Yahoo Labs presents Bodyprint, an authentication system, to unlock your smartphone!

"Bodyprint brings biometric authentication to commodity mobile devices using the capacitive touchscreen as a low-resolution, but large-area image sensor to reliably identify users based on their ears, fists, or grips when pressed against the touchscreen. "

http://www.christianholz.net/bodyprint.html

Beside your ears, you can use other body parts, fingers, fists, and palms by pressing them against the display. 


See how it work on Youtube:
Bodyprint: Biometric Authentication on Smartphones using the Touchscreen as a Scanner


image source: http://www.christianholz.net/bodyprint.html

Japan built all solar panels on water!

"Two floating mega-solar power plants at Nishihira Pond and Higashihira Pond in Kato City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. The plants, inaugurated in late March, will generate an estimated 3,300 megawatt hours (MWh) per year in total-- enough electricity to power approximately 920 typical households"



Why on Water?

The company claims that:

• Floating solar power generating systems typically generate more electricity than ground-mount and rooftop systems due to the cooling effect of the water.
• They reduce reservoir water evaporation and algae growth by shading the water.
• Floating platforms are 100% recyclable, utilizing high-density polyethylene, which can withstand ultraviolet rays and resists corrosion.
• The floating platforms are designed and engineered to withstand extreme physical stress, including typhoon conditions

Of course, it also save a lot of land in expensive Japan!

How it float?


Image source: http://global.kyocera.com/

"In April 1953, the paper by James Watson and Francis Crick describing the structure of DNA was published in the scientific journal Nature. With help from other scientists, Watson and Crick were the first to describe DNA as a double helix, or a twisted ladder shape. Notably, their model of DNA suggested how genetic information is stored and copied. DNA Day commemorates this important landmark in science."

Extracted from: http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/spotlight/dna-day-2015

More about DNA DAY:
http://www.genome.gov/26525485

Full article of 1953 paper by Watson and Crick:
Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids
http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/watsoncrick.pdf, Nature


Without a microscope, can you find DNA around you?

A 50-foot-tall sculpture of DNA, “Portrait of a DNA Sequence,” hangs in the main stairwell of the Life Sciences Building, administrative home of the UC Davis College of Biological Scienceshttp://ucdavis.edu/one/stories/one-of-a-kind/dna-sculpture.html


DNA-shapped stairs - Nestlé building detail (Bergére) - Vevey, Switzerlandhttp://vitorazevedo.com/2011/best-company-hq-2%E2%80%93-nestle-vevey-switzerland/


Double Helix Look Out Tower. Kings Park. Perthhttp://kayandjoedownunder.blogspot.hk/2013_10_01_archive.html

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germanyhttp://www.rsl.de/en/magazine/lightprojects-01/architekten-bernhardt-partner/

Double Helix Chapel, Seto Inland Sea Resort, Japanhttp://zexy.net/wedding/c_7770013856/


Vatican Museum, Rome, Italyhttp://felipepitta.com/blog/the-stunning-bramante-staircase-vatican-museum/




images source:
http://www.designrulz.com/design/2015/01/especially-weddings-ribbon-chapel-hiroshi-nakamura-hiroshima-japan/
https://diy.org/ogel/18925

The recent report about success of Vitargent in Geneva makes me curious about the high tech development and startup in Hong Kong, a small city heavily really on its financial services for decades. 

There is an interesting report by South China Morning Post:
Top 5 most promising Hong Kong start-ups

GoGoVan
"Originally envisioned as a business selling advertising on takeaway lunch-boxes, the founders of GoGoVan soon switched to logistics when they discovered how hard it could be to book delivery drivers through Hong Kong’s dispatch centres."

Insigth Robotics
"Hong Kong-based firefighting robot firm Insight Robotics has developed a wildfire detection system combining thermal imaging and artificial intelligence technology to spot fires." 

Vitargent
"Vitargent uses fish embryos to test food, cosmetics or other consumer goods for contaminants and toxins." 

Sensbeat
"Launched in August 2014, Sensbeat is a mobile app which allow users to share their moods through music and photographs."

GoGoVan, Insigth Robotics, Vitargent, and Sensbeat successfully secured a series A funding. 

Let's see how they can change our life in this modern city. Good luck!




image source: http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/technology/start-ups/article/1765406/top-5-most-promising-hong-kong-start-ups

American Chemical Society builds a very good site to promote the Earth Day 2015. The theme this year is "Climate Science ? More Than Just A Weather Report!"

Check it out here:
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/outreach/cced.html

For all kids and general public, the site shows you the relationship between chemistry of greenhouse gas, UV light, air particles and climate science:
http://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/education/outreach/cced/2015-cced-brochure-online.pdf

I captured an interesting game below:


image source: ACS

Congratulation!

a news from International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva about the great achievement of a Hong Kong biotech startup. 

http://www.inventions-geneva.ch

"The Grand Prix of the 43rd International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva was awarded to the company VITARGENT INTERNATIONAL from Hong Kong, China, for its in vivo detection system for toxins without using animals. The company uses embryos of zebra fish whose reactions make it possible to study more than a thousand toxins at the same time. It is also possible to target specific toxins as well as the toxicological mechanics of the samples studied."

More about Vitargent: www.vitargent.com





image source: http://www.freakingnews.com/Tropical-Zebra-Fish-Pics-43474.asp

Congratulation!

Dr Tom Hiu Tung Cheung, Assistant Professor of the Division of Life Science, and Dr Kam Tuen Law, Assistant Professor of the Department of Physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) were honored the prestigious Croucher Innovation Awards 2015 by the Croucher Foundation for their distinguished scientific research achievements. Each award carries a value of up to HK$5 million over five years.

Click here for the whole article:
Two HKUST Professors Honored The Croucher Innovation Awards 2015

More about Dr. Tom Hiu Tung Cheung
http://life-sci.ust.hk/faculty/Dr.T.H.Cheung/

More about Dr. Kam Tuen Law
http://physics.ust.hk/phlaw/

A story about your daily life with chemical engineering - if you are ice-cream lovers. 

This is a tasty story from University of Connecticut:

"Ice cream’s semi-solid state is the result of a fragile balance of ingredients, and it’s no easy trick to replace old-fashioned sugar and still get the rich taste and texture that makes the Creamery’s ice cream so popular."


Click here for the entire story: 
Engineering Ice Cream, University of Connecticut
http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2015/04/engineering-ice-cream/


The following video reveals the real works in an ice-cream factory

Recently I found a news from Illumina, the leading DNA sequencing technology provider about two new sequencing machines. In the article, Mark Wation from The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, gives his insight about the state-of-art of DNA sequencing and its future tends: Welcome to the $1,000 genome: on Illumina and next-gen sequencing

<More about Mick Watson>

I extracted a small part of the article below: 

The future for Illumina’s competitors
It will be really interesting to see how Life Technologies responds to Illumina’s latest developments. Their key advantage is speed, with the Ion Torrent platforms carrying out the sequencing component in hours rather than days. However, the throughput and cost-per-base do not match current Illumina platforms, never mind the new ones. To remain a viable business, Life Technologies, and its Ion Torrent platforms, must respond.

Pacific Biosciences’ SMRT technology has evolved significantly too and has become an essential tool for those wishing to close genomes, or sequence de novo new genomes. Intriguingly, Roche, a global health-care company, announced an agreement with Pacific Biosciences to develop DNA sequencing products for clinical diagnostics. This is not a space that Pacific Biosciences have been in up until now, and it is difficult to see how their RS II system can compete with Illumina and Ion Torrent in the clinic. Because of this, rumors of a new (benchtop?) PacBio machine abound on social media.

For many, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, heir apparent to the sequencing crown, remain the future. The company recently opened up an early-access program for their USB sequencer, the MinION. At the AGBT conference, David Jaffe showed the first data from this platform. These are exciting times for nanopore-based sequencing, but there remain challenges – particularly in interpreting the signal and turning it into the ‘bases + quality scores’ paradigm that many are used to. In fact, to get the best out of the platform, many think a change to the above paradigm will need to happen, and software may need to interpret the raw signal rather than the traditional 4 bases. On his blog, Yaniv Erlich commented that ‘MinION is not a sequencing platform. It is a sequencing sensor.’ (his italics) and I think this is a key differentiator of the platform. It is the only platform that detects an actual single strand of DNA (rather than incorporation events as a template strand is copied), and it still astounds me to think that we are soon to have in our hands the very first mobile device capable of sequencing DNA – surely an historic moment. With that idea in mind, it is hard not to believe that nanopore-based sequencing is the future. Of course, Oxford Nanopore have competitors, but one look at their management team, followed by a look at their IP portfolio, and it is hard to imagine anyone being better placed to deliver on the promises of nanopore-based sequencing.



image source: All Things Illumina Sequencing Methods

Corresponding author: Ravinder Reddy      krr@mail.med.upenn.edu

Author Affiliations
Center for Magnetic Resonance and Optical Imaging, Perelman School of Medicine, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania

Journal of Translational Medicine 2015, 13:97  doi:10.1186/s12967-015-0449-5


More about author 

Editorial
The last few decades have seen tremendous advances in medicine that have enhanced understanding of pathophysiological processes at the cellular and molecular level, and led to the development of increasingly sophisticated diagnostic imaging technologies. Early detection of disease induced molecular and functional changes before induction of irreversible structural changes is key for optimal treatment efficacy. Non-invasive imaging modalities, such as positron emission tomography (PET) [1], single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) [2], computed tomography (CT) [3], optical tomographic technologies [4], magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) [5], ultrasound (US) [6], and X-rays play a vital role in both the diagnosis and monitoring of disease in response to therapy. These techniques cover a broad range of spatio-temporal resolution and varying degrees of sensitivity and specificity to different molecular changes, and in many cases provide complementary information [7],[8]. Recently discovered molecular targets of various disease states, including oncology, neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric, cardiovascular, and musculoskeletal pathologies, drive further developments in the imaging field to detect these new molecular markers. Ultimately, these technologies contribute to improved disease management and personalized patient care.

Standard-of-care medical imaging techniques such as X-rays, US, CT and MRI provide exquisite structural details of human anatomy. These methods are the first-line techniques in clinic for diagnosis and characterization of disease, based primarily on structure/morphology such as size, texture and tissue attenuation [8]. In addition to providing diagnostic information, the US modality has the additional benefit of use as a therapeutic tool [6],[7],[9].

Functional nuclear medicine techniques (PET and SPECT) provide a unique, non-invasive assessment of intracellular processes and enzyme trafficking, receptors and gene expression, and serve as the underpinnings of molecular medicine. These techniques provide non-invasive diagnostic information about biochemical and physiological process ranging from glucose metabolism to gene expression by evaluating the kinetics of short-lived radioisotope tracers. While many promising tracers have been synthesized that target a variety of metabolic pathways or specific markers 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), a glucose analogue is the main radiotracer in clinical practice today. In addition, these functional nuclear medicine techniques are also being used in research and clinical settings to detect and evaluate Alzheimer’s disease, metabolic viability of cardiac tissues, in vivo gene expression, and in tracking of cancer metastasis to different organs [7],[8],[10]-[12].

MRI is one of the most powerful and versatile non-invasive techniques. The major advantage of MRI is that it provides high-resolution, three-dimensional images of tissue structure, as well as functional and metabolic information. Furthermore, MRI is performed in vivo without the use of any ionizing radiation, allowing for repeated study. Several advanced MRI methods have been introduced to monitor the structural [13], functional [14],[15] as well as biochemical changes in various diseases. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), which provides the information about the biochemical signatures, is an additional important clinical research tool to assess and characterize disease pathophysiology [16],[17].

Using MRS, enriched metabolites (e.g. 13C enriched) can be used to probe endogenous reaction kinetics. Latest advances in chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) MRI show promise in detecting several endogenous metabolites and proteins with substantially enhanced sensitivity (at least an order of magnitude) compared to conventional MRS [18]-[25]. Recent developments in hyperpolarized imaging based on dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) of 13C enriched pyruvate are yielding highly promising preclinical results [26],[27] exploring in vivo reactions in oncology and other disease conditions. Some very preliminary results showing the promise of these methods in addressing clinical problems in patients have been demonstrated [28].

Optical imaging is another emerging imaging modality with high potential for improving diseases diagnosis and treatment, which can be readily set up at the patient’s bedside or in the operating room [4],[29]-[31]. Optical imaging uses non-ionizing radiation and offers potentially to image organs, tissues as well as smaller structures including cells and molecules using their unique photon absorption or scattering profiles. It also differentiates between native soft tissue and tissue labeled with endogenous or exogenous probes based on their wavelength dependent photon absorption or scattering pattern [32]-[35]. Despite limitations in their spatial resolution, optical imaging methods offer capabilities for studying functional and molecular events in different pathophysiological conditions. There are several techniques in optical imaging that are currently being used both in research and clinical setting for evaluating various diseases and therapeutic responses [30],[36]-[38]. Potentially, optical imaging can also be combined with other imaging modalities to improve the patient’s clinical management.

PET, SPECT and near-infrared reflectance fluorescence optical imaging techniques have relatively high sensitivity and can detect compounds with concentrations in micro- to pico-molar range [7]. Despite the high sensitivity these methods are beset by a relatively low spatial resolution (5 to 10 mm in clinical setting). Also, in many cases the emitting ligands may lose the specificity. One issue with nuclear medicine techniques is the use of nuclear radiation, which precludes their repeat use in short time spans. On the other hand, MRI provides high spatial resolution (in hundreds of micrometers range), but is relatively insensitive, in comparison to nuclear medicine techniques mentioned above; it requires concentrations of metabolites to be detected to be in the millimolar range and few endogenous molecules or metabolites can be imaged [39].

A milestone in the field of diagnostic imaging is the emergence of integrated structural and functional modalities such as combined PET-CT and PET-MRI [40],[41]. These integrated modalities provide concurrent structural, molecular and functional information, improve the multimodal imaging correlations and ease the patient burden for multiple imaging sessions.

Combining these advanced imaging techniques will result in improved precision of the data that are intrinsically more sensitive to the underlying pathophysiology than the morphological features available in routine structural imaging. Over the years, all these powerful imaging techniques have been improving the way the diseases are diagnosed, therapeutic responses are monitored and dramatically enhancing the practice of medicine making it more prognostic, preventative and personalized. Despite these advances, many technological innovations in these imaging modalities are still in research setting. Transferring these technologies into clinical setting requires an intense collaborative effort between researchers in imaging physics, instrumentation, image processing, biologists, chemists, and regulatory bodies as well as clinicians from all branches of medicine. This journal section facilitates communication of advances in translating the imaging modalities from mere research tools to clinical setting. We welcome research articles from all the stakeholders in this field.



The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/13/1/97




Image source: National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering

Correspondence: H.-S. Philip Wong & Sayeef Salahuddin

H.-S. Philip Wong - Department of Electrical Engineering and the Stanford SystemX Alliance, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

Sayeef Salahuddin - Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

Nature Nanotechnology 10, 191–194 (2015) doi:10.1038/nnano.2015.29


More about Authors:
http://web.stanford.edu/~hspwong/
https://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/salahuddin.html

Introduction
Current memory devices store information in the charge state of a capacitor; the presence or absence of charges represents logic 1's or 0's. Several technologies are emerging to build memory devices in which other mechanisms are used for information storage. They may allow the monolithic integration of memories and computation units in three-dimensional chips for future computing systems1. Among those promising candidates are spin-transfer-torque magnetic random access memory (STT-MRAM) devices, which store information in the magnetization of a nanoscale magnet. Other candidates that are approaching commercialization include phase change memory (PCM), metal oxide resistive random access memory (RRAM) and conductive bridge random access memory (CBRAM).

Today's computing systems use a hierarchy of volatile and non-volatile data storage devices to achieve an optimal trade-off between cost and performance2. The portion of the memory that is the closest to the processor core is accessed frequently, and therefore it requires the fastest operation speed possible; it is also the most expensive memory because of the large chip area required. Other levels in the memory hierarchy are optimized for storage capacity and speed (Fig. 1). The main memory is often located in a separate chip because it is fabricated with a different technology from that of the microprocessor.


For over 30 years, static random access memory (SRAM)3 and dynamic random access memory (DRAM)3 have been the workhorses of this memory hierarchy4. Both SRAM and DRAM are volatile memories — that is, they lose the stored information once the power is cut off. For non-volatile data storage, magnetic hard disk drives (HDDs) have been in use for over five decades5, 6, 7. Since the advent of portable electronic devices such as music players and mobile phones, however, solid-state non-volatile memory known as Flash memory8 has been introduced into the information storage hierarchy between the DRAM and the HDD. Flash has become the dominant data storage device for mobile electronics; increasingly, even enterprise-scale computing systems and cloud data storage systems are using Flash to complement the storage capabilities of HDD.

For complete FREE article for:

• Electrical manipulation of magnetism in ferromagnets
• Electrical control of magnetization in multiferroics

image source: Controlling size and helicity of a spin-vortex skyrmion