Boomer Alert: Exercise Keeps Your Brain Young

Photo: Kelly Rossiter

Boomer Alert – Exercises Keeps Brain Young

Baby boomers are aware that exercise tends to keep the brain young and several of them would be pleased to know that using the phone or a computer could be of great help. In the course of the ageing we tend to suffer from cognitive decline but there are options wherein we could slow it down and one of these options is exercising the brain to keep it active.

It is a known fact that exercise can add years to our lives and helps in keeping physically fit and a new study shows that it keeps us mentally fit as well. A new study – Smarter every day: The deceleration of population ageing in terms of cognition indicates that the use of computers and smartphones could make a difference.

The authors of the study were not the first to notify about it. Nora Ephron had pointed it out some years ago. She indicates that we tend to live in the Google years and there are benefits to it. When one tends to forget something, you take the iPhone and go to Google. The Senior Moment has become the Google moment and by controlling the obligation of the search mechanism, one can prove that you can cope up.

The Flynn Effect – To Perform Better

Study conducted indicated different intelligent tests that were performed on people 50+ in 2006 and thereafter in 2012 and it was observed that the 2012 group had cognitive functioning equivalent to people four to eight years younger.

 Moreover there has been a steady inclination among all ages to do perform better on these tests which is known the Flynn effect, which has been attributed to nutrition, education and other causes. However, they studied in particular if the technology made any kind of a difference.

The theory that the growing use of modern technology in daily life tends to increase cognitive demand on the older people which can helps them in maintaining cognitive potentials to higher ages, is put to an experimental test in the current study.

As the authors of the study draw their conclusion observing other factors which could have affected the consequences they conclude that the use of computers as well as smartphones does make a difference. Valeria Bordone, one of the study authors has summarized the results in an interview in `business website Quartz’.

Smartphone Users – Enhanced Thumb Sensory Representation

In several cases 52 years old from 2006 obtained the same score as 60 years old from 2012 and the levels of education had not changed between these two groups. However, it was observed that their use of computers as well as mobile phones had undergone a bit of a change.

Evidently to kids essay at Quartz, 52 and 60 years olds are considered senior citizens. The authors of the study reason and suggest that video games together with the other software programs could be helpful in keeping multi-tasking skills and attention extents high as we age.

Nora seems to be right that living in the Google years tends to keep one smarter for a longer period of time, not for the information one gets whenever essential but for the act of looking out for it and locating it tends to keep the brain working. As per another study, smartphone users also have `an enhanced thumb sensory representation in the brain’ and utilising the phone and the tablet could keep your thumb young also.

Cancer Patient Receives 3D Printed Ribs

Cancer Patient Receives First 3D Printed Rib Cage

A 54 old cancer patient from Spain has become the first person in the world to receive a 3D printed RIB CAGE who had been suffering from a cancerous tumour which had grown around his rib cage and sternum. A section of it had to be removed to cut out the growth completely.

However, rather than changing the ribs with a metallic plate as is the custom, surgeon at Salamanca University Hospital requested Anatomics, an Australian firm to make a personalized titanium imitation. By scanning the patient’s sternum and the rib cage, the team designed a customized model utilising a 3D printer provided by Australia’s national science agency – CSIRO.

Additive manufacturing research leader at CSIRO, Alex Kingsburg informed that `the reason 3D printing was preferred in making this implant was because it needed to be customised accurately to suit the patient since no human body tends to be the same and hence every implant would be different’. He further adds that it would have been an extremely complex piece to create usually and would have also been impossible.

CSIRO’s 3D Printing Facility Lab 22

After the 54 year old Spanish had been diagnosed with a chest wall sarcoma, the surgical team made a decision to remove his sternum an a part of his rib cage, to replace it with an implant where the implant was designed and manufactured by medical device company – Anatomics.

The device company used the CSIRO’s 3D printing facility Lab 22 in Melbourne, Australia. The surgical team comprising of Dr Jose Aranda, Dr Marcelo Jimene and Dr Gonzalo Varela from Salamanca University Hospital, were aware that the surgery would be a difficult one due to the complicated geometries that were involved in the chest cavity.

The process has been described in the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic surgery. Dr Aranda has stated that they thought that they could create a new kind of implant which could fully customise to replicate the intricate structures of the sternum and ribs. They wanted to provide a safer option for the patient and improve their recovery post-surgery’. Hence the surgeon had sought the help of Anatomics.

Implant Out of Surgical Grade Titanium Alloy

On evaluating the complexity of the requirements, Andrew Batty, CEO of Anatomics informed that the solution lay in metallic 3D printing. He stated that they wanted to 3D print the implant from titanium due to its complex geometry and design.

He added that while titanium implants had previously been utilised in chest surgery, designs have not considered the issues related to long term fixation and flat and plate implants depend on screws for firm fixation which may tend to get loose over a period of time. This could however, increase the risk of complication and the possibility of a re-operation. With high resolution CT data, the Anatomics team were capable of creating a 3D reform of the chest wall as well as the tumour enabling the surgeons to plan and precisely define resection margins.

With this, Mr Batty informed that that they were able to design an implant with firm sternal core and semi-flexible titanium rods which acted as prosthetic ribs attached to the sternum. Operating with experts at CSIRO’s 3D printing facility, the team then developed the implant out of surgical grade titanium alloy. The implant was built using a $1.3 million Arcam printer according to Alex Kingsbury from CSIRO’s manufacturing team.

Samsung Galaxy A8

Samsung – Outstanding Features Huge Screen Mated to Thin Chassis

Samsung has made the Galaxy A8 smartphone official after rumours of which had been spreading for several months. The device’s outstanding feature is the huge screen mated to a super thin chassis which is the slimmest that Samsung has ever produced.

The Samsung Galaxy A8 is a good slim 5.7 inch smartphone and its matte metal frame feels expensive along with its smooth shimmery white back cover which is really plastic. There is a fingerprint scanner though a great security features on the home button beneath the screen, 4G LTE connectivity, a MicroSD and a big 3050mAh battery and the design is the same as seen in all Samsung phones.

The Super AMOLED touchscreen has a resolution of 1080p weighting only 151 grams. It is slimmer than the 6.3mm thick Huawei P8. Samsung has chosen Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor to power the Galaxy A8, besides 2GB of RAM, together with 16GB of internal storage memory.

 The rear camera comprises of 16 megapixels with an f/1.9 opening and a 5 megapixel wide-angle camera on top of the screen for selfies. Moreover, it also has a LG style hand gesture control, a wave rather than a clenched fist with a complete enhancement mode.

Solid Home Button Instead of Soft/Capacitive

Samsung is one of the few major manufacturers still using a solid home button instead of a soft or capacitive one and the fingerprint scanners in combined to this button making it easy to use. Being slim it tends to become easy to hold inspite of the phablet sized at 5.7 inches and the speaker, camera as well as the flash are lined across the back in that order, right above a Samsung logo.

The Samsung Galaxy A8 is a dual SIM device having both SIM slots supporting 4G SIM cards, but 4G only can be used on one SIM card at a time while the other drops to 3G. Moreover, the second slot is a hybrid slot which doubles up as the microSD slot.

Users can opt between dual SIM connectivity and storage expansion taking into consideration the price level.The Samsung Galaxy A8 runs Android 5.5.5 with Samsung’s own TouchWiz UI incorporated in it making the experience mediocre to a light stock Android especially as it comprises of various China only software features and a reworked localized user interface which indicates that in its present form, the Galaxy A8 will be a Chinese exclusive and available to be ordered online through Samsung’s store.

Device Similar to Earlier Model

With regards to an international launch, no announcement has been done by Samsung so far. Samsung could be preparing a super thin smartphone for release.

A video had been posted on YouTube portraying the Galaxy A8 in action and actually sourced from the TENAA Chinese regulatory board. It showed a device that seems similar to the model seen in earlier leaked images and the shape is resonant of the original Galaxy Alpha and a metal chassis is apparent though the phone seems thicker than what the rumours conveyed.

Details of the Samsung Galaxy A8 first started appearing in March when the name had been registered as a trademark together with the A6 and the A9. Thereafter, word about the device was spread by SamMobile in April disclosing some technical specification, prior to some early images of the phone.

NASA’s Dirt-Scanning Satellite is Down to a Single Peeper

NASA’s - Soil Moisture Active Passive Satellite

Rocket mission to space is always a risky one and when things seem to go wrong, lethargy could lead to mishap. One such mission is the almost billion dollar Soil Moisture Active Passive – SMAP satellite that had lost one of its radar imagers a few months after coming online. SMAP’s sensors pair was intended to generate high resolution, extremely accurate maps of soil moisture, the core of the Earth’s water, energy as well as carbon cycles.

The blackened electric eye does not tend to blind the mission but does cause a hindrance to the satellite’s high definition mapping abilities and recently was announced by NASA that the extra eye was not coming back. SMAP had been launched by NASA in January to guard over the water which Earth stores in its soil where more than 97% of all the water on Earth is stored in the oceans.

The rest is sheltered up in ice caps and glaciers as of now and less than a single percent of all water on Earth seems to be in the form of soil moisture. However gallon for gallon, fraction of water seems to be of more importance than any other source on the face of the Earth which is due to the soil where the plants tend to grow.

Susceptible to Interference

The content of moisture in the soil regulates how many plants tend to grow in a certain area that controls how much carbon in absorbed out of the atmosphere. Moreover, when plants tend to absorb the carbon, they give out water vapour that provides the cool temperature on the Earth’s surface as it evaporates. The SMAP, after its winter launch tends to send soil moisture maps home in April.

 However towards July, something was incorrect with one of its paired sensors. Both the sensors were intended to collect data from the same slice of the RF spectrum but they use different systems. The `A’ in the SMAP, the active radar spring up energy from the Earth’s surface, taking the moisture readings centred on the return signature.

Dara Entekhabi, SMAP mission’s principal investigator and climate scientist at MIT informed that `the advantage is that it actually illuminates the surface having high spatial resolution, but is more susceptible to interference’.

Cause - Faulty Power Supply

The P in SMAP is the big cake pan shaped antenna that dangles off its side and as its name indicate, the passive microwave radiometer tends to sit back and gather the releases of the planet. It measures up a ton of data soil and can also see through clouds and tree cover though only views around 25 miles per pixel.

The active radar would have brought that resolution below to less than two miles but due to the active sensor affecting the big clock in the sky; the passive radiometer did everything on its own.Entekhabi has stated that the culprit was a faulty power supply and to amplify a signal, power was essential.

The failure could have been the result of faulty parts, a freak ion static occurrence or one of the several low probability events. The radar being unique was global mapping radar, producing a map every two to three days, according to Entekhabi and on a mission level, it crippled SMAP’s potentials in making high resolution maps and gather the data on how changes in soil moisture could affect long term climate.

The radar’s fleeting months of operation enabled NASA watch the climate change in real time, season vegetation changes, sea ice extent, and new bodies of water developed by melting permafrost. These maps are expected to be released later this month.

Ransomware: Porn App Took Secret Photos of Users

In a recent attack on the smartphone users by a highly luring adult player reveals the emergence of the ransomware in the smartphone segment. A US security firm called Zscaler had brought into focus a malicious Android based mobile application which brings ransomware to people’s devices without their knowledge.

This app was mainly an adult player which offered pornography but it secretly worked on taking pictures of the users through the popular front facing camera used for taking selfies. Later on this app stats locking the user’s devices and demands a ransom of $500 in order to unlock the device with a consistent message on the screen.

What are ransomware and how does it affect smartphone users? 

Ransomware are such apps which lock down the phones and demands money from the users in order to get back the control of the device. It even threatens them to release their private information, data and others or simply wipes out a device. Last month Intel Security has released a report which showed a significant increase in ransomeware attacks by 125% since 2014 targeting the computers and laptops.

Intel security chief had stated that ransomware are quite easy to make which can easily be made by a group of codes and offers great returns. Ransomware apps had seen a steep rise in the recent past due to its easiness of creation and opportunity of creating a large amount of money within a quick time interval. Ransomware apps basically rely on the embarrassment factor which can happen due to releasing of private information and data in the public sphere. Most of the time people’s reputation is at stake hence people resort to pay to the ransomware attackers in order to retrieve the control of their device.

How smartphone users can safeguard themselves from such ransomware? 

Ransomware isn’t new but it has been most on the computers and PC’s for the first time it is showing a potential threat to the smartphone segment which is a worrying factor. Applying certain common sense and following basic principles while using smartphone one can lower the potential being a victim of ransomware.

Some of the ransomware threatens to wipe out the device data which usually includes documents, photos and videos. In order to avoid any loss of data smartphone should back up their data in a regular fashion. In case any user becomes a victim of such ransomware then he can easily allow it delete the data without making the necessary ransom charges.

Always download apps from trusted app stores 

Apps should only be downloaded from the trusted app stores like Google Play Store which has higher level of security measures to remove any kind of ransomware from listing on its app store. Smartphone users should never download apps from the download link given in the mails.

Furthermore if you are a victim of current adult player ransomware then simply reboot your device in the safe mode and it will allow you to remove the third party malicious software easily. However this feature and method varies greatly from one handset manufacturer to other.