know who you are. Websites are constantly asking for your email address or trying to place tracking cookies on your devices. A murky slurry of advertisers and tech firms track which websites you visit, predicting what your interests are and what you may want to buy. Search engines, browsers, and apps can log each search or scroll you make.

At this stage of the internet, being totally anonymous across your entire online life is incredibly hard to achieve. Phones, SIM cards, browsers, Wi-Fi networks, and more use identifiers that can be linked to your activity. But there are steps you can take to obscure your identity for everyday browsing.

If you’re looking to be truly anonymous or to protect your identity for a specific purpose—such as whistleblowing or activism—you should consider your threat model and individual security situation. But many of the changes you can make, which are listed below, are straightforward switches that can stop you from being tracked as much and apply to most people.

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The Hacking Threat Rises

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The Hacking Threat Rises

source:  CNN.com  | image: pexels.com

 

At The New Yorker last month, Sam Knight detailed the devastating consequences of a ransomware attack on the British Library in London: “The outage became an incident. The National Cyber Security Centre, a branch of G.C.H.Q., the British equivalent of the National Security Agency, got involved. On November 20th, a hacking group called Rhysida—after a genus of centipedes—offered 490,191 files stolen from the British Library for sale on the dark Web. United States cybersecurity officials describe Rhysida as a ‘ransomware-as-a-service’ provider—a gun for hire—part of an increasingly professional array of cyber-extortion organizations.” Knight also noted the widely international array of apparent victims of this group: “Since Rhysida surfaced, in May, its victims have included the Chilean Army, a medical-research lab in Australia, and Prospect Medical Holdings, a health-care company with hospitals in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and California. There are reports that its code contains fragments of Russian, and it appears not to have struck inside Russia or its close allies.”
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Welcome to the generative AI election era

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Welcome to the generative AI election era

source: axios.com, contributed by FAN, Bill Amshey  | image: pexels.com

 

Around one billion voters will head to polls all over the world this year, while wily campaigns and underfunded election officials will face pressure to use AI for efficiencies.

Why it matters: Conditions are ripe for bad actors to use generative AI to amplify efforts to suppress votes, libel candidates and incite violence.

The big picture: This year, more people will vote than any other year between 2004 and 2048.

  • It’s the first time in 60 years that the U.S. and U.K. are voting for new administrations in the same year and the first time since 2004 that the U.S. and EU are.
  • AI is just one category in a growing list of problems for election officials from a poll worker shortage to violent threats and cybersecurity attacks.

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What an astronaut, Molly Baz, and your mom can teach you about creativity

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What an astronaut, Molly Baz, and your mom

can teach you about creativity

 

source: fastcompany.com  |  image: pexels.com

 

As a journalist prone to nerding out on books about design and creativity, a fair number of them cross my desk. But within them, there’s often a preponderance of thought leadership presented at its thinnest—a veritable Ikea table of wisdom that, let’s admit, probably came from a ghostwriter to begin with. 

Which is why Mike Schnaidt’s Creative Endurance is such a delightful anomaly.  

Now, disclaimer up front: Schnaidt is the creative director of Fast Company—but we’d cover this book even if he wasn’t because it’s such an anomaly in the “creative inspo” genre. Crack its covers, and there’s a wonderland of editorial design inside. Concept-driven type treatments dance across colorful pages. Illustrations. Activities. But above all, insights on pushing through obstacles and remaining engaged in your process and practice from not only designers (though you’ll indeed find such minds as Sagi Haviv, Jennifer Kinon, and Bobby C. Martin Jr. here), but also from athletes, an astronaut, architect, wardrobe stylist, chefs, a sommelier, and . . . a third grader. 

If the book feels unorthodox, that’s by design. When teaching at Kean University in 2022, Schnaidt, a marathoner, eschewed the typical portfolio presentation and instead gave a talk titled, “The Runner’s Guide to Design.” 

This new cement could become…

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This new cement could become America’s next big bumper crop and help save the world as we know it

source: archdaily.com  |  image: pexels.com

 

Colorado-based Prometheus Materials and other emerging companies are developing new biocements that could help meet the world’s growing concrete demands and avert climate catastrophe.

Innovation thrives when we pause to observe, question, and reimagine the world around us, turning challenges into opportunities for progress. Nature, in particular, serves as a rich source of inspiration. By observing it, studying its daily challenges, and contemplating its processes, we can discover valuable insights that inspire innovative solutions.

One of these current challenges is the production of concrete, an ancient and extremely popular material that is now accountable for a significant portion of global CO₂ emissions, due to the energy-intensive process of cement production and the chemical reactions involved. It is estimated to be responsible for approximately 8% of the world’s annual CO₂ emissions, pumping 11 million tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere every day and consuming 9% of the world’s annual industrial water usage. In addition, the world’s building stock is expected to double by 2060—the equivalent of building an entire New York City every month for the next 36 years, which means an incredible increase in demand for cement and concrete. Faced with this daunting situation, is there anything we can do? In this article, we speak with Loren Burnett, CEO of Prometheus Materials, which has developed a material that mimics nature’s processes to recreate concrete as we know it.

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The new, sci-fi ways AI will radically redesign airports

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The new, sci-fi ways AI will radically redesign airports

source: fastcompany.com  |  Image: pexels.com

 

Someday you might be able to check into your flight from your car.

Airports today are shaped like dumbbells. One end of the dumbbell is for ticketing and checked bags. The opposite end is where the gates are located along with restaurants and shops. The thin middle between the two ends is for security screening, which separates the “landside” of the airport from its “airside.”

This airport shape has become more pronounced in the past two decades, mainly because of security screening apparatuses. But artificial intelligence is poised to subvert that shape, first by creating new ways for people to interact with existing airport infrastructure, then by challenging the traditional landside-airside barrier, and, finally, enabling all-new design approaches to the physical and digital footprints of airports. Here’s how those changes will unfold in the next five, 10, and 20 years.

FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: EARLY NEGOTIATIONS WITH INFRASTRUCTURE

Airports have historically told you what they are doing: a giant flight information display system or series of gate announcements is the airport broadcasting its operations. What you are doing as a passenger is extracting relevant information and maneuvering those operations. This power dynamic between what an airport is doing and what a passenger is doing is changing, though, and becoming far more collaborative. At Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), passengers can make “spot saver” appointments for security screenings, skipping the lines and avoiding any anxiety about getting through checkpoints ahead of flight times. Also at SEA, passengers parking their vehicles can use anautomated parking guidance system to find open spots faster. In each instance, the airport is improving its efficiency by allowing passengers to interact with infrastructure more directly.

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