Samsung’s New Galaxy Tablets Are Razor-Thin and Razor-Sharp

The 10.4-inch Galaxy Tab S. Photo: Samsung

Today, Samsung announced two devices that will comprise its flagship “S” series of tablets: The 10.4-inch Galaxy Tab S and the 8.4-inch Galaxy Tab S. There’s no mystery as to which tablets they’re meant to compete with.

In terms of weight, screen size, pixel density, and slimness, the new tablets compare favorably to Apple’s iPad Air and iPad Mini. The new tablets are also priced the same as Apple’s 16GB/Wi-Fi models of each version: $500 for the 10.5-incher and $400 for the 8.4-incher. At one pound, the larger Tab S weighs the same as the smaller-screened iPad Air, while the smaller Tab S (10 oz.) is both lighter and larger-screened than the iPad Mini (11.6 oz.).

Both wafer-thin tablets measure in at just 6.6mm, so they can limbo under the 7.5mm bar set by Apple’s latest iPads. One of the reasons the new Samsung devices are so slim is that they’re equipped with OLED screens, which don’t need the backlight panel that LCD screens need. But that doesn’t just makes them skinny. OLED’s inky blacks, sharp contrast, and vivid colors should make them look good, too.

The 10.5-inch and the 8.4-inch Tab S also have a 2,560 x 1,600 screen resolution, which adds up to a slightly higher pixel density than the current-gen iPads. Samsung’s 10.5-incher clocks in at 287ppi as compared to the iPad Air’s 264ppi, while the 8.4-inch Tab S has a 359ppi screen as compared to the iPad Mini’s 326ppi display.

At launch, you won’t get as many configuration options as you do with an iPad. Both tablets are available in a 16GB capacity (with a microSD slot that supports up to 128GB of additional space), and for now, the Tab S will be Wi-Fi-only. Later on this year, Samsung plans to launch LTE versions of the tablet for the major U.S. carriers.

A side-by-side comparison. Photo: Tim Moynihan/WIRED

Both are equipped with Android 4.4 KitKat running on a Samsung Exynos 5 Octa CPU with 3GB RAM. The eight-core CPU can jump back and forth between a 1.9GHz quad-core processor and a 1.3GHz quad-core processor depending on the task. Battery life should be ample for the 10.5-incher, thanks to a 7,900 mAh unit on board; the 8.4-incher has a 4,900 mAh battery.

The tablets are compatible with the Gear 2 watch and can team up with Samsung’s Galaxy S5 phone, too. Like Apple’s recently teased Continuity feature, SideSync lets you use the tablet to make and take calls through a Galaxy S5 via a Wi-Fi Direct connection. The tablets’ home buttons are fingerprint scanners, which can be used for login and PayPal authentication.

The Tab S design echoes that of Samsung’s Galaxy S phones. There are golf-ball-like dimples on the back, and of the two color variations, the titanium bronze version looks pretty sharp. A separately sold Book Cover case made of synthetic leather and suede can be used as a two-position stand; it attaches to the back of the Tab S via plastic snaps that fit into recesses built into the back of the tablet. There’s also a hard plastic chiclet keyboard for the 10.5-inch model, which connects via Bluetooth.

If you’re intrigued, you can preorder either size of the tablet now. You’ll have to wait until July for the Galaxy Tab S tablets to ship though.

The 'microbial garden' taking the shine off glaciers

The first ecological study of an entire glacier has found that microbes drastically reduce surface reflectivity and have a non-negligible impact on the amount of sunlight that is reflected into space.

The research, led by the University of Leeds and published today [12 June] in the journal FEMS Microbiology Ecology, will help improve climate change models that have previously neglected the role of microbes in darkening the Earth's surface.

Observing how life thrives at extreme cold temperatures also has important implications for the search for life on distant worlds, such as Jupiter's icy moon Europa.

Stefanie Lutz, a PhD student at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, and lead author of the study, said: "Our three-week field trip revealed a 'microbial garden' of life forms flourishing in this cold environment, including snow algae, bacteria, fungi and even invertebrates.

"Skiers may have seen snow algae before, but not been able to identify it. They are visible to the naked eye as coloured snow -- most often red -- and are frequently referred to as 'watermelon snow'."

The study was carried out on the Mittivakkat Glacier in south east Greenland during the summer of 2012, which was the hottest summer and thus the fastest melting season recorded for 150 years.

"Our timing was serendipitous, as it meant we were able to see changes in microbial processes over an extremely fast melting season and observe a process from start to end across all habitats on a glacier surface. This is the most comprehensive study of microbial communities living on a glacier to date," said Lutz.

The research showed that, compared to pure snow and ice, the reflectivity of the glacier (known as the "albedo") can be reduced by up to 80% in places where coloured microbial populations are extremely dense, leading to the darkening of the glacier surface.

Professor Liane G. Benning from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds and co-author of the study, said: "Previously, it was assumed that low albedo, which is most often measured from satellites, was primarily due to soot or dust. However, our research provides a first, ground-based measure for the microbial contribution to albedo. We have shown that albedo is strongly affected by and dependent upon the development and dominance of microbial communities.

"In future climate scenarios, where even more melting is predicted, it is crucial that we are able to better discriminate between all factors affecting albedo."

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The above story is based on materials provided by University of Leeds . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Google Funds a Design School That Works Like a Tech Incubator

Ponder this for a second: How different would HBO’s Silicon Valley be if the main character Richard had been a designer instead of a programmer?

The choice to feature a bumbling, awkward coder is illustrative of the greater Silicon Valley ecosystem, but it ignores a growing trend: Designers are playing an increasingly important role in leading startups and businesses.

Granted, the number of designers-turned-founders is still comparatively small, but a new incubator/school called 30 Weeks, is hoping to change that. The program is a collaboration between Google, The Cooper Union, education company Hyper Island and top-notch design schools including School of Visual Arts, Parsons and Pratt.

Starting this September, 20 designers will enroll in a 30-week program, working out of a co-working space in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood in hopes of turning their ideas into full-fledged, scalable businesses. Sound cool? Good, because they’re still accepting applications until June 20.

Tesla Just Gave All Its Patents Away to Competitors

Elon Musk. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

Much like Tony Stark, Elon Musk likes to do the impossible. Electric cars, spaceships and now … patents?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced today that his company will not “initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.” In plain English, that means that if other car companies want to produce electric cars, they can use Tesla’s technology to do it, and, in turn, advance Musk’s sustainability vision.

“The mission of the company is to accelerate the widespread adoption of electric cars,” explained Tesla spokesperson Simon Sproule in an interview before the patent announcement was made. “If Tesla acts as the catalyst for other manufacturers … that will have been achieved.”

Later, in a conference call, Musk reiterated the point, saying that “putting in long hours for a corporation is hard, putting in long hours for a cause is easy.”

Of course, Tesla wants to make and sell electric cars (it exists to make a profit, theoretically), but in order to do that on a large scale, the company needs to move past the niche markets that the Model S currently plays in. They need the public to stop thinking of them as electric cars and to start thinking of them simply as cars.

“They need to see Americans … at least be open to switching to an electric vehicle lifestyle,” Kelly Blue Book analyst Karl Brauer said. By themselves, “they’re never going to convert the average American into an electric car fan, even with great press and great publicity.” A $90,000 electric car for celebrities and the Silicon Valley elite isn’t going to save the world. Tesla needs to, and is thinking much bigger.

The Tesla Model S at the company’s factory in Northern California. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

At the moment, the Model S is the only electric car that acts as a true replacement for a more traditional gasoline-powered automobile, with its 200+ mile range and network of rapid charging stations that stretches from coast-to-coast across 96 stations in the US, with dozens more coming in North America, Europe and Asia. Not enough people are interested in electric cars with 70-100 miles of range, as Nissan and others are discovering. But, if other car companies adopt some of Tesla’s technology to develop long-range electric cars, that’s nothing but good for the company.

Tesla’s longer-term goal is to sell a $30,000 car with 200-miles of range. At that point, a potential owner worries less about whether they can get to Grandma’s house in an emergency, and starts to assess it as a normal piece of transportation. Tesla’s cars remain a curiosity. In order to transition from a technological plaything that nerds get excited about into something that busy regular people want to buy, Tesla needs to prove that driving an electric car is a normal thing to do.

Finally, if other automakers begin using Tesla’s technology, it increases the value of the company and its inventions as well as validating what the company is doing. Tesla has hundreds of patents, but if the company goes bust because not enough people buying electric cars, they’re all meaningless. Tesla needs widespread adoption of electric cars and the easiest way to do that is to get other automakers to sell them too. More electric cars in the world means Tesla’s cars aren’t so weird, and they become an easier sell to a skeptical public.

Releasing its patents is certainly a controversial move, though TSLA shareholders seem fairly indifferent — shares are trading only slightly lower following the announcement.

At the end of the day, the biggest risk for Musk isn’t that BMW or Toyota will steal his technology. It’s that the big automakers might not be interested in electric cars enough to bother building them at all.

Increasing the Fragmentation of Natural Landscapes May Help Spread Disease

Powdery mildew-afflicted ribwort plantain leaves. Image: Susanna Kekkonen/Science

The modern natural world is an increasingly fragmented one, with islands of ecological integrity isolated in vast sprawls of human development.

An environment arranged in such a fashion may inadvertently fuel the spread of disease, according to a new study of the interaction of plants and a fungus pathogen. Conversely, large and continuous natural areas may dampen the spread. While the observations can’t be directly extrapolated from a single system to nature at large, they hint at a potentially troubling dynamic.

“If we have these little islands of susceptible hosts in a landscape, harboring high levels of infection that transmit to everything around them, the potential is there for spillover” to agriculture and perhaps humans, said biologist Anna-Liisa Laine of the University of Helsinki.

The study, published June 12 in Science , describes 12 years of the battle between Plantago lanceolata, a herb commonly known as ribwort plantain, and leaf-blighting powdery mildew in forests on the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea.

The researchers, led by Laine and fellow University of Helsinki biologists Jussi Jousimo and Ayco Tack, found that vulnerability to the disease changed depending on the area of ribwort populations. Plants in isolated populations were more likely to become infected, and those in larger, connected patches were more likely to resist infection.

It’s a counterintuitive dynamic: At least on the surface, conventional ecological theory predicts that disease should spread much more readily through larger patches. Instead, those regular exposures seemed to heighten plant defenses, serving almost as evolutionary inoculations.

In large patches, disease-resistant plants were more likely to reproduce and spread, and—crucially—there was a larger gene pool from which disease-resistant mutations might arise. Small-patch plants, less-exposed and with a smaller gene pool to draw from, remained susceptible to infection when it finally did occur.

'We've known for some time that habitat fragmentation exacerbates many diseases, but this study reveals a whole new mechanism.'

“I would have predicted exactly the opposite result—that hosts in fragmented populations would be protected from this fungus,” said disease ecologist Richard Ostfeld of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, who was not involved in the research.

“We’ve known for some time that habitat fragmentation exacerbates many diseases, but this study reveals a whole new mechanism,” Ostfeld added.

Among the exacerbations to which Ostfeld refers are enhanced virulence of the lethal Hendra virus in isolated populations of Australian flying foxes, and also outbreaks of yellow fever in fragmented forests in southern Brazil.

Common to these incidents is a newfound appreciation for disease dynamics, with healthy ecologies linked to evolutionary patterns that naturally reduce the dangers of epidemic outbreaks.

Disease ecologist Meghan Duffy of the University of Michigan did, however, caution against extrapolating too much from the new study. More research involving other hosts and diseases is needed to see whether similar patterns are found elsewhere, she said.

“Whether habitat fragmentation is likely to contribute to increased infectious disease in a wide range of systems is an open question,” she said, but the findings underscore how links between the environment, human impacts and disease “might be more complicated than we might initially guess.”

Laine, whose group is now studying infection dynamics of viruses in ribwort, said that one significant, broad-spectrum message is the importance of genetic diversity. “It’s enough in itself to dilute disease transmission,” she said. “We see less infection when there is a diversity in resistance traits.”

Aside from possible spillovers from habitat pockets into human areas, as with the Hendra virus, there may also be conservation implications to the new findings. Some scientists have wondered whether connecting protected areas may increase the spread of disease; instead, said Laine, connection provides protection.

ACLU Sues After Illinois Mayor Has Cops Raid Guy Parodying Him on Twitter

Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis. Image: Ron Johnson/AP

Countless parody Twitter accounts have been created over the years — British Petroleum, Mark Zuckerberg, the NSA, the Queen of England and even God.

In each case, the target of the account either did nothing in response or simply requested that the owner of the account clearly label it a fake.

Not the mayor of Peoria, Illinois, however.

Mayor Jim Ardis directed his city manager to use the police to hunt down the author of a parody account about him and threatened Twitter with litigation unless it suspended the account, which it did. Now a man who was raided and arrested for creating the account is suing the mayor, a former police chief, and others for violating his constitutional rights.

Jonathan Daniel, 29, created the Twitter account @peoriamayor in March and used it primarily to amuse his friends by retweeting their comments as the mayor. Daniel sent out satiric tweets that contradicted the mayor’s clean-cut image by conveying the mayor as having a preoccupation with sex, drugs, and alcohol. Though he also sent out tweets from the account, he labeled it a parody account three days after he created it, and the account was only active 10 days before it closed.

“The joke of the account was to have my fictional mayor saying things that no one would possibly think that Mayor Jim Ardis would say,” Daniel said in a statement. “If the Mayor was concerned, all he had to do was tell the public that his was not his account and not his words, rather than involving the police.”

The matter didn’t end there, however. Peoria police obtained two warrants, under false pretenses the ACLU alleges, to obtain the subscriber IP address used with the Twitter account and to get Daniel’s home address from his internet service provider.

They also obtained a search warrant and on April 15 raided Daniel’s home while the defendant was at work and seized several computers, phones and other electronic devices while Daniel’s roommates were present. Police also arrived to Daniel’s place of employment where they searched him before arresting him for falsely impersonating a public official and taking him to the police station for interrogation. Daniel was only released after demanding to speak with a lawyer, but police refused to return his mobile phone or other property to him.

Illinois law defines false personation of a public official as someone “knowingly and falsely represent[ing] himself or herself to be . . . [a] public officer or a public employee or an official or employee of the federal government.”

But according to the ACLU, the provision only criminalizes false representations made in person. “Illinois courts require as an element of the offense that there be an intent to deceive the public that the impersonator is acting in the official capacity of a public official,” the organization notes in its complaint. But Daniel’s account “was not reasonably believable as conveying the voice or message of the actual mayor,” the group wrote, and Daniel had “no intention of deceiving people into believing the account was actually operated by a representative of the mayor or the mayor himself, and no reasonable person could conclude such an intent from the content of the tweets or the Twitter account’s profile page.”

Daniel was never charged with any crime because the state’s attorney determined that his conduct did not violate the false personation statute. The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois filed a lawsuit on his behalf today (.pdf) alleging that the mayor, city manager Patrick Urich, former police chief Steven Settingsgaard, and other officials violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights.

“Political parody is a great tradition in the United States – from Thomas Nast to Jon Stewart,” Harvey Grossman, legal director for the ACLU of Illinois said in a statement. “The only way to hold these government officials accountable is to have a federal court rule that their actions violated the fundamental constitutional rights of our client.”

No one at the mayor’s office was available to respond to questions. A clerk in the office said the mayor would be releasing a statement later today.

Key step toward a safer strep vaccine

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have identified the genes encoding a molecule that famously defines Group A Streptococcus (strep), a pathogenic bacterial species responsible for more than 700 million infections worldwide each year.

The findings, published online in the June 11 issue of Cell Host & Microbe, shed new light on how strep bacteria resists the human immune system and provides a new strategy for developing a safe and broadly effective vaccine against strep throat, necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating disease) and rheumatic heart disease.

"Most people experience one or more painful strep throat infections as a child or young adult," said senior author Victor Nizet, MD, professor of pediatrics and pharmacy. "Developing a broadly effective and safe strep vaccine could prevent this suffering and reduce lost time and productivity at school and work, estimated to cost $2 billion annually."

Efforts to develop such a vaccine have been significantly hindered by complexities in how the human immune system reacts to the bacterial pathogen. Specifically, some patients with strep infections produce antibodies that cross-react with their own heart valve tissue, leading to rheumatic fever and heart damage. Though rare in the United States, rheumatic fever remains common in some developing countries and causes significant disability and death.

The Cell Host & Microbe study suggests a way to circumvent the damaging autoimmune response triggered by strep. Specifically, the researchers noted that the cell wall of strep is composed primarily of a single molecule known as the group A carbohydrate (or GAC) which, in turn, is built from repeating units of the bacterial sugar rhamnose and the human-like sugar N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc).

Previous research has indicated that GlcNAc sugars present in GAC may be responsible for triggering production of heart-damaging antibodies in some patients. Nizet said the latest findings corroborate this model, and suggest that eliminating the pathogen's ability to add GlcNAc sugars to GAC could be the basis for a safe vaccine.

"In this study, we discovered the strep genes responsible for the biosynthesis and assembly of GAC, the very molecule that defines the pathogen in clinical diagnosis," said first author Nina van Sorge, PharmD, PhD, a former postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego who now leads her own laboratory at Utrecht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. "This discovery allowed us to generate mutant bacterial strains and study the contribution of GAC to strep disease."

The researchers found that a mutant strep strain lacking the human-like GlcNAc sugar on the GAC molecule exhibited normal bacterial growth and expressed key proteins known to be associated with strep virulence, but was easily killed when exposed to human white blood cells or serum. The mutant strep bacteria also lost the ability to produce severe disease in animal infection models

"Our studies showed that the GlcNAc sugar of GAC is a critical virulence factor allowing strep to spread in the blood and tissues," van Sorge said. "This is likely important for the rare, but deadly, complications of strep infection such as pneumonia, necrotizing fasciitis and toxic shock syndrome."

The researchers also identified a way to remove the problematic GlcNAc sugar so that a mutant form of the bacteria with only rhamnose-containing GAC could be purified and tested as a vaccine antigen.

"We showed that antibodies produced against mutant GAC antigen helped human white blood cells kill the pathogen and protected mice from lethal strep infection," said Jason Cole, PhD, a visiting project scientist from the University of Queensland, Australia, and co-lead author of the paper. "Because GAC is present in all strep strains, this may represent a safer antigen for inclusion in a universal strep vaccine."

Researchers plan to assess the new modified antigen against other candidates in advanced strep throat vaccine tests in nonhuman primates beginning later this year in Atlanta, Georgia, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

"It is satisfying to find that a fundamental observation regarding the genetics and biochemistry of the pathogen can have implications not only for strep disease pathogenesis, but also for vaccine design," Nizet said.

Gum disease bacteria selectively disarm immune system, study finds

The human body is comprised of roughly 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells. In healthy people, these bacteria are typically harmless and often helpful, keeping disease-causing microbes at bay. But, when disturbances knock these bacterial populations out of balance, illnesses can arise. Periodontitis, a severe form of gum disease, is one example.

In a new study, University of Pennsylvania researchers show that bacteria responsible for many cases of periodontitis cause this imbalance, known as dysbiosis, with a sophisticated, two-prong manipulation of the human immune system.

Their findings, reported in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, lay out the mechanism, revealing that the periodontal bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis acts on two molecular pathways to simultaneously block immune cells' killing ability while preserving the cells' ability to cause inflammation. The selective strategy protects "bystander" gum bacteria from immune system clearance, promoting dysbiosis and leading to the bone loss and inflammation that characterizes periodontitis. At the same time, breakdown products produced by inflammation provide essential nutrients that "feed" the dysbiotic microbial community. The result is a vicious cycle in which inflammation and dysbiosis reinforce one another, exacerbating periodontitis.

George Hajishengallis, a professor in the Penn School of Dental Medicine's Department of Microbiology, was the senior author on the paper, collaborating with co-senior author John Lambris, the Dr. Ralph and Sallie Weaver Professor of Research Medicine in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine. Collaborators included Tomoki Maekawa and Toshiharu Abe of Penn Dental Medicine.

Work by Hajishengallis's group and collaborators had previously identified P. gingivalis as a "keystone pathogen." Drawing an analogy from the field of ecology, in which a species such as a grizzly bear is thought of as a keystone species because of the influence it has over a number of other species in the community, the idea suggests that, although P. gingivalis may be relatively few in number in the mouth, their presence exerts an outsized pull on the overall microbial ecosystem. Indeed, the team has shown that, although P. gingivalis is responsible for instigating the process that leads to periodontitis, it can't cause the disease by itself.

"Scientists are beginning to suspect that keystone pathogens might be playing a role in irritable bowel disease, colon cancer and other inflammatory diseases," Hajishengallis said. "They're bugs that can't mediate the disease on their own; they need other, normally non-pathogenic bacteria to cause the inflammation."

In this study, they wanted to more fully understand the molecules involved in the process by which P. gingivalis caused disease.

"We asked the question, how could bacteria evade killing without shutting off inflammation, which they need to obtain their food," Hajishengallis said.

The researchers focused on neutrophils, which shoulder the bulk of responsibility of responding to periodontal insults. Based on the findings of previous studies, they examined the role of two protein receptors: C5aR and Toll-like receptor-2, or TLR2.

Inoculating mice with P. gingivalis, they found that animals that lacked either of these receptors as well as animals that were treated with drugs that blocked these receptors had lower levels of bacteria than untreated, normal mice. Blocking either of these receptors on human neutrophils in culture also significantly enhanced the cells' ability to kill the bacteria. Microscopy revealed that P. gingivalis causes TLR2 and C5aR to physically come together.

"These findings suggest that there is some crosstalk between TLR2 and C5aR," Hajishengallis said. "Without either one, the bacteria weren't as effective at colonizing the gums."

Further experiments in mice and in cultured human neutrophils helped the researchers identify additional elements of how P. gingivalis operates to subvert the immune system. They found that the TLR2-C5aR crosstalk leads to degradation of the protein MyD88, which normally helps clear infection. And in a separate pathway from MyD88, they discovered that P. gingivalis activates the enzyme PI3K through C5aR-TLR2 crosstalk, promoting inflammation and inhibiting neutrophils' ability to phagocytose, or "eat," invading bacteria.

Inhibiting the activity of either PI3K or a molecule that acted upstream of PI3K called Mal restored the neutrophils' ability to clear P. gingivalis from the gums.

"P. gingivalis uses this connection between C5aR and TLR2 to disarm and dissociate the MyD88 pathway, which normally protects the host from infection, from the proinflammatory and immune-evasive pathway mediated by Mal and PI3K," Hajishengallis said.

Not only does the team's discovery open up new targets for periodontitis treatment, it also suggests a bacterial strategy that could be at play in other diseases involving dysbiosis.

New sensor to detect harmful bacteria on food industry surfaces

A new device designed to sample and detect foodborne bacteria is being trialled by scientists at the University of Southampton.

The Biolisme project is using research from the University to develop a sensor capable of collecting and detecting Listeria monocytogenes on food industry surfaces, thereby preventing contaminated products from entering the market.

Listeria monocytogenes is a pathogen that causes listeriosis, an infection with symptoms of fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, that can spread to other parts of the body and lead to more serious complications, like meningitis.

Transmitted by ready-to-eat foods, such as milk, cheese, vegetables, raw and smoked fish, meat and cold cuts, Listeria monocytogenes has the highest hospitalisation (92 per cent) and death (18 per cent) rate among all foodborne pathogens. Listeriosis mainly affects pregnant women, new-born children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.

Current techniques to detect the bacteria take days of testing in labs, but the new device aims to collect and detect the pathogen on location within three to four hours. This early and rapid detection can avoid the cross contamination of ready-to-eat food products.

Traditional methods of testing, where sample cells are cultivated in labs, are also flawed. 'Stressed' cells will not grow in cultures (and will therefore produce negative results) despite the bacteria being present, live and potentially harmful.

Alternative techniques, based on molecular methods, will detect all cell types, but don't differentiate between live and harmless dead cells, which can remain after disinfection.

The new device is designed to sample single cells and biofilms -- groups of microorganisms where cells stick together on surfaces. Compressed air and water is used to remove the cells before they are introduced to an antibody. If Listeria monocytogenes is present, cells react with the antibody to produce a florescent signal, which is detected by a special camera.

Doctor Salomé Gião and Professor Bill Keevil from Southampton's Centre for Biological Science Unit have been studying Listeria monocytogenes biofilms under different conditions and will be testing the new prototype. "We researched biofilms under different stresses to find the optimum pressure to remove cells from different surfaces, without disrupting the cells themselves," says Dr Gião. "We also found that biofilms can form on surfaces even if they are covered in tap water.

"The scientific research we have carried out at the University of Southampton has been used by our Biolisme project partners to develop a device which will have major implications for the food industry. By making the process simpler we hope that testing will be conducted more frequently, thereby reducing the chance of infected food having to be recalled or making its way to the consumer."

The prototype sensor has been finalized in France and field trials are now underway to test the device before it is demonstrated in food factories.

José Belenguer Ballester, from project partner ainia centro tecnológico, added: "Biolisme has raised the expectations of food business operators because the devices being developed will allow rapid assessment of the cleanliness of manufacturing plants."

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The above story is based on materials provided by University of Southampton . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Fermentation of cocoa beans requires precise collaboration among two bacteria, and yeast

Good chocolate is among the world's most beloved foods, which is why scientists are seeking to improve the product, and enhance the world's pleasure. A team of researchers from Germany and Switzerland -- the heartland of fine chocolate -- have embarked upon a quest to better understand natural cocoa fermentation and have published findings ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

"Our studies have unraveled the metabolism of the rather unexplored acetic acid bacteria in the complex fermentation environment," says corresponding author Christoph Wittmann of Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany

In the study, Wittmann and his collaborators from the Nestle Research Centre, Lausanne, Switzerland, simulated cocoa pulp fermentation in the laboratory. They mapped metabolic pathway fluxes of the acetic acid bacteria, feeding them specific isotopes that could easily be tracked. Wittmann compares the process to viewing the flows of city traffic from the sky. "We could see what they eat and how they use the nutrients to fuel the different parts of their metabolism in order to grow and produce extracellular products," he says.

The key molecule to initiate flavor development is acetate, says Wittmann, noting that "The intensity of the aroma from a fermented bean is amazing."

Production of acetate requires two major nutrients: lactate and ethanol. These are produced by lactic acid bacteria, and yeast, respectively, during the initial fermentation of cocoa pulp sugars, says Wittmann.

The acetic acid bacteria then process these simultaneously, via separate metabolic pathways, ultimately producing acetate from them.

"This discovery reveals a fine-tuned collaboration of a multi-species consortium during cocoa fermentation," says Wittman. And that may help improve selection of natural strains for better-balanced starter cultures.

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The above story is based on materials provided by American Society for Microbiology . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Prince Rupert: Philosophic Warrior

When you drop molten glass into water, it creates a droplet shape with a long tail. The droplet head is unbreakable, yet the slightest touch of the tail makes the entire piece of glass explode. We now call this Prince Rupert’s Drop, named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who first demonstrated it to the Royal Society.

I have written before about the death of the Renaissance Man: the polymath who could discourse knowledgeably on diverse topics, from literature to astronomy. As what we know has grown, experts have had to specialize, in order to make advances at the frontier. Generalists are few and far between. But in this process, we have lost certain types of colorful characters. And one is the scientist-warrior-prince, embodied by Prince Rupert of the Rhine.

Prince Rupert of the Rhine lived in the Seventeenth Century, was a member of the German royal family, as well as being the nephew, first cousin, and uncle of several kings of England. He was a soldier and military leader. But he also was an active scientist and inventor. He helped found the Royal Society and was known as a “philosophic warrior.” He invented various weapons, was involved in chemistry, and even contributed to biology, with experiments related to the healing of wounds. Some more from Wikipedia :

He demonstrated a new device for lifting water at the Royal Society, and received attention for his process for “painting colours on marble, which, when polished, became permanent”. During this time, Rupert also formulated a mathematical question concerning the paradox that a cube can pass through a slightly smaller cube; Rupert questioned how large a cube had to be in order to fit. The question of Prince Rupert’s cube was first solved by the Dutch mathematician Pieter Nieuwland. Rupert was also known for his success in breaking cypher codes.

For even more, see “Prince Rupert as a Scientist” (behind paywall).

Aristocratic gentleman scientists are no longer a commonplace. And I’m not even sure we, as Americans, feel entirely comfortable with this idea. Yet, whether or not we need individuals exactly like Prince Rupert, it is important to try our best as a society to keep the potential for generalists alive. They are, if nothing else, very interesting people.

Top image:Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons

This Cup Tracks Exactly What You’re Drinking With Molecular Analysis

Vessyl is a cup that always knows what's inside of it. Image: Vessyl

Vessyl is a cup that always knows what's inside of it. Image: Vessyl

Justin Lee, founder of Mark One, started developing the molecular analyzing technology it relies on seven years ago. Image: Vessyl

Justin Lee, founder of Mark One, started developing the molecular analyzing technology it relies on seven years ago. Image: Vessyl

The cup will wirelessly communicate with an app that will ID what you're drinking and record its caloric content, as well as caffeine, sugar, protein, etc. Image: Vessyl

The cup will wirelessly communicate with an app that will ID what you're drinking and record its caloric content, as well as caffeine, sugar, protein, etc. Image: Vessyl

Lee sees it as the other half to the tracking equation. Image: Vessyl

Lee sees it as the other half to the tracking equation. Image: Vessyl

Practically speaking, hauling the same cup around for every drink you have throughout the day might be a tough sell. But the technology is still pretty impressive. Image: Vessyl

Practically speaking, hauling the same cup around for every drink you have throughout the day might be a tough sell. But the technology is still pretty impressive. Image: Vessyl

You’ve quantified yourself. Soon, you’ll be able to quantify your soda.

Vessyl is an ordinary-seeming cup with a fairly extraordinary hidden feature: It always knows what’s inside of it. Using sensors built into its inner walls, it automatically analyzes the molecules of whatever liquid you pour in. It works with all sorts of prepackaged beverages–coffees, beers, wines, smoothies, juices and more. And it’s impressively precise. It doesn’t just know that you’re drinking soda; it can actually tell whether you’re drinking Sprite, Squirt, or Seven-Up.

It will record a breakdown of things like calories, sugar, protein, and caffeine.

The connected cup is the brainchild of Justin Lee, the culmination of seven years of work. Lee sees it as “the other half of the tracking equation.” While we’ve already seen myriad devices that can passively track our physical activity, tracking what we consume throughout the day has been much trickier. Most apps today require that you manually log your food and drink. As Vessyl shows us, in a sensor-laden near future, that might not be the case.

The idea is that Vessyl will wirelessly pass information to an accompanying app every time you fill it up. There, it will record what you’re drinking, how much of it you’ve poured, and a breakdown of things like calories, sugar, protein, and caffeine. The app will also make use of a proprietary metric dubbed Pryme, intended to be an at-a-glance measure of your overall hydration, much like NikeFuel is for activity.

Lee started working on the project as a student in the Human Media Lab at Queens University, in Ontario. While fellow classmates were looking at ways to add connected functionality to all sorts of already-complex products, Lee thought there was something poetic about the idea of imbuing one of our most foundational, mundane tools with technological smarts. Cups are one of the most enduring technologies we’ve created, after all.

After several years of development, Lee felt confident the core sensing functionality was in reach. During a trip to San Francisco, the engineer paid an unannounced visit to Fuseproject, the powerhouse design studio helmed by Yves Behar. Even without an appointment, the technology was impressive enough that the studio took up the job of designing the hardware itself.

Justin Lee Image: Vessyl

It might not seem like a cup presents much of an industrial design challenge. But what was unique about Vessyl is that it had to feel appropriate for many different types of beverages. One of the criteria that guided the design was that it had to look good on a table. Where Nalgenes and other popular water bottles come with a whiff of the camp fire, Lee and the designers at Fuseproject strove to create a cup that looked perfectly at home on a desk, a coffee table, or a nightstand. The design they landed on feels appropriately versatile. It’s elegant, but not too elegant. It’s inconspicuous, and feels sturdy in the hand.

As designed, the Vessyl will have a simple light-up display on the side that shows your Pryme level on the cup itself. A clever magnetic lid will keep things spill-proof, and charging is taken care of just by placing the thing on a companion saucer. You can pre-order one today for $99; retail will be $199 when the cup comes out in “early 2015.”

But There’s One Big Issue

The real world problem with a drink-tracking cup is obvious: It’s just one cup. For it to be useful, you’ll have to bring it everywhere you go. And think about how many different cups you encounter everyday. There’s your coffee mug in the morning, your water bottle at your desk, a can of Coke from the vending machine at lunch, and a glass of wine or two at night. To say nothing of the fact that each of these vessels is uniquely suited for the drinks they carry and convey, it’s going to be a pain in the ass to rinse out and fill-up your high-tech cup every time you grab a new drink.

Still, as we grope toward the still-vague connected world of tomorrow, Vessyl seems like a fascinating milestone. It’s a reminder smart homes could extend beyond appliances to all sorts of less glamorous objects. When I ask Lee if Vessyl’s sensing technology could ever work with something like, say, a knife and fork, he only smiles and says that his company has already envisioned an aggressive roadmap of products.

Figuring how best to employ this intelligence–how to harness it to help people live richer, simpler, healthier lives–remains the very real challenge. Until then, so many of these connected products won’t be anything more than demos. But, as far as demos go, this is an impressive one. I’m not convinced that a cup that knows what’s inside of it is a silver bullet for healthy living, by any means. But watching Lee pour half a can of orange Slice into a prototype container and seeing his phone, after a brief, bubbly animation, light up with the name and flavor of that very soda–that, I have to admit, felt like a peek into some sort of future.

Dead-Simple Money Transfers, Thanks to the Power of the Crowd

Illustration: Balanced

If you want someone to transfer money straight into your bank account, you probably have to look up some very long numbers you have trouble remembering. Typically, such transfers require not only your bank account number, but your bank’s routing number.

That’s a bit of a pain. But an online payments startup called Balanced wants to make things easier. Starting today, the company is offering a new service called Push to Card that lets others send you payments using your debit card details. All they need to send you money is your name, card number, and expiration date.

Normally, a company would develop a new service like this in secret, but Balanced took a very different approach.

The service isn’t available to everyone. Balance doesn’t offer payment services directly to consumers. It seek to streamline payments for online marketplaces, such as RelayRides, Tradesy, and Gittip. And, for the moment, the new Push to Card offering is only available to select marketplaces as part of a private beta program. But it will filter down to consumers through these marketplaces–if Tradesy adopts it, it’s available to Tradesy users–providing yet another way we can simplify how we transfer money from place to place.

After PayPal got things rolling in the late ’90s, the payments world is evolving yet again through startups such as Balance and Stripe–a company that aims to simplify things for ordinary merchants in much the same way Balanced hones operations on marketplaces. And then there’s bitcoin, the open source software that could completely overhaul the way we not only send but store money.

The Push to Card tool was launched with a crowdfunding campaign. Customers using its existing payment services were asked to pay fees for the tool before it was even built. “The idea wasn’t to fund the development of the new feature, but to ask customers to put their money where their mouth is,” says Balanced founder and CEO Matin Tamizi. “Our goal was that if people paid $50k in 30 days, we’d build the feature. We hit that goal in 24 hours, including companies that weren’t even customers yet.”

Such an unorthodox approach is typical of Balanced. Tamizi describes it as an “open company.” That means not only that the company’s services are based mostly on open source software–enough that a competitor could build a clone of Balanced’s services fairly easily–but also that the company tries to make most of its decision in public. This lets employees from all parts of the company participate in major decisions and make suggestions about projects they’re not working on, and it lets the company get feedback from customers on new ideas, such as Push to Card. Bitcoin isn’t the only one reinventing payments with the open ethos.

Mario Maker Is Great. Here’s How It Could Be Awesome

Nintendo

For decades, Nintendo fans have asked for a game that lets them create their own Super Mario levels, and so of course this has never happened. Until this week, that is; Nintendo has announced that it will bring Mario Maker to Wii U in 2015.

The demo version that Nintendo showed on the E3 floor this week is surprisingly good. You can’t truly grok just how good it is until you try it on for yourself. But Nintendo’s only showing a little slice of the game. And whether Mario Maker is merely good versus mind-blowing is all down to what they do with the rest of it.

Wii U’s GamePad controller, with its touchscreen and stylus, is as expected a perfect control scheme for Mario Maker. You begin with an empty Mario level, and beginning to build out your platforming level is as easy as dragging items, terrain and characters down from the menu bar on the top of the screen. (You can also simply click an item, then click where you want it on the screen.)

The version shown on the E3 floor — which I believe has been stripped down significantly from the real game, so that players don’t spend too much time on it — lets you place enemies from the first Super Mario Bros., although you can tweak them a little bit more than that game allowed. You can put wings on a Hammer Brother and have him pop out of a green pipe, for example, if you are a jerk.

Amazon Launches Streaming Music Service; Spotify and Beats Shrug

Photos: Courtesy of Amazon

Amazon introduced a new streaming music service for its Prime members today. Amazon Music is an ad-free service that features more than one million tracks from 10,000 albums drawn from the catalogs of Sony, Warner and many independent labels (Universal Music Group’s catalog is absent, as it wasn’t part of the deal). You can listen to music online, or download them to your device for offline use. It goes live today on Kindle Fire HD and HDX, iOS, Android, PC and Mac apps, and the web. Amazon says it will be coming later this year to Sonos, Fire TV, and other platforms.

Streaming music is increasingly a commodity, with the various services trying to set themselves apart via features. Amazon says that it’s focusing on a few key areas. There will be no ads–neither audio nor graphical ads within the app. You won’t have to pay extra to listen to music offline. Nor will listeners have to suffer through tracks they don’t want to hear — you’ll be able to skip songs or reply them to your ear’s content.

There are a few nice features in the service. For example, if you’ve been buying music from Amazon since it began selling CDs in 1998, you’ll see many of those tracks and albums already populated in your library. And if there’s music from Universal you’ve previously purchased—something from Kanye West for example—it will still show up in your personal Amazon Music library even though you can’t stream other Universal tracks. If you’ve only bought a track or two from an album, the service will show you there are more free ones to be had. There are also playlists created by Amazon’s own “experts,” and Songza-style music lists meant to match your mood—for example under “Happy and Upbeat” you’ll find “Pop to make you feel better.” You can, of course, create your own playlists as well.

But really, the main feature is Prime itself. Without a deal that gives access to tracks from Universal, it would be hard to justify choosing Amazon’s streaming service over Rdio or Spotify. But given that this is yet another feature that comes with all the other benefits of Prime, and that the annual cost of a Prime membership is less than an annual subscription to Rdio, Spotify, Beats or Google All Access, it does more to help sell Prime than it does to sell itself as a standalone service. If you think of it as a music streaming service that also includes free shipping from Amazon, a robust video library, and a book lending library, it’s suddenly a very good deal–even without the songs from Universal artists. It is, very much, a way to help suck you into the Amazon ecosystem and eventually buy more stuff from Amazon.