New research hints at stem cell treatments for cataracts

A pair of unrelated studies into the efficacy of stem cell-based treatments for correcting cataracts had the scientific community abuzz on Tuesday. The studies are “amazing, almost like science fiction” Mark Daniell, head of corneal research at the Centre for Eye Research Australia in Melbourne, told Nature News. “The potential of this technique is mind-boggling.”

The first study, conducted by Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan and published Tuesday in the journal Nature, examined the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (aka iPS cells, those gathered from adult donors) as the basis for growing replacement corneas. They found that iPS cells could be coerced to grow into discs containing several types of eye tissue. These discs can be separated, their various cell types isolated and used in transplants. The Osaka University team successfully pulled corneal cells from one disc and managed to transplant them into the eyes of rabbits.

The second study, conducted by teams at UC San Diego and Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, looked at whether doctors could get the body to regenerate its own corneas — specifically in children born with cataracts. Doctors have long had issue with implanted artificial corneas becoming cloudy as the body’s cells grew over them, now they want to simply do away with artificial lenses altogether. They found that lens epithelial stem/progenitor cells (LECs), did in fact, regenerate corneas if given the chance (about 3 months). After numerous animal trials, the team successfully regrew the corneas of 12 infant humans.

“This is just a change in a surgical procedure,” James Funderburgh, a cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told Nature News. “They are not putting in an artificial lens: they are just letting the lens regrow.” What’s more, this new technique has a complication rate of just 17 percent compared to the 92 percent rate when implanting artificial lenses.

Source: Nature News

Sonos announces layoffs, refocuses on streaming and voice tech

Sonos has announced that it will be “letting go of some employees,”; part of reshaping the company in a new direction. In an (admittedly vague) blog post, CEO John Macfarlane doesn’t say exactly how many jobs are going to be cut, but he says its’s a consequence of the still in-transition music industry. “Everyone in the ecosystem is adjusting to a world of streaming services,” he added, citing the addition of The Beatles back-catalogue across the top music streaming services.
Macfarlane says it’s an inevitable change — and that’s why the company is now focusing on these users over customers that are playing from non-streamed files and physical music collections. How? He’s not saying, but it’ll apparently involve “building incredibly rich experiences that were all but unimaginable when we started the company.” (The company recently added Apple Music to its list of compatible services.)

The second target is voice. Explicitly mentioning Amazon’s Echo products, the CEO said that voice recognition will be a big change for the company best known for speakers. Macfarlane adds that the company is investing into the technology to make sure it works like it should, reaffirming that the company wants to ensure it’s a sustainable, profitable one — and that means catering to the music streaming revolution.

Source: Sonos

Chrome Music Lab puts sound experiments on your browser

If you love to play with musical instrument apps, you might find Chrome Music Lab entertaining. It doesn’t have straightforward virtual pianos or guitars — it’s more of a collection of experiments (some familiar, some odd) to explore sounds, rhythms and melodies. One of them plays notes and tunes based on what you draw, for instance, while another remixes your voice. There’s also one experiment that works like a stripped down rhythm game if you’re not quite up for a round of Rock Band or Rhythm Heaven.

Google put the Lab together for Music in Our Schools Month, because the company “wanted to make learning music a bit more accessible.” That’s why you can play with all its experiments right on your browser without having to download extensions or add-ons. The best thing about Music Lab, though, is that you don’t have to know how to read notes or play an instrument to enjoy it: just go to its website and poke around to have some fun.

Source: Chrome Blog

Google joins Facebook’s effort to reinvent the data center

Facebook and Google aren’t the best of friends, but they’re willing to make exceptions for the right causes: Google has joined Facebook’s Open Compute Project in a bid to improve data centers everywhere. It’s starting off by contributing a new server rack spec that both improves power handling and lets project members’ racks slip into Google computing farms. The move isn’t entirely surprising, even though it involves an arch-rival. Google is no stranger to building its own hardware — it’s just offering some of that know-how to the tech industry in hopes of getting some upgrades in return.

It’s not the only company making moves, either. Microsoft is contributing SONiC, or Software for Open Networking in the Cloud. The code should help companies build switches and other networking gear using open source, widely compatible technology. While you probably won’t see a lot of these collaborations first-hand, you might just notice the difference if your favorite cloud services run that much faster or supply you with more storage.

Source: Google Cloud Platform Blog, Microsoft Azure Blog

Android N release date: What we know about the path to launch

An early developer preview points to a likely late summer release for the next version of Android.

With the arrival of the Android N developer preview, there’s burning question for those of us who haven’t yet played around with this very early version on a Nexus device: When will the next version of Android be finished, and released into the wild.

Typically, new versions of the OS tend to land in late October or early November. However there are signs that Android N could reach “stable” status a little sooner in the year than you might’ve expected. Writing on Medium today, Google’s Hiroshi Lockheimer suggests “final” Android N will be made available to manufacturers this summer.

By releasing the first preview and asking for your feedback now (in March!), we’ll be able to act on that feedback while still being able to hand off the final N release to device makers this summer, so they can get their hands on the latest version of Android earlier than ever.

It’s worth pointing out that a “release to device makers” isn’t the same thing as a public release. So while the people who make phones might get final Android N code this summer, that doesn’t mean updates will start pushing out, nor that new devices will start appearing running N out of the box around this time.

There are further clues in Google’s Developer Preview site, which breaks things down from the first “alpha” release of Android N, right through to the “final” code drop sometime during the third quarter.

• Preview 1 (initial release, alpha)
• Preview 2 (incremental update, beta)
• Preview 3 (incremental update, beta)
• Preview 4 (final APIs and official SDK, Play publishing)
• Preview 5 (near-final system images for final testing)
• Final release to AOSP and ecosystem

Android N Developer Preview

The Android N Developer Preview is just that — a developer preview. It is not intended for daily use. That doesn’t mean it’s not cool, and that you shouldn’t poke around. But know that things will break. Tread carefully. (And have fun!)

• All Android N news
• What’s new in Android N
• About the Android Beta Program
• Download system images
• Android N easter egg
• Join the Discussion

The big differences for developers this time around includes much earlier access to final APIs, and the ability to start publishing apps using those APIs to Google Play right then and there. This will allow users in the Android Beta Program to use and test them on their devices.

So while there’s no specific release date just yet — and we wouldn’t expect one so far out from launch — sometime in late Q3 seems a reasonable bet. That said, Google missed a few of its projected timeframes during 2015’s Android M Developer Preview, so don’t hold your breath.

As always with early developer previews and pre-release operating systems, everything is subject to change, and nothing should be considered anywhere near final until Google says so.

More technical details at the Android Developers site.

Multi-Window in the Android N Dev Preview is amazing on the Pixel C

It’s everything you imagined it could be and more.

We saw hints of multi-window support coming to Android when it was hidden deep in the Marshmallow Developer Preview last year. When Google announced the Pixel C, we thought for sure multi-window support would be made available due to odd (for displays anyway 1√2 aspect ratio of the tablet. (You know, just like a piece of paper.) For months now, anyone with an Android tablet that wasn’t made by Samsung has been screaming to multi-window support.

While nothing is ever set in stone when it comes to Google’s Developer Previews, it’s looking like Android N will be bringing multi-window support for all.

Here’s a quick look at how it works.

Multi-window in its current iteration is working on both phones and tablets. It works by splitting the screen in half, allowing you to run one app on each half of the display. If you’re holding a tablet horizontally, those apps are split side by side. If you’re holding the tablet vertically, those apps are split top and bottom. (Same for phones.)

To set an app up for split screen, you tap the multitasking button, press and hold on the colored bar above the app you want to set, and drag it to one half or the other. Once you let go of that app, it snaps into place and you’ll see a black bar with a white line in the middle to show you the separation point.

From here, you have two options. You can either set another app from your multitasking tray as the second app, or you can tap the home button and locate another app from your app tray. When you press the home key with no secondary app set, the first app will tuck itself away on the side of the screen so you can access the whole screen to locate your app. The Desktop is never split between the two sides. Once you have launched a second app, it snaps itself in place to fill the screen. From here, if you tap the home button again, whatever app you snapped to multi-window last will be sent away, and if you press home a second time you’ll be taken to the full home screen.

The default for this setup is to have the display split right down the middle, but that is far from your only option. The center black bar can be dragged in whichever direction you choose, increasing and decreasing the space the apps have available to them within several hundred pixels (or about a quarter or so of the full screen). In our brief tests, most apps we loaded handled this fairly well. Google has pointed out that resizing the window on the Pixel C can cause some crashing, which we’ve seen in our tests. These crashes aren’t frequent, but it’s a Developer Preview and things like this are bound to happen. If you load an app that isn’t set up to handle multi-window, you’ll see a little toast notification letting you know the app isn’t optimized and may have problems. It’s all early days, but still surprisingly functional.

By far the most important feature to multi-window is the way it forces apps to play nice with landscape displays. Apps like Slack, which force portrait when trying to sign in and look horrible taking up the whole screen on a large tablet like the Pixel C are contained and orient nicely in multi-window. While app developers should still stop behaving this way with their apps, Google has clearly stepped up and offered an alternate solution. We’ve only tested this on the Google Pixel C so far, and Google has made it clear the Android N Developer Preview is far from ready to be your daily driver. That having been said, multi-window in Android N is amazing so far, and it’s going to get even better as app developers prepare their apps for this new setup.

Android N Developer Preview

The Android N Developer Preview is just that — a developer preview. It is not intended for daily use. That doesn’t mean it’s not cool, and that you shouldn’t poke around. But know that things will break. Tread carefully. (And have fun!)

• All Android N news
• What’s new in Android N
• About the Android Beta Program
• Download system images
• Android N easter egg
• Join the Discussion

Catch Russell talking Android N live tonight on TWiT’s Tech News Today

Tonight, starting at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT, you can catch Android Central’s own Russell Holly live on TWiT’s Tech News Today. The topic of the day? Why, the freshly released Android N Developer Preview, of course!

Russell will be on hand to talk with hosts Megan Morrone and Jason Howell about the fresh goodies tagging along in the Android N preview, the beta program and more. If you’re curious for an early look at where Google is going with the next big Android release, be sure to tune into the livestream tonight at the link below!

Catch Russell on Tech News Today at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT

Android N Developer Preview reveals notification shade changes galore

Google is doing even more with the notification shade in the latest version of Android.

It’s very (very) early days for Android N, but as we’re playing around with the first release of the Developer Preview we’re instantly seeing big changes on the horizon. The first and most noticeable is the new notification shade design, which makes big changes to both individual notifications and the quick toggles that we’ve all been so fond of in Marshmallow.

Knowing that what we see here is very likely to change throughout the process of the Developer Preview being updated, and that what we see here is currently only applicable to Nexus devices, let’s dive in and see how notifications are changing with the next version of Android.

Notifications

First up are the notifications themselves. The base system is quite similar to that of Marshmallow, but a big handful of visual changes add up to quite a different experience. Visually, the notifications now take up the full width of the screen, and are also separated by a thinner line instead of a wide gap — the perceived depth of the cards is dramatically diminished with these two changes.

App icons accompanying notifications are now much smaller, but are visually separated with pops of color for the app icon and name to stand out from the white, grey and black of the rest of the notification.

Though notification bundling was already integrated into previous Android versions, what we have now turns the knob up to 11: notifications can be bundled up tightly with lots of information, and when expanded can be expanded a second time to see individual pieces of data and act on them. As this is a first release of the Developer Preview we only have Google’s own apps to go off of here, but Gmail is a great example of this right now — bundling together several messages into just one notification, then letting you expand and act on each.

Of course you still have the ability to expand a single notification to act on it, whether that’s sharing an image or replying to a message, and those buttons now draw in some of that visual separation with color you see elsewhere in the notification. Google is hoping to have even more apps use a new API for direct replies from notifications, just as we’ve seen in some apps like Hangouts today.

Notifications can be expanded and contracted with the standard two-finger swipe gesture, like before, but there are also small expand and contract buttons to the right of the notification subject line, meaning you can get at them quickly with a single tap.

One final standout feature is a new option for managing how notifications are delivered to the notification shade. In Marshmallow you’re able to perform a long press on the notification to bring up a notification settings menu to block an app altogether, but now there are three options. Instead of a long press we now have a slight swipe (as opposed to a full swipe to dismiss) to bring up a settings icon, that when tapped exposes a new menu right in the notification.

You now have the choice to set each notification, by app, to come in normally, come in silently or not come in at all. “Do not silence or block” would be the standard notification we’re all used to, where your phone can vibrate and make noise as it arrives. “Silently” is how Google Now surfaces some low-priority notifications today: it will still hit your notification shade, but you’ll only see it when expanding your notifications and you won’t be notified with vibration or sound. “Block” works exactly as you’d think.

You can also tap into further settings, which in some ways are duplicative. The only other option here is to mark the app to override your Priority mode, meaning you can have it alert you at any time, even when you have sound otherwise turned off on your device.

While this notification system isn’t finished yet and is only working this way currently on the Android N Developer Preview for Nexus devices, it’s a nice set of visual and functional changes that have us excited for developers to take in and use. Together, they bring a nice improvement to the way notifications work.

Notification quick toggles

In the notification shade, the first change to notice is that you have access to your top five quick toggles right at the top of the notification shade with just one swipe, rather than having all toggles hidden behind a second swipe. Those toggles work just as you’re used to, with a single tap activating the toggle and a long press taking you to the appropriate settings area where applicable.

An additional swipe down on the bar reveals the full set of toggles, as we’re used to in Marshmallow, but now you can swipe left and reveal a second page of quick toggles, if you so desire. How do you get that many toggles, you ask? Well, Android N Developer Preview now has the option to completely customize the quick toggles.

Expanding the quick toggles shade and tapping “edit” takes you into a new interface for rearranging and choosing which quick toggles you want displayed — just as you’ve been able to do in Android builds from various manufacturers. Long press any toggle and drag it around to rearrange, show or hide it from view. You can have anywhere from zero to nine toggles available in the shade, and if you add more than nine the additional toggles will end up on the second page.

You can rearrange in any way you like, with the first five (looking left to right, top to bottom) showing in the non-expanded view.

It’s such a simple thing, but the changes in the Android N Developer Preview to the way the quick toggles work are pretty much exactly what Android fans have been asking for as long as Android has been around. This is also one area where Android manufacturers have arguably done a better job than Google itself — now the playing field is a bit more level.

Android N Developer Preview

The Android N Developer Preview is just that — a developer preview. It is not intended for daily use. That doesn’t mean it’s not cool, and that you shouldn’t poke around. But know that things will break. Tread carefully. (And have fun!)

• All Android N news
• What’s new in Android N
• About the Android Beta Program
• Download system images
• Android N easter egg
• Join the Discussion

Android N’s Recent apps key has grown a bunch of awesome new features

The Recents key in the Android N Developer Preview makes it quicker and easier than ever to jump between tasks.

The Recents key — the square you see in the bottom-right corner of most Android phones — is a staple of the OS, letting you see a card-deck of recently-used apps. In the Android N Developer Preview, along with the new split-screen view for phones and tablets, the Recents key becomes more useful than ever before, with brand new features making it easier to hop between apps.

For starters, the individual app previews are much larger than before, with more valuable screen realestate being turned over to the apps themselves, not the surrounding background. And when you’re switching apps, you’re now given a much larger preview of the second app in the deck (i.e. the one you were using before the current app.) It’s not unlike the way Samsung has tweaked the Recents menu on the Galaxy S7 and other phones running Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

As usual, you can swipe through the deck and tap an app, but it’s also possible to use the Recents key in a bunch of new ways for faster app-switching.

Here are some of the new tricks we’ve encountered so far:

• From your home screen, double-tap the Recents key to jump to the last-used app.
• With an app open, double-tap Recents to jump to the app you had open before.
• Bring up the Recents menu, then keep tapping the Recents key to cycle through apps in the deck. When you stop, the selected app will go fullscreen.
• With the Recents menu open, long-press the Recents key to switch to split-screen view. (You can also long-press and drag on an app preview.)
• In split-screen mode, long-press the Recents key again to go fullscreen.

Naturally, as it’s still in the developer preview stage, Android N could change considerably between now and the final release. Thing will likely look a bit different when the final code drops. Some of these features could go away, or new ones may be added.

Regardless, these are a few welcome changes to an important part of Android, and they should make it a lot easier for power users to quickly jump between tasks.

MORE: A closer look at split-screen on the Pixel C tablet

Android N Developer Preview

The Android N Developer Preview is just that — a developer preview. It is not intended for daily use. That doesn’t mean it’s not cool, and that you shouldn’t poke around. But know that things will break. Tread carefully. (And have fun!)

• All Android N news
• What’s new in Android N
• About the Android Beta Program
• Download system images
• Android N easter egg
• Join the Discussion

Dive into the Deep with Wallpaper Wednesday

Don’t let your home screen fall into a rut — switch out your wallpaper!

You don’t have to pull out a complex new theme like Deadpool to bring a breath of fresh air to your home screen. A new wallpaper can do wonders, and launchers like Action Launcher can re-theme your entire home screen around a good wallpaper. In our effort to help brighten your device — and maybe your day — we’re compiling some wallpapers for you to try out.

If you’ve got a wallpaper you use everywhere, share it in the comments below! We’re always looking for something new. Now get your wallpaper picker ready and see what’s in store this week.

Batman Circuitry by EchoLeader

Batman v Superman is coming up, and rest assured we are hard at work at some wonderfully dark superhero themes, but in the meantime, that doesn’t mean we can’t share some excellent wallpapers for the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel. This digital background brings to mind the system Bruce Wayne and Lucius Fox used in The Dark Knight. Except, y’know, without the law-breaking intrusion into the lives and privacy of millions of users…

Batman Circuitry by EchoLeader

Starfish Stones

The subdued tones of the natural scene give a soothing peacefulness to the home screen. And amid our chaotic lives, don’t we need a small dose of peace in our pockets? This wallpaper pairs well with most home screen layouts, and lends itself especially well to tablets and wider-screen devices.

Starfish Stones

Heart Stone

This is another natural wallpaper that works well on wider-screen devices, but it’s got a little more heart to it. Yes, I just did that. I have no shame. This background has a little warmer tone to it, which we could all use as we wait for spring to finally arrive.

Pretty Rose Quartz, ne?

Heart Stone wallpaper

Canal City by ryky

The vibrance of the city’s lights contrasts with the shadows of the canals beautifully in a wallpaper that evokes romantic nights and elaborate masquerades. When gazing at this wallpaper, I find myself humming lilting love songs and swaying with the gentle waves. Find some cazone napoletana ringtones and take a little trip to Italy every time you wake your phone up.

Canal City by ryky

Flowers and Thorns by GreenKiwiOfDoom

This wallpaper is reminiscent of the kimino-inspired wallpaper we had last week, but this radiant ruby beauty stands out much more. This is also a wallpaper that can be set in its original landscape format or turned to portrait for a strong gradient on your home screen as you fade from the brighter flowers to the bloody red thorns below.

Flowers and Thorns by GreenKiwiOfDoom