The hidden beauties unlocked by photomicrographs

Founded in 1988, the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research has established itself as a leader in photomicroscopy. In addition to helping develop new technologies to further the field, it’s made important scientific discoveries of its own. In the early 21st century, its work on protoplasmic astrocytes redefined our understanding of their place in the brain. To the layperson, browsing through its images — many of which are available to view online — is simply a treasure.

The false-colored image above is of a cultured neuron (nerve cell), taken by Thomas Deerinck. Neurons detect and pass on information from sensory cells and other nerve cells by way of its dendrites (the branching extensions coming out from the nucleus). The dendrites are covered with Filopodia, which in the body would connect to other cells. It was taken with a scanning electron microscope that, as the name suggests, captures images by scanning subjects with a focused beam of electrons.

For more photomicrographs, you can visit the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research’s gallery page. We’d recommend starting with confocal images of retinas, also captured by Deerinck:

The Big Picture is a recurring feature highlighting beautiful images that tell big stories. We explore topics as large as our planet, or as small as a single life, as affected by or seen through the lens of technology.

Uber’s Family Profiles let you pay for up to 10 people

Many companies offer “Family” programs to make it easier to manage accounts, but they’re typically associated with things like mobile plans, streaming services or downloading apps from the App Store. Now, Uber is getting in on the act with its new “Family Profiles,” a service that lets you take control of a group of up to 10 friends, family members or colleagues and pay for them on their behalf.

To set it up, the group leader needs to head into the settings in the Uber app and select “Add a Family Profile.” It’ll then bring up a list of all the people in your contact list and ask you to select the people you want to bring into the fold. Those chosen will then be sent an invitation, which will then provide the option to request an Uber using payment details provided by the group leader (who receives a receipt for every ride).

Although Uber is pushing the family angle, it doesn’t want customers limiting rides to a partner or their children. The option also builds on Uber For Business, which makes it easier for employees to expense an Uber, by having their manager automatically pay for any rides requested while on the clock.

Source: Uber Blog

Chevy’s new Malibu keeps teens safe from themselves

The Chevy Malibu used to conjure up images of teen rebellion. The late ’60’s/early ’70s SS muscle car was the go-to backroads drag racer for more than a few adolescents. And while the latest incarnation is more “grocery getter” than rumbling rocket, it still has four wheels, which means kids will figure out a way to put their lives in danger while behind the wheel. GM wants to curb that.

With the 2016 edition, the Chevy Malibu has added a new setting called Teen Driver. Once enabled, the feature lives in the infotainment system in the dash and warns underage drivers when they exceed a predetermined speed limit. At that point, it kills sound from the stereo until the front seat belts are buckled, enables all the safety features like traction control and generates a report card for the whole trip. It’s basically a computer narc tucked behind a four-digit PIN.

While the cues to teenagers can be helpful, it’s the report card that’s going to do the most good here. For example, just because parents have instituted a speed limit of, say, 55 miles per hour, that doesn’t mean their child isn’t blowing through 35-mile-per-hour school zones. The real-time warning still relies on the driver to follow a rule. Most of us might remember from our own years in high school that once we got away from authority figures, a few in-car warnings wouldn’t have slowed us down.

But parents can use the report card to make decisions about future access to the car and use it as an opportunity to talk about their kids’ driving habits. And because it offers up hard evidence — such as when a safety system like stability control was activated and the top speed — a parent has the information necessary to make that conversation count.

If I had a teenage driver, I’d want this sort of system in whatever car I let them drive. I was incredibly reckless in high school. It’s a miracle I only wrecked one car. But because I was alone or with friends, my parents never found out about my behavior (well, except for that one accident). Teen Driver adds consequences to actions both in real time and afterward.

After driving the Malibu for a few days, then, it’s clear that it’s not the muscle car it used to be. Instead it’s a sensible family vehicle that’s trying to keep some members of your family from hurting themselves.

Medium’s collections makes it easier to find things to read

It’s taken a few years, but Medium has made a niche for itself as the ideal place for hot takes and navel-gazing editorials on the web. Starting today, you’ll be able to find the site’s best pieces more easily. A new “collections” feature on Medium’s iOS and Android apps will list curated groups of stories underneath major sections, which at this point includes things like news and education, as well as events like the 2016 election. And, in a big change, Medium is also using real-life humans to curate featured stories.

“We believe that in order to create a great reading experience for humans, other humans should be part of that process,” Medium’s Katie Zhu wrote in a blog post. “There’s a unique sensibility that individual curators bring, whether that’s a specific tone, voice, or simply good taste.” At this point, collections are being built by Medium’s editorial staff, as well as “a handful of trusted testers.” The plan, eventually, is to open up collections to all Medium users.

There aren’t many surprises in Medium’s curation guidelines: The site says it will highlight timely stories, compelling original writing and diverse voices, among many other criteria. Medium’s editors also say they won’t just be featuring stories from their friends, or from people who pay them. As with many news-focused sites, you can also suggest featured stories by emailing their tips line.

Ultimately, it’s features like this that will help Medium cement its role as the editorial platform of choice for the tech world, intellectuals and so-called tastemakers. It’s not as if the web needed another place for people to write stuff — but being able to cut through the noise and offer a single platform for high-quality writing could be genuinely useful.

Source: Medium

Nixon Mission Android Wear smartwatch is sport ready with 100m water resistance

Nixon Mission is the Android Wear smartwatch that takes sporting smart wrist wear to another level, a deep one. Nixon says this will be the first smartwatch capable of reaching underwater depths of 100 metres, or 10ATM, thanks to its water resistance.

The Nixon Mission comes with a pair of pre-loaded apps designed specifically for surfers and snowboarder or skiers. These apps offer live information on weather conditions around the world to help plan outings and movements using the smartwatch. Of course since it is an Android Wear operating system that will require a connection to a smartphone in order to update with live information.

The Nixon Mission features a round AMOLED display encased in Gorilla Glass. This is surrounded by a stainless steel bezel plus polycarbonate and stainless steel shell with silicone wristband. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor. As you can see from the above gallery it’s solidly built to withstand even the most rugged of sporty beatings.

Nixon will allow wearers to customise the choice of finish for bezel and band. The display can also mimic other Nixon watches like the 51-30, The Sentry, The Player, The Ranger and The Unit thanks to various watch faces.

The Nixon Mission will be on sale this autumn, expect pricing to be announced nearer that time.

READ: Android Wear 5.1 explored

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TomTom’s Golfer 2 GPS watch tracks your swing

TomTom’s original Golfer GPS watch can give your distance and score, but the latest golf devices from Piq and Game Golf also track your swing and distance stats. To keep up, TomTom has launched the Golfer 2, a watch that measures your swing using a built-in motion sensor and gyroscope. That lets you “see at a glance glance how far you’ve hit each ball, show your distance potential, and create a detailed post-round analysis” on the MySports app, according to the company. It only counts one shot in a 10-foot area, letting you take as many practice swings as you need.

It also has an “automatic scorecard” feature that works with the shot detection to automatically count your score, though you’ll have to enter the putts manually. As before, it’ll give you precise yardage to greens and hazards, “based on the player’s exact location,” as TomTom puts it. That’s a subtle jab at products like the Piq that use your phone’s GPS to measure distances, requiring you to keep it in a pocket and not your golf bag when playing.

Unlike the other devices, all you have to do is put on the slim, lightweight and relatively stylish watch, with no need to install NFC sensors on clubs. However, it’s not clear whether the Golfer 2 can record your club selection, as the Piq and Game Golf devices do. As with those gadgets, you’ll also have to remember to enter putting and other info during rounds and may have to tweak the data later to get useful info.

Other features include the ability to visualize graphics for greens and hazards before shots, round tracking for time, score and distances, wireless syncing to TomTom’s MySports app, daily course updates and 40m water resistance. The Golfer 2 arrives this May for $250, a considerable discount over the original model and less than the Piq and Game Golf devices.

Source: TomTom

Nanowires could bring ‘tunable’ privacy glass to the masses

If you don’t want to block light but still need privacy, a discovery from Harvard might let you ditch the window coverings. Researchers at the university’s engineering school have developed glass that changes from transparent to translucent at the flick of a switch. Such “tunable windows” aren’t new, but commercial models are currently expensive and slow. The new material, however, can transform from clear to cloudy in less than a second and should be cheap to produce.

A bright field microscope shows how nanowires distort an elastomer when voltage is applied.

Electrochemical smart windows are pricey because they’re painstakingly coated using vacuum deposition (Samsung’s crazy OLED windows are in another league altogether). Harvard’s tunable window, on the other hand, is made by sandwiching glass or plastic between soft elastomers that are sprayed with silver nanowires. The nanowires are too small to diffuse light, but squeeze together when you apply current, deforming the elastomer. The randomness of the coating allows light to pass but heavily distorts it, giving you similar privacy to frosted glass or sheer curtains. By varying the voltage, you can have different levels of privacy.

The voltages required are still too high, so the team is trying to make the elastomers thinner to reduce the draw. Once the materials are perfected, however, nanowires could be sprayed directly onto special windows, making the tech feasible for large projects. “Because this is a physical phenomenon rather than based on a chemical reaction, it is a simpler and potentially cheaper way to achieve commercial tunable windows,” says Harvard’s David Clarke.

Via: CNET

Source: Harvards/Seas

Sky opens ‘Q’ TV orders to everyone

Sky is back with a revamped TV platform called Sky Q, which introduces a series of new set-top boxes and a much-needed software overhaul. Until now, orders have been limited to UK customers with a Sky broadband package, however starting today the platform is available to everyone. So if you have an existing internet bundle with BT or Virgin Media, you can still order Sky Q and get an installation “in the coming weeks.”

If this particular route interests you, bear in mind that there are a few caveats. A Sky Q Hub is required, for instance, to turn your remaining Sky Q boxes into WiFi repeaters. That’s maybe not a deal-breaker, but it’s worth bearing in mind if you’re after the “complete” Sky Q experience. If you’re still sold on the idea, you can pick a package now from £42 per month.

Via: Digital Spy

Microrobots use the power of bacteria to avoid obstacles

We don’t need to scale down Google’s self-driving system to make microrobots that can swim in fluid while avoiding obstacles. Drexel University professor MinJun Kim and his team of engineers have discovered how to use bacteria to do so. See, Serratia marcescens, the flagellated microorganism commonly associated with urinary tract and respiratory infections, carries a negative charge. If you smear that on a tiny chip, you get a negatively charged microrobot that can stay afloat (thanks to the bacteria’s flagella) and swim around by riding electric fields applied to its environment.

Kim devised that method way back in 2014. For this new study, the team has created an algorithm that gives the tiny machines the power to detect and avoid any distortions in the electric field on their own. These distortions can typically be found near the corners of other objects in the fluid. By circumventing them, the robot is also avoiding anything that can block its path. The professor explains that this level of “autonomy is an important step” if we want to use micromachines for targeted drug delivery or to build microstructures.

Kim, of course, isn’t done exploring the potential of bacteria-powered microrobots. Now that this particular study is done, he’s planning on creating a system of micromachines that can manipulate live cells in the lab. Among other things, that system could be used to control the growth of stem cells for research and medical purposes.

Source: Drexel University, IEEE Xplore