Using cellphones and sewage, scientists can tell what drugs you’re taking

Why it matters to you

A new waste-sampling technique lets researchers more accurately pinpoint population drug use.

Asking people about their drug habits — whether perfectly legal pharmaceuticals or those on the more illicit end of the spectrum — unsurprisingly doesn’t always result in reliable data. You know what does? Analyzing waste products in the form of sewage, since that’s where ingested drugs ultimately end up in some way, shape, or form.

This is where a new study comes into play, as researchers analyzed both sewage and cell phone signals as a means of finding out more specific information about the inhabitants of certain areas — from what they use medicinally to a census of who is in a certain area at a certain time.

“Through combining measurements of drug residues in sewage with counting the number of mobile devices in the area to [indicate] the number people there when we collect our sample, we have developed a tool for knowing the per capita drug use for the population with a relatively low level of uncertainty,” Professor Kevin Thomas, from the faculty of Health of Behavioral Sciences at Australia’s University of Queensland, told Digital Trends. “What’s exciting is that we are able to deal with highly dynamic populations, yet still say with confidence what the level of drug use is. This is a really exciting development as it significantly reduces the uncertainty associated with population weighting that has been a weakness of many wastewater-based studies. [It] opens up the opportunity to look at spatial and temporal trends with much more certainty — a really important development as we start to look at new biomarkers in sewage.”

For their proof of concept, the researchers looked at Oslo, Norway, where they found that the population in one area can change by more than 40 percent in one 24-hour period. That pretty much renders any survey limited to local residences enormously inaccurate, even if they all did tell the truth about their habits. The researchers also noted some intriguing details related to seasonal drug usage, like finding that ecstasy is most heavily used during weekends, while illegal drug use in general peaks in June and July.

“We are currently working on expanding the biomarkers in wastewater that we measure to cover chemical exposure, different health effects, and nutrition,” Thomas continued. “We hope to be able to develop a suite of biomarkers that will tell us about the health of a population in a particular area with the overall goal of protecting human health.”

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Benjamin Brush plays popular music to keep kids brushing their teeth

Why it matters to you

A clean mouth is an important way to keep people healthy. Benjamin Brush makes it easier to form good brushing habbits.

Brushing teeth is easy, but almost everyone can agree that it’s not the highlight of their day. The dentist recommends we brush twice a day for two minutes, but busy schedules or laziness can shorten the time actually spent brushing. Wouldn’t it be easier to brush more if it was entertaining?

Benjamin Brush, the latest product from BleepBleeps, is a smart toothbrush for the whole family. This cute connected device makes brushing teeth more fun with the aid of music and games. Users can download their favorite music from millions of available tracks on the BleepBleeps Music Store. Each song plays for two minutes, giving everyone reason to keep brushing. As a reminder, Benjamin Brush vibrates every 30 seconds to signal when it’s time to clean the next section of teeth.

“As a parent I know it’s difficult to get kids to brush properly – or even at all,” company founder Tom Evans said in a statement. “We made Benjamin Brush to get everyone more excited for brushing their teeth and to encourage good brushing habits.”

By pairing the toothbrush with the BleepBleeps app, parents and kids can keep track of their brushing. Everyone earns points based on how long and how often they brush their teeth. Siblings can compete or parents can reward children for good habits.

Depending on a user’s age, there are two different brush heads to choose from. The Pom-Pom Brush has bristles in every direction, making it easier to clean a toddler’s little teeth. As children get older and grow their permanent teeth, they can upgrade to the Big Brush head. Both brushes are made from soft, flexible, and hygienic silicone bristles. These prevent over brushing and protect the tooth enamel.

Inside the waterproof base is the speaker and a sonic motor that produces thousands of pulsations per minute for cleaner teeth. Recharging Benjamin Brush is as easy as plugging in a USB cable.

Just like BleepBleeps other kid-friendly products, Benjamin Brush is available for pre-order on Kickstarter. The campaign runs through October 12 with prices starting at $55. After initial shipments go out in January, the toothbrush will be made available to the mass market for $89.

Parallels 13 review

Maybe it was the best-in-class build quality, or the pleasant MacOS user experience, but one way or another you decided to invest in a Mac.

As enjoyable as MacOS is, a day will come when you might need to open up a Windows exclusive application. When that day comes, you’ll be faced with a decision. Do you partition your drive, fire up Boot Camp, and install a full-fledged version of Windows? Or do you just buy Parallels 13?

There are other solutions, but these two rise to the top of any Windows-on-Mac discussion. During our Parallels 13 review, we saw firsthand why that is — and why Parallels might be the best option for most people.

Living in parallel

The divide between Windows and MacOS isn’t as stark as it used to be. Outside of gaming, you can find an analogous version of most Windows software nestled in the warm embrace of the MacOS App Store, or elsewhere online. All the major productivity suites are on MacOS and Windows — Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, and of course Google’s G Suite.

There’s still cases where you’ll need a regular install of Windows, though. A number of specialized software tools only support one platform or another, and software developers often need access to a Windows environment for testing. That’s where Parallels comes in.

Installation is quick and painless, and it doesn’t require any messing around with hard drive partitions or boot loaders. You install it like any other MacOS application — after you pay the entry fee of $80, or $100 per year, for the Pro version. Click through a few menus, and that’s it. The rest of the installation goes on auto-pilot, downloads Windows 10, and breezes right through all the setup.

Parallels is great at doing heavy lifting in the background, out of sight.

Installing a Twitter client requires more interaction than installing Parallels 13, and that’s a good thing. Parallels is great at doing heavy lifting in the background, out of sight.

Contrast the installation process to Boot Camp, and it’s easy to see why Parallels 13 is the more attractive — if expensive — option for some. To install Boot Camp, you’ll need partition your hard drive, reboot your Mac a few times, and then deal with installing Mac-specific drivers on your Windows install. Even then, the trackpad never feels quite right.

Windows when you want it, MacOS when you don’t

Once it’s installed, Parallels 13 offers the full functionality of Windows 10 in parallel with MacOS. You can fire up Parallels from your applications menu, or you can just click your new Windows folder from the dock, and jump right into any Windows app, as if it were just a part of your MacOS experience.

The seamless transition between Windows and MacOS has long been the draw of Parallels, and the latest version upholds that storied tradition. Windows 10 is never more than a click away, and your Windows apps even live in your dock, just like your MacOS apps.

On top of that, Parallels 13 goes one step further. With the “Coherence” mode, Parallels actually does a decent job of merging with MacOS proper. The Windows 10 panel goes away, and your Windows taskbar icons jump up on your MacOS menu bar. Your Windows apps even live inside your MacOS desktop environment, just like your regular MacOS apps.

All right, what’s the catch?

Parallels and its Coherence mode are very cool, but they require a substantial amount of system resources. We did our testing on a 2016 MacBook Pro 15 — with an Intel Core i7-6820HQ and 16GB of RAM — and Coherence mode caused significant slowdown over time. Sites had trouble loading, while Excel and Word started to cry for mercy, exhibiting substantial input delay.

If you do need it, you’ll find Parallels 13 is nearly perfect solution.

That said, slowdown was the only real issue we encountered during our testing, and Parallels does an admirable job of managing system resources when you’re not actively running Windows apps. When you tab out of a Windows app, Parallels puts it on the back burner. Your Mac won’t be quite as slow, but there’s still a bit of input lag.

Other than that, Parallels ran every Windows 10 application flawlessly during our tests. Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and even Steam ran without any issues. In fact, when we had Photoshop open in MacOS and Windows 10 with Coherence mode active, it was hard to tell which one was which.

It’s important to point out that running Windows 10 through Parallels is a bit more limited than running Windows 10 through a Boot Camp install. Parallels is a virtual machine — an emulation of a Windows machine — and Boot Camp just installs a regular version of Windows 10 on your MacBook or iMac hardware.

The Boot Camp version of Windows 10 can interface directly with your hardware, so it’s always going to be a quicker, more robust option and the best option for gaming on a Mac or MacBook. Gaming through Parallels is… ill-advised.

Advanced, graphics-heavy games like Overwatch — if you can get them to run at all — will be unplayable. That’s not what Parallels is meant for, so remember that if you were hoping Parallels might offer an easy path to gaming on your Mac.

A solution in search of a problem

Overall, Parallels 13 does an excellent job of integrating Windows 10 into MacOS. It’s seamless, fast — usually — and reliable. If you need access to a Windows 10 environment for software testing, or just one or two applications, Parallels is an excellent choice.

With that said, for most users, the price of entry will be too high for what you get. Parallels 13 is an excellent piece of software, but the utility of the software for most users is debatable. Parallels targets a set of power users that need frequent access to both operating systems.

For most people, Parallels is an answer in search of a question – but if you do need it, you’ll find Parallels 13 is nearly perfect solution.

How to use an LTE Apple Watch with an Android smartphone

It’s hacky as all hell and your battery life will be terrible. But it works.

While testing the Apple Watch Series 3 GPS + Cellular last night, I floated a crazy idea past iMore editor-at-large Rene Ritchie: What happens if you set up the Apple Watch on an iPhone, then swap that iPhone’s SIM card over into an Android phone? Would the watch recognize that its paired iPhone SIM was no longer in an iPhone and stop working? Would it still work over a carrier’s LTE connection? And more importantly: If it worked, what could it do?

Well, because we embrace insanity here at iMore, we tried it. And, barring a bit of hacky behavior, it works.

I’m going to preface this write-up by saying that I personally think this is a terrible way to use the Apple Watch. Your battery life will most certainly be nonexistent, because the watch solely relies on a LTE connection. You won’t be able to get any fitness data on your Android smartphone. And you likely won’t be able to access certain features like calling internationally or sending and receive SMS messages from your watch.

How we did it

I used my iPhone 8 Plus on AT&T and the new LTE Apple Watch Series 3, along with a loaner Galaxy S8 Active from Michael Fisher (of Mr Mobile fame), who also shot a video which we’ll be posting soon.

After setting the Apple Watch up, we swapped my iPhone 8 Plus’s SIM card into the Galaxy S8 Active, and isolated the iPhone 8 Plus in Airplane mode so that there was no possible way for the Apple Watch to connect to the iPhone or remembered Wi-Fi networks.

It took the Android device a few minutes to reboot and connect to AT&T. During that time, my watch showed a depressed “Disconnected,” though it did attempt to connect to the (limited) cellular network inside our hotel in NYC.

Once the S8 Active was connected, I went outside (to find a stronger cellular signal) with only my watch. To kickstart it, I swapped the watch into Airplane mode, then back out of it. Then I asked Siri to call my mother. It took Siri a few seconds longer than it has over past Series 3 queries, but Apple’s assistant delivered — and a few minutes later, I was talking to my very-confused mother.

We didn’t stop there, however. Fisher and I then went up to our hotel’s rooftop terrace and placed another call (to him), asked Siri a few queries, and checked for directions on the watch. We also sent an iMessage (!) to Rene, which delivered successfully even through cellular; it appears the watch has its own iMessage handshake protocol separate from iPhone when it’s on cellular — even if your original phone SIM is now in an Android device.

I also had Fisher place an inbound call to me from his older iPhone 7. The call displayed on both the Apple Watch and the Galaxy S8 Active; I then picked it up on the watch and we proceeded to talk for a short period of time.

Wacky.

Things we still haven’t tested, but I would like to explore:

• SMS (“green bubble”) messaging: I couldn’t get a straight SMS message to work when using my Series 3 over cellular normally, so I’m curious to see if this will work at all. We also didn’t test receiving SMS messages on the watch.
• International calling: As with SMS, I couldn’t get this to work when using the Series 3 in stand-alone mode, though this may be an AT&T limitation (along with no roaming).
• FaceTime Audio: If iMessage has its own protocol on the watch, it stands to reason that FaceTime Audio might as well — you’d just need to set up the original iPhone with iCloud, iMessage, and FaceTime addresses before switching to Android.

Who might actually want to use this

If I had to recommend this work-around to anyone, it would be families who have both an iPhone and an Android device — those who prefer Android in their pocket but want an Apple Watch on their wrist, and they have a family member with an accessible iPhone where they can still sync fitness data, iCloud calendars, and change settings.

Yes, you could use some random friend’s iPhone to set up your watch, but it’s a terrible idea from a security standpoint. Honestly, it’s just a terrible idea, period. Don’t do this.

Even if you do have a multi-device household, it’s far from an ideal solution: Your watch’s battery life is going to be awful from it needing to constantly try and look for LTE, and you’ll be missing out on a lot of key features available to watch and iPhone users. Also worth considering: This “option” might disappear at any time with a software update or a carrier settings change.

What you need

If you are absolutely sure you want to do this, here’s what you need to get started.

• An unlocked iPhone 6 or later
• A factory-default Apple Watch Series 3 GPS + Cellular watch
• An unlocked Android smartphone with a microSIM card slot
• A cellular network that supports Apple Watch Series 3 GPS + Cellular models
• A SIM removal tool

How to make your Apple Watch work with an Android smartphone

Remove the SIM card from both your iPhone and your Android phone.
Insert your Android phone’s SIM card into the iPhone.
Once your data connection enables, open the Watch app on the iPhone.
Set up your watch, and add it to your carrier’s cellular network.
Finish setting up the Apple Watch.
Switch the SIM card from the iPhone to your Android phone.

Toggle Airplane mode on and off on the Apple Watch to make sure it connects to its cellular network.

Use your Apple Watch alongside your Android smartphone.

If you want to change your settings or sync your Apple Watch, you’ll have to repeat steps 1-3 then adjust accordingly from the Watch app.

What do you think?


Would you try this insanity to get a little slice of Apple on your wrist even without an iPhone in your pocket? Let us know in the comments.

iPhone 8 at iMore: Everything you need to know!

Apple wins two patent rulings against Qualcomm

Apple and Qualcomm’s ongoing patent wars have netted two victories for Apple.

Qualcomm’s processors — at the very least, its modems — are key for any LTE-connected device in today’s world. Beyond the high quality of the radios, Qualcomm is also the only company that licenses the CDMA technology that Sprint and Verizon use for their 2G and 3G networks. Earlier this year, Apple and Qualcomm began a legal battle over Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) patents that stated Qualcomm was charging unreasonable sums for patents essential to cellular technology. Qualcomm followed that up with a claim to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) stating Apple infringed on six of Qualcomm’s patents.

Apple Insider reports that Judge Curiel of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California (where the legal arguments for the FRAND case are being heard) has ruled Qualcomm cannot collect intellectual property (IP) royalty payments on Apple’s manufacturing partners until the total royalties amount is determined, if that happens at all. Qualcomm will now have to calculate and argue just how much royalty money will need to be recouped from Apple and its partners.

Next, Judge Curiel denied Qualcomm’s motion to drop Apple’s related lawsuits in other jurisdictions. Qualcomm will now be tasked with proving infringement in each location it is suing Apple, including the UK, China, Japan and Taiwan. There hasn’t been any indication on the status of Qualcomm’s patent claims against Apple. Additionally, the larger battle of FRAND patents is still ongoing, and it’s still important to Apple and the cellular market as a whole. Licensing costs are a large part of the costs of a cell phone, so an increase in licensing fees would quickly have a ripple effect on the prices of smartphones, cellular tablets, cellular smartwatches, and cellular laptops.

‘Resident Evil 7’ DLC trailer offers the first look at Chris Redfield

Chris Redfield has had a long and storied career as the fictitious protagonist in many installments of Capcom’s Resident Evil video game series. The Raccoon City policeman starred, along with partner Jill Valentine, in the original 1996 game, and has appeared as a major character in Resident Evil Code: Veronica, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil: Revelations. He also has a cameo in the latest installment, Resident Evil 7: biohazard, and will show up in the free, downloadable expansion Not A Hero, this December 12th. A new gameplay trailer, just released at the Tokyo Game Show, shows off a bit more of his role in the upcoming release.

The video starts off with Redfield suiting up in a mining cave, ostensibly to find three men from a missing unit. He makes note of a massive “shield machine” before heading further into the mine. He soon finds one of the missing men in a cell, then runs off to find a key. As this is a Resident Evil game, Redfield finally runs across some zombies, which he dispatches quickly via grenade, a punch to the face, and a pistol. The gory visuals continue as he blasts his way through the mine, killing toothy, stringy monsters along the way. The final boss is a bloated, gross, massive beast who spills guts and gore all over Redfield, who says, “just another monster.”

The gameplay in the trailer seems sort of flat to me, to be honest, but the visuals are gorgeous, with tons of shadows and high-res zombie attacks. If you don’t want to wait until December, Resident Evil 7: biohazard is available now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.

Via: Gematsu

Source: Capcom/YouTube

Volvo launches 12-month trade-in plan with XC40 crossover

By Reese Counts

After months of teasers and leaked images, Volvo finally pulled back the curtain on its latest crossover, the all-new XC40. The stylish new crossover packs in everything you would expect from a modern Volvo. The model will pack a whole host of active and passive safety equipment beneath its handsome, sporty skin. Two gasoline powertrains have been announced, though a hybrid and full electric version will come sometime later.

As with nearly every compact crossover, the XC40 looks to sell as much on style as it does on substance. Volvo is offering a wide range of interior and exterior colors, including a two-tone roof. In total, there are 17 color combinations for the roof and bodywork. The “Thor’s hammer” LED running lights flank a sharper version of Volvo’s corporate face. The overall design is a smaller, more sporty version of what you see on the XC90 and XC60. That’s far from a bad thing, as those two are some of the best-looking vehicles around.

Likewise, the interior looks like a miniaturized version of Volvo’s larger models. It’s likely to use lower-grade materials, but the basic framework all seems to be there. The bold design and color choices carry over from the exterior. One model with black leather and red carpeting (shown in the photo gallery above) looks particularly fetching. The center stack features Volvo’s quick and clean infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, while a bin below packs Qi wireless charging. A panoramic sunroof is available.

No Volvo would be complete without safety equipment. The XC40 comes standard with City Safety, which includes pedestrian, cyclist, vehicle and large-animal detection with automatic emergency braking. Other features include Pilot Assist, Run-off Road protection and mitigation, Cross Traffic alert and a 360-degree camera.

Care by Volvo will launch alongside the XC40. The new service is a negotiation-free sales model that has a national, flat-rate monthly fee, combined with the opportunity to upgrade to a new car as early as 12 months. This flat fee includes maintenance, insurance and the replacement of wear and tear items. Volvo equates it to owning a phone, where one payment gets you all the services. No pricing has been announced.

The 8.3-inch ride height is on the low side for a crossover, but we can’t imagine many owners will be taking this on more than some dirt or gravel roads. That said, if the Cross Country and other XC models are any indication, Volvo knows just what its buyers are looking for in an off-roader.

At launch, the XC40 will come in a T5 Momentum all-wheel-drive variant. That model starts at $35,200 and comes with a turbocharged inline-four. Later in 2018, a $33,200 front-wheel-drive model will hit showrooms.

BYU develops sports helmet foam for real-time concussion detection

Cranial collisions are haunting the sports world more and more. A recent survey of 111 former football player’s brains found that 110 showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease caused by repeated blows like those delivered in the high-contact sport. Companies have been scrambling to provide ways to better track injuries during games, which is a complex undertaking. Researchers at BYU have introduced a non-interfering solution: A nanofoam cushioning that measures impacts in real-time.

The foam can be inserted in helmets and padding to track collisions via electrical signals and wirelessly send the data to tablets and devices held by coaching staff on the sidelines. It’s designed to operate quickly, too, informing coaches how hard a player has been hit — and whether they’re at risk of a concussion and should be pulled off the field.

Previous prototype devices simply indicate when players are hit, but the BYU researchers’ nanofoam tracks the severity of impact: When compressed, nickel nanoparticles rub against the foam to generate a static charge, which is gathered by a conductive electrode and measured by a microcomputer before being sent off wirelessly. A bigger hit generates a higher static charge, which is measured to account for acceleration, energy and velocity. The current setup determines how hard the wearer has been hit with 90 percent accuracy, according to research published by the BYU team’s lead Jake Merrell in the journal Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

As with most prototype devices, it’s too early to tell whether programs or leagues in any sport will pick up Merrell’s team’s invention. But EurekAlert noted that a company that produces taekwondo vests had started using the foam in its products to score fights and train athletes.

Source: EurekAlert

Facebook and Amazon might bid on English Premier League rights

It’s no secret that online titans are jockeying with each other for sports streaming rights. Most of the news has revealed domestic squabbling, like when Amazon wrested the rights to broadcast NFL games from Twitter back in April. But a Manchester United vice chairman said in an earnings call today that Facebook and Amazon might bid on the European broadcasting rights to the English Premier League (EPL).

Before you ask, that doesn’t include the rights to broadcast in America, which NBC acquired for a reported $1 billion deal back in 2015 to retain until the 2021-22 season. But snatching broadcasting rights for leagues far from home is apparently now in Amazon’s purview after it recently outbid Sky and ITV for tennis’ ATP World Tour for the next five years.

That deal only cost the online shipping titan about £10 million (almost $1.4 million today), but Amazon is going to have to dramatically up its bidding budget to beat out Sky and BT for the next set of Premier League rights. The latter two split three years of EPL broadcasts ending in the 2016-17 season by collectively spending £5.14 billion (almost $7 billion today) to secure them.

It will be interesting to see if Amazon and Facebook do challenge Sky for the UK and European rights to the EPL. The English broadcasting company just splintered its sports coverage into ten optional channels that users can pick between, and losing a key pillar of its portfolio would be painful.

Source: The Miami Herald

Court rules Stingray use without a warrant violates Fourth Amendment

Today, the Washington DC Court of Appeals overturned a Superior Court conviction of a man who was located by police using a cell-site simulator, or Stingray, CBS News reports. The court ruled that the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when law enforcement tracked down the suspect using his own cell phone without a warrant.

Stingrays work by pretending to be a cell tower and once they’re brought close enough to a particular phone, that phone pings a signal off of them. The Stingray then grabs onto that signal and allows whoever’s using it to locate the phone in question. These sorts of devices are used by a number of different agencies including the FBI, ICE, the IRS as well as police officers.

The use of cell-site simulators, especially without a warrant, has come under question a few times in recent years. In 2016, a federal judge suppressed DEA evidence obtained via such a device, the first time a federal judge had done so. Last year, members of Congress called for legislation that would protect citizens’ privacy and require a warrant before Stingrays could be used by law enforcement. Two such bills were introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this year.

In the ruling, the judges said, “We thus conclude that under ordinary circumstances, the use of a cell-site simulator to locate a person through his or her cellphone invades the person’s actual, legitimate, and reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her location information and is a search.” They also said, “We agree with [the defendant] that the government violated the Fourth Amendment when it deployed the cell-site simulator against him without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause.”

The ruling could affect ongoing and future cases as well as law enforcement’s use of the technology.

Via: CBS News

Source: DC Courts