Pain-free patch uses dissolving microneedles to deliver your yearly flu shot

Why it matters to you

Microneedle patch is a pain-free alternative to needle-and-syringe immunization, that can also be used anywhere.

There are plenty of reasons why needle-and-syringe immunization isn’t great — ranging from the difficulty of self-administering it to, well, the fact that some people hate being stuck in the arm with a sharp bit of metal. Fortunately, it seems like the folks at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University have come to much the same conclusion. With these issues in mind, they’ve developed a new experimental Band-Aid-sized flu patch that could one day replace your annual flu shot by way of dissolving microneedles.

“Collaborators at GA Tech have been working on a microneedle patch (MNP) for vaccine delivery for many years,” Dr. Nadine Rouphael, professor at the Emory University School of Medicine and first author of the study, told Digital Trends. “The microneedles are tiny and dissolve within the superficial layers of the skin. The goal of the technology is to be safe, effectively deliver vaccines, and be simple to use.”

In a trial of 100 patients, the pain-free patch was concluded to be safe for use in humans, while also carrying out its use case of generating the right antibody response to fight flu. In the aftermath, more than 70 percent of patch recipients said they’d prefer a patch-based vaccination to a traditional injection, or even a nasal spray, when getting future vaccinations.

The fact that the patch can be used anywhere is one of the things that makes it so exciting. In the recent study, a subgroup of subjects had to administer the vaccine themselves, and were easily able to do so. Considering that the World Health Organization estimates that between 250,000 and 500,000 people die from influenza each year, a technology like this could help treat people who might otherwise not travel into a flu clinic for whatever reason.

“Since the MNP completely dissolve, leaving no sharp waste behind, and does not require refrigeration, it makes it very attractive for self administration outside healthcare settings,” Rouphael said.

Next up, Rouphael said the goal is to carry out studies in different populations and different vaccines. “This summer Micron Biomedical — the manufacturer of the patch — and Emory University will be conducting MNP placebo studies in kids,” she said. “Micron Biomedical, GA Tech and CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), with funds from the Gates and Melinda Foundations, will [also] be testing the patch for measles, rubella, and inactivated polio in 2018 to 2019.”

Between this and the various early warning technologies researchers have come up for tracking the spread of flu, hopefully we’re getting closer to being able to avoid the sneaky influenza virus whenever it rears its ugly head.

Reader poll: How are you keeping your gaming PC cool?

As we swing fully into the summer months, the weather is starting to heat up, and that makes cooling a gaming PC trickier than normal. Intake fans are pulling in warmer air than they’re used to, and may even be pushing your room up to above-average temperatures thanks to formidable exhaust. We’re struggling with the same issues in our homes and test lab, so we’re wondering how you keep your PC cool when it starts to heat up outside.

How are you keeping your gaming PC cool during the summer?

— Digital Trends (@DigitalTrends) July 3, 2017

The first option is also one of the simplest. More fans, or better fans, can often mean better airflow, although that isn’t always true. Your case may not have enough intake vents to actually experience a noticeable reduction in operating temperatures. Even with plenty of ventilation, adding more fans may not create enough pressure to actually improve airflow or lower heat buildup. In that case, you may have to take more aggressive options.

That often involves liquid cooling. Whether it’s an all-in-one cooler with a closed loop for your CPU, or a complex series of hard-lined tubes and extra radiators, liquid cooling doesn’t just improve performance temperatures, it can also keep a system consistent through exterior temperature fluctuations. It’s becoming cheaper than ever to include liquid cooling in a gaming rig, and it’s an excellent choice for keeping cool.

Another option is to simply use central air conditioning or a window AC unit to keep the whole room cool. It’s not the most direct answer to the problem of high CPU and GPU usage generating a lot of heat, but it’s certainly an effective one, assuming you don’t mind paying a bit extra on your power bill for the month. Plus you’ll just be a nerd — and not a sweaty nerd.

Finally, there’s the easy way out. Just don’t worry about it! Hardware is generally capable of running upwards of 80 degrees Celsius without issue, so if the weather isn’t too extreme when you are, there’s no need to stress about it. That said, there may be some adverse effects that come about through apathy, the largest of which is that important components like the GPU and CPU may have to throttle, or hold back on speed, in order to keep cool enough to stay within recommended temperatures.

How to download the MacOS 10.3 High Sierra public beta today, right now!

It doesn’t officially release until Fall 2017, but Apple recently opened up the beta version to everyone. So, if you want to get a sneak peek at the next big MacOS update before it’s ready for prime-time, here’s how you can download and install MacOS High Sierra public beta right now.

Backup first!

First things first, you’ll have to enroll in the Apple Public Beta program if you’re not already a member — if you are, just move on to the next step. For everyone else, let’s forge onward! All right, there’s not much to forge through, just a couple links and a registration page, but let’s forge anyway.

Before we go any further though, it’s important to mention that the MacOS High Sierra public beta is incomplete software. It’s going to be buggy, and you will very likely run into some issues, particularly with third party software. As of this writing, we’ve run into issues with Microsoft Office, Wunderlist, and a few other common productivity apps. Nothing that caused us to lose data, but be prepared for some unexpected weirdness.

So, with that in mind, make sure you backup your files. For anything important that absolutely cannot be replaced, be sure you send it off to the cloud – Dropbox, iCloud, and OneDrive are great for this – or create a hard copy on a flash drive or external hard drive.

That’s not just a measure for the abundantly cautious, this is something everyone needs to do before installing the MacOS High Sierra beta, because it’s going to make some changes to your Mac’s file system. That means it’s going to be fiddling around with your hard drives, and how they store your files.

Sign-up for the Apple Public Beta Program

If you’re still intent on downloading the MacOS High Sierra beta, let’s get started! Head over to the Apple Public Beta program page, and sign up with your Apple ID. It’s a quick and painless process. There’s just a beta software agreement you’ll need to look at, but once you scroll through it and hit agree, you’re in!

Now that you’ve been inducted into the secret order, let’s talk about blood sacrifices. Go ahead and acquire three fatted calves, and a set of scarlet robes. Once that’s out of the way, all you’ll need to do is grab the High Sierra update and start downloading. You can skip the calves — this time.

Install the MacOS High Sierra Update

Here’s the part where we beg you to back up your files again, because it’s your last chance before MacOS High Sierra starts performing surgery on your precious data. Last chance!

All right, let’s do this. Once your update is downloaded, tell the Mac App Store to install it.

Your Mac will warn you about the changes to your file system, so make sure you’re installing the update on the correct partition. Now, just let your Mac get to work. It’ll reboot itself, and apply the update, which can take quite a while depending on how old your Mac is. Even on a 2016 MacBook Pro, it took about 20 to 30 minutes to complete.

When it’s finished, your Mac will boot up into MacOS High Sierra, and all those new features will be at your disposal. It also comes with an awesome new wallpaper, so you can show off to your friends.

AT&T makes changes to GoPhone prepaid service, offers new plans

Why it matters to you

If you’re looking for a cheap data plan under a strong network, AT&T’s new prepaid plans might be your best option for unlimited talk and text.

If you’re looking for a simple and cheap prepaid plan, AT&T might be your best option. The carrier’s GoPhone prepaid offerings may soon see a rebrand — to be known as AT&T Prepaid instead — with new plan rates now available.

There was already speculation of the rebrand last week when a reader discovered that Target’s website listed an AT&T Mobility Web $25 Prepaid Card, describing the service as the one formerly known as GoPhone, Prepaid Phone News reported.

While all three plans are currently available on AT&T and still listed under the GoPhone name, a photo featuring the prepaid rebrand was uploaded to Reddit on Sunday — further hinting the new look is soon to be official.

The plans consist of unlimited data for $65 and 6GB for $45 which both include unlimited talk and text within and between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Both plans also offer roaming in Mexico and Canada for talk, text, and data, among other perks listed on the site.

The cheapest plan will cost you $35 for 1GB of data and includes unlimited talk and text in the U.S., unlimited text to over 100 countries, and eligibility for a multi-line discount — which allows you to save money per month when you add your friends and family to your account. As for additional savings, customers can take $5 off all plans if they agree to enroll for AutoPay.

The news of a potential rebrand comes a week after AT&T launched cellular access in eight more states bringing broadband internet to 70,000 locations. In attempt to expand its coverage to more rural areas, the carrier has a goal of launching its service in 400,000 locations before 2017 ends.

It’s clear that cheap unlimited data plans are the one way carriers have been battling it out to lure customers in. Up until last week, Sprint offered one year of unlimited data service for free if you switched from your current carrier. When comparing it to plans by other major carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile it’s the cheapest plan on the market for unlimited data.

Even though a free year of data is enticing, it might not outweigh Sprint’s infamous track record when it comes to coverage and speed — especially after last year’s OpenSignal report. Not to mention its shaky future with reports of mergers with Comcast or T-Mobile.

If you are looking for more stable and reliable coverage, AT&T’s new plans — especially 1 GB for $35 — could be the next cheapest option for unlimited talk and text under a strong network.

SolarSack water purifier taps sun to bring clean H20 to developing regions

Why it matters to you

SolarSack is an affordable and environmentally friendly water purification system for developing regions.

A team of Danish students have developed what they’re calling an affordable and sustainable solution for purifying water in developing regions. The system, dubbed “SolarSack,” includes a 4-liter pouch that purifies water when placed in direct sunlight for four hours.

SolarSack works by harnessing heat from the sun, as well UVA and UVB rays. These elements combined eliminate more than 99.9 percent of the pathogenic bacteria in the water, a figure the team says was affirmed by the World Health Organization, which has approved the method. The system has so far been tested in villages, refugee camps, and slums in Kenya and Uganda.

“After the first study in Uganda, it became clear that the use of coal and wood constitutes a major threat to the natural environment, and the price of fuel increases as forests are cleared. So we decided to use sunlight as a resource for water purification. There is plenty of sunlight in Africa, and it’s free,” designer Anders Løcke said in a statement.

As a result, SolarSack’s creators have managed to keep its price down to just about $1, with most of the costs coming from distribution. That puts its price on par with a bucket of coal, although SolarSack may provide five times more clean drinking water.

“We estimate that a SolarSack can be produced for less than one-and-a-half Danish kroner (about 25 cents), transported, and end up in the hands of the user for less than a dollar. The bag can be reused 150 times, making it significantly cheaper than the alternatives,” said Louise Ullmann who led the project with Løcke.

Accessing potable water is a struggle for many people living in East Africa, where more than 47 million people are without it and where around 80 percent of diseases are a result of poor sanitation. With SolarSack, Løcke and Ullman hope to provide an alternative to boiling water over a wood or coal fire, which is currently the most common method for purifying water, but has negative consequences on the health of people and the environment.

Løcke and Ullman recently won a green startup competition in Denmark. They are now competing internationally for funding and help in developing SolarSack further at the ClimateLaunchpad in Cyprus.

More or less teeth? Computer modeling helps work out the recipe for a perfect smile

Why it matters to you

Research could help surgeons aiding patients with partial facial paralysis to create more genuine, natural smiles.

Computer modeling can do anything. It can create microworlds for teaching robots how to pick up real-world objects. It can help model the spread of influenza through social media posts. And it can let you know whether the smile you’re flashing Brenda from accounts receivable is more “welcome to the company” or crazy Jack Nicholson from The Shining.

This last idea is one that researchers from the University of Minnesota recently set out to explore with a new study, designed to uncover the components inherent in a good smile.

“We teamed up with a digital artist and medical facial specialists to develop a 3D model of the human face capable of realistically creating the subtle spatio-temporal variations seen in facial expressions,” Dr. Sofia Lyford-Pike, one of the author on the study, told Digital Trends. “We created short animations of smile-like expressions by systematically manipulating three spatial features: smile angle, smile extent, and teeth show, as well as dynamic symmetry. To determine which combinations of smile features were most successful, we asked over 800 participants to rate the smile animations in terms of their ‘effectiveness,’ ‘genuineness,’ ‘pleasantness,’ and perceived emotional intent.”

The conclusion the researchers reached was that, for the most part, big V-shaped smiles with lots of teeth are worse than subtler, less manic ones. And that there is such a thing as a smile that’s too perfect. “Two aspects of the results were surprising,” Lyford-Pike said. “The smile ‘sweet spot’ that we discovered contradicts the ‘more is always better’ principle, which is currently guiding medical practice. [Also], slight temporal asymmetries are preferred over smiles that evolve in a perfectly symmetric fashion. To our surprise, perfect mirror image smiles were rated as faker and creepier than smiles with slight temporal asymmetries.”

If you’re wondering why researchers are investing so much time in figuring out the perfect smile, though, don’t worry: this isn’t open-ended research with no useful applications. “The goal is to understand precisely what makes a smile successful, for the purpose of improving facial reanimation surgeries for patients with partial facial paralysis,” Lyford-Pike concluded. “Beyond this immediate application, our results can be useful for creating more realistic animation of facial expressions in digital environments. A future goal is the development of personalized biofeedback applications, which can be used to improve one’s ability to display and perceive facial expressions.”

You can read the full study in the online journal PLOS One.

Unlock your PC with your Samsung phone’s fingerprint reader

Have a recent Samsung phone and a Windows 10 PC? Life’s about to get a bit easier. Samsung has updated its Flow app to let you use the fingerprint reader on Galaxy devices running Android Marshmallow or newer (such as the S6, S7 and S8) to log into any Windows 10 PC using Hello, not just Samsung’s own Galaxy TabPro S. If you regularly keep your phone on-hand, you won’t have to enter your password every time you sit down at your computer.

Flow is also much more helpful if you regularly check alerts on your phone. The app now syncs mobile notifications with any Windows 10 device, rather than just Samsung-branded PCs. You won’t have to worry about missing a text message or an Instagram like just because you’re working at your desk.

Via: The Verge

Source: Google Play

Most popular Android apps this week: Bandicoot Adventure In Jungle, XDA Feed, Tiles, and more!

The Google Play Store is filled with many apps, which is great for consumer selection, but can often make app discovery difficult. Some apps just never make it to our homescreen. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of this weeks hottest Android apps that have most likely gone under the radar or are so new that they haven’t had enough downloads to be featured or make it onto a top list.

Tiles
App Info: Tiles makes use of the new Quick Settings Tile API (https://developer.android.com/about/versions/nougat/android-7.0.html#tile_api) to provide new tiles that can be added to Quick Settings to change system settings and take quick actions without leaving the context of the current app. $1.49

Bandicoot Adventure in Jungle
App Info: Help this hero Bandicoot jump over the jungle and up to collect the magic apples and avoid enemies throughout an adventure journey through the levels. Help this fox jump happy again the anger of the cortex while filling his chest full of magic apples. Free

XDA Feed

App Info: XDA Feed is a “feed” of the best of the best from the XDA forums, updated several times per day. Whether it’s a new ROM, kernel, or mod to keep your phone customized, or a theme, wallpaper, or icon pack, to keep things fresh, XDA Feed will keep you apprised of the best stuff from the XDA forums, with granular notifications to filter content type and push interval selection — or disable them altogether. Free

Video Downloader Mate
App Info: Video Downloader Mate help you to share video with your friends very easy, Video Downloader Mate also allow you to download your favorite videos. This mate video app allows you to download videos from the Internet directly on your device. Free

Race Kings
App Info: Experience thrilling new racing gameplay, and compete against 100% live real-time opponents. Free

Adobe Scan
App Info: Experience thrilling new racing gameplay, and compete against 100% live real-time opponents. Free

If you like these apps then drop us a comment below with your thoughts. Also if you have spotted a new app that you think is worth a mention, leave a comment below with your suggestion and we’ll be sure to check it out.

Here’s how Oxford scientists think bloodsucking ticks could help prevent heart disease

Why it matters to you

Proteins derived from tick saliva could be used to develop drugs to fight heart disease, stroke, pancreatitis, and arthritis.

When you think of animals saving people’s lives, you probably picture a dolphin rescuing some ailing swimmer from drowning, or a Lassie-style dog pulling a toddler out of a well. In fact, the big lifesaver from the animal kingdom may just turn out to be one of the more unusual suspects out there: the tiny blood-sucking arachnid known as the tick.

More commonly thought of as the carrier of various tick-borne diseases, including rickettsia and ebola, a new study from the U.K.’s University of Oxford suggests that tick saliva could actually be an invaluable weapon for helping fight inflammation-based pathologies like heart disease.

“We have developed a method of rapidly identifying and characterizing proteins in tick saliva by cloning tick salivary gland genes into yeast,” Professor Shoumo Bhattacharya, lead author of a paper on the research, told Digital Trends. “We have used this method to identify tick saliva proteins, called evasins, that bind and neutralise chemokines, which drive inflammation in the heart and other organs. These tick saliva proteins could be turned into drugs that treat inflammatory conditions driven by chemokines.”

The work is detailed in a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. It names several new tick evasins, and demonstrates how one — extracted from the cayenne tick found in the Americas — can bind and block the effect of the proteins which cause inflammation in the disease myocarditis, heart attack and strokes. Tick saliva contains around 1,500 to 3,000 of these inflammation-blocking proteins. They are used by the tick to prevent the kind of painful inflammation that would normally alert a host to the tick’s presence, thereby giving them a period of up to 10 days to feed unnoticed.

“We [next] need to raise funding to do more research, show efficacy and mechanism of action of these evasins, [and] identify and engineer new evasins,” Bhattacharya said.

He said the researchers also plan to collaborate with the pharmaceutical industry to convert their findings into therapeutics. Or, to use the catchier term the team uses, to develop a “bug to drug” solution. The results may lead to the development of new medicines to help fight diseases in which inflammation is present — including heart disease, stroke, pancreatitis, and arthritis.

Perhaps combined with new AI tools for helping predict pathologies such heart disease, it seems that the tick is finally living up to its superhero status. Just ahead of Amazon’s reboot of the classic superhero cartoon The Tick, too!

Time-traveling Windows 10 Timeline to miss Fall Creators Update deadline

Why it matters to you

Unless you’re a Windows Insider, it will be awhile before you can travel back in time on your Windows 10 machines.

Microsoft recently announced the next major update to Windows 10, Fall Creators Update, at its Build 2017 event held in May. The company highlighted a number of new features for the update, including the new Story Remix app that will help novices create compelling videos with the help of some artificial intelligence and a new Fluent Design System that will make Windows 10 and its apps a more cohesive and dynamic environment.

One of the more exciting new features announced at the event is the Timeline, which promises to let users move back and forth through their workflows on various devices and return to apps, documents, and tasks. Unfortunately, as MSPoweruser reports, Microsoft will not be able to complete the Timeline feature by the time Windows 10 Fall Creators Update ships to users.

The work comes via Twitter, where Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Windows Joe Belfiore responded directly to concerns that the Timeline wouldn’t make it out in time:

Correct. Timeline won't be in the Fall Creators Update. We're planning for it to be in early insider builds shortly after FCU is out.

— Joe Belfiore (@joebelfiore) July 3, 2017

This is not the first time a high-profile feature failed to make the cut in a major Windows 10 update. The My People feature was promised for Creators Update that shipped in April and it, too, was left out. The My People feature is slowly making its way into the latest Windows Insider preview builds and so far the functionality is rather limited compared to what was promised at its introduction in 2016.

Timeline is particularly important to Microsoft and Windows 10 because not only does it expand the operating system’s value in helping users be more productive — a key Microsoft mantra — but it also helps tie Windows 10 to other important platforms. Android and iOS will gain Timeline support via Microsoft Cortana, which already helps tie the platforms together for sharing reminders and seeing Android notifications on Windows 10 machines.

Microsoft has been doing a great job of letting users know what is coming in Windows 10 and the Windows Insider program helps the particularly courageous — not to mention IT administrators — get a feeling for the upcoming changes. Sometimes, the company gets ahead of itself, however, and makes promises that it cannot quite keep. This is such a case, but users will likely be happier to have the Timeline feature delayed as opposed to suffering through a buggy rollout.