Device Could Make It Easier To Find Your Veins

Many a times we tend to face shortage of blood for life saving transfusions due to shortage of donors for the same. At times they may be discouraged due to the endurance of being poked by the nurse at several areas of their arm with a sharp needle to locate a vein which is not a very pleasant experience for them. But now with a device which shows a glowing map of the veins the process is made simple and trials of the technology have made headways in Australia.

A discovery has been made by scientists to find a way in locating the veins instead of poking around the body to find a spot. The Australian Red Cross Blood service is now utilising the near infrared light device which locates blood in studying whether it is able to locate hard to find veins resulting in less tension, making it likely for donors to come back and donate again.

The Blood service states that it would test 300 first time donors and 600 returning blood donors in the age group of 18 – 30 on several devices from different Australian providers with a hope that the vein visualization device, functions by waving a near infrared light source above the naturally deoxygenated haemoglobin in the body wherein it absorbs that light and the veins portrayed in glowing green.

Machine Safe – Adjusted to Individual Preferences

The machine is safe though it is suggested to avoid staring directly at them. Moreover, it can also be adjusted to individual preferences. This technology functions by beaming harmless near infrared light at the arm and our veins tend to contain lot of deoxygenated haemoglobin and since it is absorbed by infrared light, it develops an image of where the veins lie under the skin. Besides, the device could be used anywhere and is already being used widely in hospitals as well as pathology clinics around the world making it easier for people to have blood taken though it will also be helpful for generous donors in donating blood.

The first blood bank service in the world is the Australian Red Cross who have tried this technology and has started using in its Sydney clinics. Though it tends to look like a small radioactive, it is very safe and works by shining near infrared light on the arm that gets absorbed by the deoxygenated haemoglobin which floats around the blood and develops a glowing green image of the veins which the nurse can utilise in guiding the needle.

Reduced Anxiety/ No Painful Experience

With the introduction of this technology, which is already being used in several clinics all over the globe, enabling and assisting practitioners in taking blood samples, it will help in reducing anxiety of going through painful experience of locating vein thus enabling generous donors to return.

According to senior researcher at Australian Red Cross Blood Service, Dr Dan Waller, he states that `they are keen to retain young donors and it is important to test if this technology could help them to do that and are interested to see if the technology improves the donation experience in young people and if it increases their likelihood to return to make repeat donations’.

Graphene-Based Supercapacitors for Battery-Free Electric Cars

Photo credit: AlexanderAlUS, CC

Change in Power Battery free Electric Cars

Latest technology has brought about a change in power battery free electric cars within five years with scientists developing graphene based super capacitors which are light and can be used to create electric vehicles that are powered by their own parts of the body rather than the batteries.

Electric cars is considered as the future of sustainable transport but are held back due to the fact they need heavy, slow releasing batteries to power them and the top end Lithium-ion batteries available in the market tend to charge really slowly besides weighing a lot.

A better option is to use supercapacitors devices which could release a large energy burst though they are difficult to store much energy as batteries and hence plenty of them would be needed to power a car. Scientist have worked their way to combine batteries and supercapacitors to make batteries powerful as well as lighter in the shortest term though the ultimate goal is to create super capacitor which would also store a large amount of energy.

Since batteries seem to be the limiting element in the popularity of electric car, they are also one of the most expensive components of the vehicle, having limited range when compared to gasoline powered vehicles.

Supercapacitors Film to replace Battery

There have been remarkable changes recently wherein a team of researchers have developed a supercapacitor film which could replace the requirements of battery within the next five years and the collaboration between scientist at Queensland University of Technology and Rice University has resulted in two papers, published in Nanotechnology and Journal of Power Sources.

The supercapacitors comprises of two layers of graphene having an electrolyte layer at the centre and while the film is strong and very thin, it is able to release a large amount of energy in the shortest possible time, which is a necessity.

The ordinary batteries would take a huge amount of space while the super capacitor film can be integrated in several areas of the vehicle like the roof, floor, doors and the body panels.

The super capacitors of this size would be capable of providing the vehicle with the right amount of energy which the vehicle would be needing while at the same time making the vehicle much lighter.

A Graphene – Charges Quickly

Marco Notarianni, a PhD researcher of QUT stated in a press release that, `since vehicles would need extra energy spurt for acceleration, supercapacitors could be helpful which holds a limited amount of charge and are capable of delivering it swiftly thus making them the appropriate complement to mass storage batteries.

He was the lead author of the Nanotechnology paper - `Super capacitors offer a high power output in a short time, meaning a faster acceleration rate of the car and a charging time of just a few minutes, when compared to several hours of a standard electric car battery’.

Supercapacitor film which is grapheme has the potential of charging fully in a matter of minutes instead of the several hours taken for a conventional battery and though it would charge, releasing energy faster than standard batteries, they presently do not hold so much energy which the scientist are probably intending to change with further research.

Yahoo Replaces Google as Firefox's Default Search

Just from the coming December, Mozilla Firefox will utilize Yahoo search engine as a default, only in the United States on cell phone as well as desktop. On account of this five-year agreement, Yahoo will also start a new search experience in favor of the users of Firefox in the U.S. that would simultaneously make this Firefox to move away from Google.

Such a new kind search experience will provide a clear, fresh and immersive layout that reveals input from the Mozilla group. In Russia, Firefox will employ Yandex Search, while in China this will make use of Baidu as its default. On the other hand, Google, and a lot of other search engines like DuckDuckGo will stay as integral options.

Reasons for changing the partnership-

The Mozilla Company has long earned most of its funds by means of its joint venture with Google that has always been seen as default in Mozilla. In fact, in 2012, information known from a reliable source reveals that 88 percent of Firefox’s revenue came mainly from Google. The deal with Google was going to terminate this year, although, and it seem as either Yahoo has made an offer that Mozilla cannot reject or Google planned to walk away from the contract.

Opinion of Mozilla

CEO of Mozilla, Chris Beard stated that Google has been the default search engine of Firefox global since the year 2004. The renewal time of the deal is in this year, and hence Mozilla took it as a chance to assess its competitive approach and investigate the options. He even added that his company is really eager to work with Yahoo to get a new, expected search experience of Yahoo to the Firefox users in the particular country featuring the best of the Web, and to discover new modern search experience along with the content.

Statements from Yahoo

Similarly, CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer recently perceived that she thinks that search is really a point of investment, prospect and development for the company. Such a joint venture aids to increase their success in search and even provides with an opportunity to serve closely along with Mozilla to get ways to create something more in search matter, communications as well as digital content.

Yahoo engine, in its present form, is supported by Microsoft Bing, certainly, although the company largely alters the results it obtains from Microsoft, in terms of design and in terms of status. There have long been gossips that Yahoo might end this agreement and return back its own particular search engine; however that appears improbable

This collaboration with Firefox will definitely provide Yahoo and even Microsoft a more powerful dominance in the search market. When Firefox usage has turned down over some of the previous years, this yet accounts for minimum 15percent of the browser market in the US. Yahoo at present possesses nearly 10 percent of the search engine of US market. To return back to the Google as default is only a matter of some seconds though some of the users want to go for the default.

GTA 5 Patch Coming to Xbox One Soon!

Grand Theft Auto V – GTV 5, an open world action adventure video game which has been developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games was released in September 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and on 18 November 2014 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. For Microsoft Windows it is scheduled to be released on 27 January 2015.It is the first main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series since the Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008.

It is set within fictional states of San Andreas which is based on Southern California wherein the single player follows three criminals with their efforts in committing heist, are under great pressure from a government agency.

It enables the players to freely roam San Andreas including open countryside as well as the fictional city of Los Santos, based on Los Angeles and the game is played from a first person or a third person view while the world is navigated by a vehicle or on foot.

Players have the capabilities of controlling the three lead protagonists throughout the mode of a single player, switching them during and outside of the mission with the focus on the heist sequence. The mission revolves between shooting and driving gameplay and players who tend to commit crimes may receive a response from law enforcement agencies which is measured by a `wanted’, system which governs the response of their aggression and a patch update is going to be released soon.

Latest Games Envisaged Issues of Download

Since the craze following the release of GTA 5 for the next generation console has begun, several players have envisaged issues in the latest game which had won positive reviews from major gaming sites and many players have postedon the official Rockstar Forum their inability to download the first update thereby being unable to play the online version of the game.

Rockstar has been working to resolve the issue faced by several players stating on 18 November 2014 that `at this time PlayStation 4 users should no longer have issues downloading the patch. All character migrations are now working on PlayStation 4 and affected PlayStation 3 users can play GTA online as normal.

This issue will be addressed for Xbox One and Xbox 360 users tomorrow’. The GTA V draws inspiration from several other past Rockstar titles which include Max Payne 3, Midnight Club, Manhunt and Red Dead Redemption.

Several Unique Features 

There are several unique features in the game wherein when the players are playing as one of the three protagonist, the other two tend to live out their daily lives and one will be surprised in finding what the characters are doing when one switches back into them. The other feature is the character swapping feature which is executed in a Google Earth manner which was displayed at a Game Informer demo, showing a smooth run without any lag.The Xbox One, PC, and PS4 version would be presenting an exclusive feature that is a first person mode and the entire game can be played through the concept of the protagonist. The mode of the gameplay will bring about a new way of playing the game and cars will have detailed interior which would be different from one another while the shooting will be like a FPS game.

Researcher Put Their Focus on the Masque Attack on OS X/iOS

According to the reports released to public by the researchers working at FireEye on 17 November, Mac OS X and iOS operating systems have threat from Masque Attack, which has already come into existence. This report was published within a gap of a week post the discovery of WireLurker by the Palo Alto Networks.

What is Masque Attack? 

Masque attack can easily utilize a drawback in the operating system of Apple, which allows the user to replace one app by another app, as long as both these apps are using the same bundle identifier. One of the threatening issues is that through this attack, all the preinstalled apps on the operating systems (example Mobile Safari) can be easily replaced.

The duplicate apps will be able to track the local data of the original apps, which includes the login details like user id and password. Through this attack, an attacker can easily login into anyone’s account and make transactions from their bank accounts.

These attacks become more easy, has the iOS usually does not put in force certificate matching for apps that come with the same bundle identifier. FireEye researchers were able to verify and identify the vulnerability on both regular iOS and jailbroken. The regular iOS includes iOS 7.1.1, iOS 7.1.2, iOS 8.0, iOS 8.1, and iOS 8.1.1 beta. Attackers can influence the vulnerability through USB ports and even wireless networks.

According to the blog post of FireEye researchers Tao Wei, Hui Xue and Yulong Zhang, Apple is unable to prevent such attacks due to the existing standard interfaces and protections. They are requesting the Company to develop interfaces that are more powerful and give it to professional security vendors.

This way these vendors will be able to protect their enterprise users from all these advanced attacks. This attack will prompt the users to download malicious apps with new names like for example, the new angry bird.

The users of these operating systems are more susceptible to these attacks when they download any app from third party source or by ignoring the un-trusted app message popping on their phones. Users, who have set the Gatekeeping feature on “Anywhere”, actually nullify their protection.

As per FireEye's researchers, WireLurker utilizes very limited form of the attack when hitting the iOS through USB ports.

According to director of software engineering at Arxan, Joe Abbey, WireLurker will be able to deliver the workload only if the user has installed any un-trusted app on MAC, on the other hand for the Masque attack to occur, the user must have downloaded enterprise-provisioning profile.

Companies who have the BYOD policies are more susceptible to Masque attack. According to Abbey, it is recommended that the owners of BYOD policies disable the provisioning profiles, till Apple comes out with a solution.

Masque attacks and WireLurker are additional examples of highly sophisticated and automated attacks, which are growly rapidly. These attacks highlights that we are in serious need of automotive proactive protection and prevention methods.