An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Stomach ulcers and other gastric wounds afflict one in eight people worldwide, but common conventional therapies have drawbacks. Now scientists aim to treat such problems by exploring a new frontier in 3-D printing: depositing living cells directly inside the human body. [...] In their effort to treat stomach lesions less invasively, scientists in China wanted to develop a miniature bioprinting robot that could enter the human body with relative ease. The researchers used existing techniques for creating dexterous electronic devices[...]
A team of scientists from the Singapore University of Technology and Design discovered that, using simple chemistry, the organic polymer chitin -- contained in the exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans -- can easily be transformed into a viable building material for basic tools and habitats. The findings have been published in the journal PLOS ONE. Ars Technica reports: "The technology was originally developed to create circular ecosystems in urban environments," said co-author Javier Fernandez. "But due to its efficiency, it is also the most efficient and scalable method to produce material[...]
With space junk piling up around our planet, the International Space Station needed to perform a last-minute avoidance maneuver Tuesday to steer clear of an "unknown piece of space debris expected to pass within several kilometers." From a report: Mission Control in Houston conducted the move at 2:19 p.m. PT using the Russian Progress resupply spacecraft docked to the ISS to help nudge the station out of harm's way. "Out of an abundance of caution, the Expedition 63 crew will relocate to their Soyuz spacecraft until the debris has passed by the station," NASA said in a statement prior to the m[...]
sciencehabit writes: A mini-arms race is unfolding in the supposed field of quantum radar, spurred by press reports in 2016 that China had built one -- potentially threatening the ability of stealthy military aircraft to hide from conventional radars. Governments around the world have tasked physicists to look into the idea. Whereas a conventional radar searches for objects by detecting pulse of microwaves reflected from them, quantum radar would utilize pulses of microwaves linked by a quantum connection called entanglement. The system would retain one pulse and measure it in concert with the[...]
Mike Morhaime, the cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, has launched a new game company called Dreamhaven, and it has established two new game studios: Moonshot and Secret Door. VentureBeat reports: The Irvine, California-based company is a pretty good clue that Morhaime and his wife Amy Morhaime weren't quite done with games when they left Activision Blizzard in 2018. Mike will be the CEO of Dreamhaven, while Amy will head operations. They have hired a number of (mostly former Blizzard) industry veterans to help run their studios, which will work on separate games. That's an ambitious startup[...]
Legendary horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs is now open source, meaning that modders can dig in and see what lies underneath the hood of both games. Polygon reports: The full source code for The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs has been released on Github for folks who want to take a crack at modifying the game. It's relatively rare for developers to post their game codes themselves, though sometimes proprietary code can make its way online via leaks. "This doesn't mean that the game is suddenly free," Amnesia developer Frictional Games said in a blog post. "It ju[...]
Researchers will be able to gain a deeper understanding of what's considered the world's oldest surviving (digital) computer after its long-lost user manual was unearthed. Engadget reports: The Z4, which was built in 1945, runs on tape, takes up most of a room and needs several people to operate it. The machine now takes residence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, but it hasn't been used in quite some time. An archivist at ETH Zurich, Evelyn Boesch, discovered the manual among her father's documents in March, according to retired lecturer Herbert Bruderer. Rene Boesch worked with the Swiss Ae[...]
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: T-Mobile US CEO Mike Sievert yesterday fired back at AT&T and Verizon, saying the carriers' complaints about T-Mobile obtaining more spectrum licenses show that they are afraid of competition. "The duopolists are scrambling to block this new competition any way they can... Suddenly in the unfamiliar position of not having a dominant stranglehold on the wireless market, and preferring not to meet the competitive challenge in the marketplace, AT&T and Verizon are urging the FCC to slow T-Mobile down and choke off our ability to compete fairl[...]
mabu writes: National Voter Registration Day, earmarked to call attention to encouraging more people to register to vote, is a pinnacle of many state's voter registration drives. Unfortunately in the state of Louisiana, its secretary of state Kyle Ardoin, decided this was a great time to shut the web site down for "scheduled maintenance." As a result, people who tried to register to vote online, on one of the most visible days of the registration drive, were denied the ability. "Ardoin's apparent decision to shut down the website raises concerns about ongoing efforts to suppress voter turnout [...]
According to The Verge, Twitter says they will be testing voice DMs soon, after rolling out audio tweets for iOS in June. From the report: Brazil will be the first country included in that test. "We know people want more options for how they express themselves in conversations on Twitter -- both publicly and privately," [Alex Ackerman-Greenberg, product manager for direct messages at Twitter, said in a 20-second voice message].
Similar to voice tweets, voice messages have a bare-bones, simple interface: there's just a play / pause button, and the sender's avatar pulsates as the message pla[...]