Friday, 7 November 2014

Scientists Create Apple That Fizzes Like Soda in Mouth


Lubera
There is really the good news for those persons whose daily calorie intake always includes soda because they can now get carbonated apple directly from the tree just as any ordinary apple. In this present marvelous world the scientists have dedicated all their intelligence to create such things that one has ever dreamt of.

Scientists have recently manufactured the first amazing and a new type of sparkling apple that can bubbles in the mouth while you eat it. When this apple is bitten by a person, the cells within the flesh of the apple release delicious juices that taste very sweet and you will feel that you are having some fizzy drink.

Creation of the apple-

Two varieties are mainly used to create this new apple. One of these varieties is Resi, which is a specimen of East Germany and it is very popular for its sweet qualities. Resi is a variety of apple that is very disease resistant. It is medium sized apple, which has a smooth round and flat surface and it usually grow abundantly. The skin of the apple is red along with little yellow.

Lubera- a Swiss company blended this variety with another one, named as English Pirouette to make the new apple known as Paradis Sparkling. This new fruit has soft texture along with a crunch. You will get the experience only if you bit it and not if you press it. The total formation of this new breed took some years to be perfect by the methods of genetic modification.

According to production manager of Lubera, Mr Maierhofer , the breeding process was carried on by repeatedly picking the richest apples that are found in the trees to make them to cross-breed. From the official website of the company Lubera, it is known that due to the distinct nature of this fruit, the word sparkling is added in its name.

Details of the fruit and its availability in the market

For any person who is interested in growing their own orchard that would be filled up with magical apples, i.e., the Paradis Sparkling Apple they can buy the sapling tree form. According to a particular video, seen on a website, the first apple will be brought into the market in the year 2015. This video also shows that these are a bit irregular shaped and when they are cut down into small pieces they will make a very different crunchy sound. This sound indicates that the cells are quite big in size and very juicy to provide the matter in the mouth.

The company appears to be targeting mainly the home gardeners as well as small-time cultivators with its innovative apple, and it has been frank regarding the downsides or the negative aspects of the fruit. The new variety Paradis Sparkling Apples are quite ugly in look, according to the company, though these were more unattractive at the early stages. The harvesting process is said to require a number of rounds, and the shape of the fruit is found to be sometimes huge and sometimes medium sized. Besides, the color is often dull and also the striping over it is irregular.

Google Skybox for Good: Access Satellite Images Freely


Google Skybox for Good: Access Satellite Images Freely
There is great news for all the non-profit institutions out there. Now you can access all the images you need via Skybox. The company has been recently purchased by Google in August for 500 million$. It uses the satellite SkySat-I and a technology called the Skynode, which allows companies to improve their performance through high fidelity imaging and analytical data. Skynode is comprised of a 2.4 metre satellite communications antennae, packed in the premier applications which allow an user to access relevant images in as little as 20 minutes. It comes with a flexible access plan.

Advantages of Skybox-

  • It allows access to those images that a business company requires- trucks, ships, cars, etc. It also displays the grid of ports, pipelines as per the requirement of the client. 
  • It provides real-time video streaming for global movements in 90 seconds videos at a rate of 30 frames per second for clarity.
  • It provides algorithms that help to solve business problems that may arise at any moment. 

Google has recently announced its Skybox for good programme that allows the use of skybox imaging for non-profit causes. Since skybox provides real-time images of the earth, it has immense possibilities for helping humans. Through the use of crystal clear pictures and analytical data, non-profit institutions can tell their story with better facts and data. It allows them to reach more people and to spread awareness.

How the Skybox for good program is helping people all over-

  • The program has already started tracking the melting of the Helheim glacier in Greenland which allows environmentalists to track the effects of climate change.
  • Google has partnered with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s Signal Program to trace the development of the displaced people of Sudan by their Internally Displaced Persons program. 
  • The images have also been used to view the beaches that have been cleared of landmines in Sri Lanka. The program has successfully taken some images of the Nagarkovil Village in the northern portion of Sri Lanka. HALO trust had verified that this area was free of landmines. Skybox imaging has helped to prove the rehabilitation of people by showing the presence of 84 houses and 40 acres of cultivated agricultural land.
  • Skybox has also made the tracking of elephants and other wildlife movements to determine the condition of endangered animals and study breeding patterns of animals in the wild. This can be helpful in the understanding of animal behaviour on a better level.
  • Sky Truth and Appalachian Voices are monitoring the rate of deforestation on the mountain tops for expansion of mines. The images available show the shocking truth about the devastating effects of this deforestation on the local community and wildlife of the Appalachians.

This program is available for anyone who attributes Google and does not profit from such images in any manner. Non-governmental institutions can also request for images pertaining to their areas of interest. This initiative from Google will definitely be a milestone in helping NGO’s and other institutions by allowing them to freely access satellite images.

Wednesday, 5 November 2014

Researchers Identified Sophisticated Chinese Cyber Espionage Team


Hacking
Collaboration between various security firms has thwarted one of the biggest and most sophisticated cyber espionage crew called the Axiom which is thought to be linked to China. This Axiom Threat Actor Group mostly targeted NGO and pro-democratic along with other individuals who are perceived as potential threat to China.

The Axiom Group

The group mostly targets pro-democratic NGOs in Asia along with industrial espionage by targeting organizations with influential energy policy and environmental policies. Also on the list is IT giants, chip makers, telecom companies and infrastructure providers.

The group mostly used phishing attack and malwares to get the job done. The typical attack seems more like a state-sponsored attack yet again. Their prime is the Hikit tool linked to an attack referred to as Deputy-dog attack, which famously used an IE zero day bug to attack Asian firms mostly.

The group seems to work relatively quietly and is thought to be more heavily funded than say APT1 crew (Shanghai based and PLA affiliated). According to Novetta, the group is active for 6 years, is highly disciplined and is well-resourced. The suspect that Chinese government is related is most certainly true.

The Collaboration and Solution

The attacks performed did not go unnoticed however and sooner rather than later, security firms started collaborating to bring it down. The coalition among the partner is led by Novetta along with Bit9, Cisco, F-Secure, ThreatTrack Security, iSIGHT Partners, Microsoft, FireEye, Tenable, ThreatConnect, Volexity and other unnamed partners. Via Microsoft’s coordinated malware removal campaign, the coalition took its first public action called operation SMN.

Over 43k machines with Axiom tool installations have been removed from machines. Among them 180 were clear examples of Hikit – the last stage persistent and data exfiltration tool that is the peak of the Axiom victim’s lifecycle. This was perhaps the first of its kind from security firms to fight off potentially deadly state-sponsored threats to the whole world.

The Diplomacy 

China has clearly denied any involvement in Axiom. According to Chinese Embassy spokesman, such events and allegations judging from the past are fictitious and China has itself been on the wrong end of cyber espionage according to revelations by Snowden.

With 2 weeks to go before President Barrack Obama gives Beijing a visit, cyber security will be a high priority agenda to discuss. Washington has previously tried hard enough to pressurize China over issues of possible state-sponsored cyber warfare against the US but has failed to sustain it after the Snowden revelations.

Novetta however hopes that the example set by the coalition will be followed in future to fight cyber terrorism. However, it will be very stupid to think that Axiom is gone for good. The operation was more of a remediation than knock-out blow and chances are that Axiom will be back soon though with probably different tools and strategies this time around.

The group has amassed lots of technical data regarding the threat and its workings which will help in future in fighting against such groups.

Google Exploring A Way to Search Bodies for Cancer, Heart Disease


Google X life science
US based tech giant Google Inc is exploring with the help of advanced technologies at its disposal to search inside the human body for the early signs of life threatening diseases such as the cancer and heart disease.

Google is working on developing a technology that combines the disease detecting with the use of nanoparticles, which would be sent into the patient’s bloodstream through a swallowed pill an it would emit its finding to a wrist worn sensor.

Google Plunges Into Human Biology With Dynamic Technology

Google is aiming to diagnose cancers, impending heart attacks, stokes as well as other deadly diseases before they could become fatal and beyond treatment. Google is working on the idea of identifying the slight changes in the human biochemistry, which could act as an early warning system. This ambitious work is at its nuptial stage.

It should be noted that the early diagnosis of deadly disease is the key to treating disease in the modern healthcare. Many cancers such as pancreatic could only be detected after they had become untreatable or fatal. There is also a marked differed between the healthy and cancerous tissues. Google ambition is to constantly monitor the blood for extracting and identifying the unique traces of cancer. In turn, this would allow the early diagnosis before any physical symptoms could even appear.

Google X: A Health Research Unit

Google has assembled a Life Sciences team at the special project Google X Lab which are experimenting with the nanoparticles. These nanoparticles would be transmitted in the human bloodstream to hunt for the signs of the medical trouble there report its finding to the sensors, which would be worn by the people. This project is conducted by the Google’s research unit known as Google X, which is dedicated to investigating potentially revolutionary innovations.

This project is also seen as the Google’s latest shift into the medical sector. Earlier it has worked on creating glucose measuring contact lenses for diabetic patients. It has also acquired a start-up, which has developed an innovative spoon to counteract the tremors caused by the Parkinson’s disease.

The Use Of Nanoparticles 

Nanoparticles are expected to have a unique magnetic quality, which would allow them to drawn to the worn devices and counted as well using a non-invasive detection method such as light or radio waves. Google is ultimately going to create a wristband, which could take these readings from the nanoparticles via the light and radio waves, one or more times within 24 hours.

Google even asserts that if its innovative technology gets successful then it could help physicians in detecting the diseases before their deadly onset in the human body.

Google is even planning to license its technology to the companies who are interested in using it specifically for the medically approved diagnostics.

Google had bought stakes in an anti-ageing research company Calico in order to address health and ageing problems by harnessing the advanced technologies.

Tuesday, 4 November 2014

Lollipop in Nvidia's Shield Tablet


Shield Tablet
The much awaited Lollipop

Finally, it is here! The latest version of the Android series as Lollipop. And with its release, all the leading companies are getting their sleeves rolled to get this version for their respective mobile phones and tablets as well. Likewise, Nvidia has also declared that their Shield tablet will also be soon updated to this latest Lollipop version.

Nvidia's official declaration

The declare was officially made public is one of the Twitter feeds. The officials in this feed had promised of bringing “Android 5.0 Lollipop and more.” Nevertheless, the official declaration of the upgradation is indeed a good one, thus showing that Nvidia does not at all want to lag behind. Yet the release time-frame hasn't been said. As expected by many speculations, this upgrade will be done about the end of this year.

The official declare says “Android 5.0 Lollipop and more.” The OS upgradation definitely gets included. However “and more” still makes other stay in vague expectations. Many people have been expecting that this “and more” can mean the inclusion of a software with a gaming centric form.

Other includes exciting features

Apart from this upgrade, the tablet also includes many other exciting features as well. The Nvidia tablet includes a 32-bit chip set of Nvidia Tegra K1. It also includes a massive 2 GB RAM. The latest Nexus 9 includes the Denver version of 64 bit. However, this 32-bit form is actually faster than many other chips that you can find presently in the market. The tablet also includes an impressive 8-inch display. In addition, it allows the device to run a resolution that comes in HD form with a range of pixels that include a combination of 1920 by 1080. Apart from these, the tablet also includes a 16GB or even a 32GB expandable storage space.

This tablet is available at two kinds of prices. The tablet coming in the Wi Fi only mode with a 16GB, is priced at a $299. On the other hand, the tablet, which has a 32GB mode with an LTE, is priced at $399. These features along with many more simply make the availability of this tablet a much awaited and an exciting one.

Lollipop suffices a lot

If these features are not enough to compel you to grab one of these tablets, the added Android Lollipop version will be enough to get one for yourself. Android Lollipop itself includes a whole lot of exciting features like improvised lock screen, notifications and many more. Both the release of Lollipop and the Nvidia tablet are all set to fulfil the expectations of the passionate Android lovers from all over the world.

Nvidia, undoubtedly does a good job in declaring the official release of their upgraded OS. Of course other issues like the speed and quality depends on its future use. Whether it will be better than Nexus or will it be faster than HTC is all really vague. But that doesn't make the enthusiastic waiting a slower one. The only solution is to grab one and get pampered in it.