Apple’s new Beats Pill+ speaker is now available to order from the online Apple Store.

Beats Pill+ is designed to go wherever you do and fill the room with a rich clear sound field that has as much power as it does definition. With a sleek interface, the Beats Pill+ is intuitive to use and brings people together with engaging features for a unique shared listening experience.

Apple’s New Beats Pill+ Speaker is Now Available to Order

Sound bigger than its size
The stereo active 2-way crossover system creates an optimized sound field for dynamic range and clarity across all genres of music. Tweeter and woofer separation uses the same acoustic mechanics found in professional recording studios around the world.

Designed around you
With its sophisticated design, Beats Pill+ looks as good as it sounds. The simple, intuitive interface is no nonsense so you can get to your music fast.

Pair and play
Pair the Beats Pill+ to your iPhone, MacBook, or any other Bluetooth-enabled device and play your favorite tracks, videos, and games with optimized sound and ultimate convenience.

Speakerphone
Improved voice performance allows you to make and receive calls with enhanced clarity.

Stay charged all day
The Beats Pill+ has a 12-hour battery life to stay charged on the go. Short on time? Use the included Lightning cable and power supply to get a quick charge in three hours. Keep track of your power levels with the fuel gauge so you always know how much batter is left.

Charge out
Keep the music going by charging your iPhone or external music device with extra juice from the Beats Pill+.

Beats Pill+ app
Download the Beats Pill+ app from the App Store to unlock features that put you and your friends at the center of your music like never before. Bring a second speaker into the mix for even more innovative ways to play. Get additional software updates and product support within the app.

The Beats Pill+ can be purchased from the link below for $229.95. It delivers tomorrow via expedited shipping or by October 28th via free shipping.

http://www.iclarified.com/52198/apples-new-beats-pill-speaker-is-now-available-to-order

BY JAMES WALKER 2 HOURS AGO IN TECHNOLOGY
Google has revealed it uses an artificial intelligence system to process a large majority of searches made through its website. Known as ‘RankBrain’, the AI helps with ambiguous questions never answered before.
Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist at Google, informed Bloomberg of the workings of the system this week. It follows several large investments in the development of machine learning and AI, indicating the company is taking the potential of the emerging technologies seriously and is actively deploying it across its core businesses.
Corrado told Bloomberg that RankBrain has assisted with the processing of a “very large fraction” of the millions of queries submitted to Google in the past few months. The AI primarily helps with interpreting the ambiguous searches that Google has never seen before. Questions like “what’s the title of the consumer at the highest level of a food chain?” account for 15 percent of the total queries made each day, a surprisingly large proportion that Google has traditionally struggled to handle correctly.
RankBrain has only been enabled on the public site for a few months but it has already become the third-most important system used to provide the results for queries. Corrado said its success was a surprise, telling Bloomberg “I would describe this as having gone better than we would have expected.”
The AI links the written language that users send to Google with computer-friendly mathematical expressions and models that the search engine’s servers can actually understand. By embedding the words into mathematical vectors, RankBrain can look for words and phrases it has never seen before. From there, it is able to determine the phrases that most closely resemble the unknowns and filter the search results accordingly. The process makes the results for first-time searches more accurate than would otherwise be possible if relying on traditional information retrieval alone.
RankBrain still sits alongside hundreds of other systems that all influence the final algorithm responsible for displaying the listings on Google’s search results pages. However, its success since launch has demonstrated that machine learning may be the best way forward in search, something that Google CEO Sundar Pichai has already expressed.
During the company’s earnings call last week, Pichai described AI as “transformative” and something capable of “rethinking everything we are doing.” The technology is also used by rivals including Microsoft whose Bing search results are influenced by intelligent systems powered by the company’s Azure cloud servers.
Corrado stressed that machine learning isn’t an easy way to perfect results though, noting that it still has to be tailored to each individual use case. He said: “Machine learning isn’t just a magic syrup that you pour onto a problem and it makes it better. It took a lot of thought and care in order to build something that we really thought was worth doing.”
Google is continuing to monitor RankBrain as it expands but the system has already won over its engineers and its users. In an experiment, the company found disabling the AI “would be as damaging to users as forgetting to serve half the pages on Wikipedia” after establishing that RankBrain could guess which pages Google would return in search results with an 80 percent success rate. The humans only managed 70 percent.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/technology/majority-of-google-searches-now-processed-by-rankbrain-ai/article/447642#ixzz3phen2nbV

The first ad focuses entirely on the new iPhone 6s camera, as well as the 4k video recording and live photos feature. The ad highlights how the new camera and accompanying apps change how the user is able to “take a photo, find a photo, share a photo” and more.

Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry makes a cameo in this ad as well, showing off both his jump shot and the new slow-motion HD video recording tech on the 6s.

In addition to the camera ad, Apple showed off a couple quick 15-seconds clips of Jamie Foxx demonstrating the “Hey Siri” functionality of the new iPhones.

These ads are definitely looking to be super cutesy and don’t really attempt to show off any real world use cases. They’re more about getting users used to talking with Siri hands-free, now possible thanks to the new iPhones’ M9 motion coprocessor technology that allows Siri to always be ready to chat without ever significantly draining your battery life.

The first one, titled “Crush,” is a bit weird, though I must say Jamie Foxx and Siri in a Her sequel would make my 2015.

The second one, called “Flip a coin,” is pretty funny, with Foxx asking Siri to flip a coin as he struggles to choose which script to go with.

Apple’s latest iPhones went on sale late last month and beat expectations selling over 13 million devices in their first weekend of sales.

New iPhone 6s Ads Tout New Camera And “Hey Siri” Tech, Boast Jamie Foxx And Steph Curry Cameos

Montreal will get 106 electric-car charging stations at on-street parking spots by next spring, part of an ambitious plan to install 1,000 such charging stations by 2020.

The project makes Montreal the first Canadian city to create an electric-car charging network, said Mayor Denis Coderre.

“We’re getting somewhere. Montreal is back,” Coderre said.

The city of Montreal announced on Sunday the plan to install 25 double charging stations of 24o volts, plus three rapid charging stations with twice the voltage; Quebec will partially fund a matching number of charging stations, in keeping with its five-year $420-million vehicle-electrification plan, with $500,000 earmarked for city charging stations.

The city hopes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 — the target will be achieved largely by electrification of transport, the city said in a press release. Transportation accounts for 43 per cent of greenhouse gases in Quebec. Quebec hopes to have 100,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2020.

If we want to encourage people to choose electric cars, Coderre said, we need to offer a network of charging stations.

AddÉnergie Technologies Inc. will provide the city’s 53 stations at a cost of about $415,000. The Quebec company was chosen after Hydro Québec issued a call for tenders for the stations two years ago. The stations were adapted to Quebec’s climate, using a pulley system so electrical cables don’t come into contact with snow or ice on the ground, journalists were told at a media briefing session. The stations are capable of being adapted for new technologies, said France Lampron, director of electrification of transport for Hydro.

The charging stations will be placed at current parking spots reserved for electric cars, taking into account factors like reserved bus lanes, cycling lanes and heritage value. If it is a metered spot, the motorist will have to pay up.

The 240-volt charging stations will cost $1 an hour — plus the cost of the parking meter. The 400-volt stations will cost $10 an hour, charged by the minute. In 10 minutes, it can recharge a car sufficiently to travel 50 km. The stations will be blue.

Montreal went forward with the plan after a pilot project with two charging stations, on St. Urbain St. and near Place Victoria. Each double station was used 60 to 75 times a month over the course of 15 months.

There are also 46 off-street charging stations in the city, with another 32 to be installed in areas like parking lots by the end of the year.

The first four street charging stations — with 16 points for recharging — will be installed by the end of November, on St-Antoine St. W. near the Palais des congrès.

http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-unveils-electric-car-charging-network

BEIJING — More than 53,000 couples in Beijing have applied for a second child since the city changed its birth control policy in early 2014.

By the end of September, 53,034 couples in Beijing had submitted applications, among which 48,392 couples were approved. Of the potential mothers, 57 percent were aged between 31 and 35 years old.

China introduced its family planning policy in the late 1970s to rein in population growth by limiting most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two, allowing the birth of a second child if the first child was a girl.

A major policy change at the end of 2013 allows couples nationwide to have a second child if either parent is an only child.

Beijing, with permanent population in excess of 20 million, estimated that the new policy would increase this number by more than 270,000, with around 54,200 additional births annually until 2019, when the figure will peak and begin to go down steadily.

Read more at http://www.mb.com.ph/more-than-53000-beijing-couples-opt-for-second-child/#PtIeCMbZHLJUVPZU.99

Washington D.C, Oct 25 (ANI): An important step towards next-generation ultra-compact photonic and optoelectronic devices has been taken with the realization of a two-dimensional excitonic laser.

Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) embedded a monolayer of tungsten disulfide into a special microdisk resonator to achieve bright excitonic lasing at visible light wavelengths.

The observation of high-quality excitonic lasing from a single molecular layer of tungsten disulfide marks a major step towards two-dimensional on-chip optoelectronics for high-performance optical communication and computing applications, says leader Xiang Zhang.

Among the most talked about class of materials in the world of nanotechnology today are two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). These 2D semiconductors offer superior energy efficiency and conduct electrons much faster than silicon.

Furthermore, unlike graphene, the other highly touted 2D semiconductor, TMDCs have natural bandgaps that allow their electrical conductance to be switched “on and off,” making them more device-ready than graphene. Tungsten disulfide in a single molecular layer is widely regarded as one of the most promising TMDCs for photonic and optoelectronic applications.

However, until now, coherent light emission, or lasing, considered essential for “on-chip” applications, had not been realized in this material.

“TMDCs have shown exceptionally strong light-matter interactions that result in extraordinary excitonic properties,” Zhang says.

The study appears in Nature Photonics. (ANI)

http://www.canindia.com/2015/10/new-2-d-laser-find-offers-next-generation-photonic-devices/#

Check out this video from Simon Gladman demonstrating how 3D Touch can be used to compare the weight of two plums.

Here at FlexMonkey Towers, the ever beautiful Mrs FlexMonkey and I love to spend our Sunday mornings luxuriating in bed drinking Mimosas, listening to The Archers omnibus and eating some lovely plums. Being a generous sort of chap, whenever I pull a pair of plums from the freshly delivered Fortnum & Mason’s hamper, I always try to ensure she has the larger of the two. However, this isn’t always easy, especially after the third of fourth breakfast cocktail.

3D Touch to the rescue! My latest app, the Plum-O-Meter, has been specifically designed to solve this problem. Simply place two delicious plums on the iPhone’s screen and the heavier of the two is highlighted in yellow so you can hand it to your beloved without fear of being thought of as a greedy-guts.

Take a look at the video below. To learn more about 3D Touch, watch this video.

http://www.iclarified.com/52185/weighing-plums-on-the-iphone-6s-video

A type of bacteria found at the bottom of the ocean could be used to neutralise large amounts of industrial carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, researchers have found. Most atmospheric CO is produced from fossil fuel combustion.

But converting the carbon dioxide into a harmless compound requires a durable, heat-tolerant enzyme. The bacterium, Thiomicrospira crunogena, studied by researchers from University of Florida, produces carbonic anhydrase, an enzyme that helps remove CO in organisms.

The bacterium lives near hydrothermal vents, so the enzyme it produces is accustomed to high temperatures.

That is exactly what is needed for the enzyme to work during the process of reducing industrial CO, said Robert McKenna at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

The enzymecatalyses a chemical reaction between CO and water.

The CO interacts with the enzyme, converting the greenhouse gas into bicarbonate. The bicarbonate can then be further processed into products such as baking soda and chalk.

According to the UF researchers, which included graduate research assistants Brian Mahon and Avni Bhatt, in an industrial setting the carbonic anhydrase would be immobilised with solvent inside a reactor vessel that serves as a large purification column.

Flue gas would be passed through the solvent, with the carbonic anhydrase converting the carbon dioxide into bicarbonate.

Keywords: carbon monoxide, Thiomicrospira crunogena, carbonic anhydrase

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/bacteria-neutralises-greenhouse-gas/article7800238.ece

It flies. It dives. It swims. It’s a flapping-wing insect-size microbot. It’s … RobotBee!
October 23, 2015

The Harvard RoboBee concept (credit: Harvard Microrobotics Lab)

In 1939, Russian engineer Boris Ushakov proposed a “flying submarine” — a cool James Bond-style vehicle that could seamlessly transition from air to water and back again. Ever since, engineers have been trying to design one, with little success. The biggest challenge: aerial vehicles require large airfoils like wings or sails to generate lift, while underwater vehicles need to minimize surface area to reduce drag.

Engineers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) decided to try that a new version of their RoboBee microbot (see “A robotic insect makes first controlled test flight“), taking a clue from puffins. These birds with flamboyant beaks employ flapping motions that are similar in air and water.

Harvard University | RoboBee: From Aerial to Aquatic

But to make that actually work, the team had to first solve four thorny problems:

Surface tension. The RoboBee is so small and lightweight that it cannot break the surface tension of the water. To overcome this hurdle, the RoboBee hovers over the water at an angle, momentarily switches off its wings, and then crashes unceremoniously into the water to make itself sink.

Water’s increased density (1,000 times denser than air), which would snap the wing off the RoboBee. Solution: the team lowered the wing speed from 120 flaps per second to nine but kept the flapping mechanisms and hinge design the same. A swimming RoboBee simply changes its direction by adjusting the stroke angle of the wings, the same way it does in air.

Shorting out. Like the flying version, it’s tethered to a power source. Solution: use deionized water and coat the electrical connections with glue.

Moving from water to air. Problem: it can’t generate enough lift without snapping one of its wings. They researchers say they’re working on that next.

“We believe the RoboBee has the potential to become the world’s first successful dual aerial, aquatic insect-scale vehicle,” the researchers claim in a paper presented at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Germany. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

Hmm, maybe we’ll see a vehicle based on the RoboBee in a future Bond film?

related:
Dive of the RoboBee

http://www.kurzweilai.net/this-microrobot-could-be-a-model-for-a-future-dual-aerial-aquatic-vehicle

October 23, 2015

Coronary artery structure being 3-D bioprinted (credit: Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering)

Carnegie Mellon scientists are creating cutting-edge technology that could one day solve the shortage of heart transplants, which are currently needed to repair damaged organs.

“We’ve been able to take MRI images of coronary arteries and 3-D images of embryonic hearts and 3-D bioprint them with unprecedented resolution and quality out of very soft materials like collagens, alginates and fibrins,” said Adam Feinberg, an associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

Feinberg leads the Regenerative Biomaterials and Therapeutics Group, and the group’s study was published in an open-access paper today (Oct. 23) in the journal Science Advances.

College of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University | Adam Feinberg Demonstrates 3-D Bioprinting Process

“The challenge with soft materials is that they collapse under their own weight when 3-D printed in air,” explained Feinberg. “So we developed a method of printing these soft materials inside a support bath material. Essentially, we print one gel inside of another gel, which allows us to accurately position the soft material as it’s being printed, layer-by-layer.”

A FRESH idea

A schematic of the FRESH process showing the hydrogel (green) — representing an artery — being added to the gelatin slurry support bath (yellow). The 3D object is built layer by layer and, when completed, is released by heating to 37°C and melting the gelatin. (credit: Thomas J. Hinton et al./Science Advances)

With this new FRESH (Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels) technique, after printing, the support gel can be easily melted away and removed by heating to body temperature, which does not damage the delicate biological molecules or living cells that were bioprinted.

(Left) A model of a section of a human right coronary arterial tree created from a 3D MRI image is processed at full scale into machine code for FRESH printing. (Right) An example of the arterial tree printed in alginate (black) and embedded in the gelatin slurry support bath. Scale bar: 10 mm. (credit: Thomas J. Hinton et al./Science Advances)

As a next step, the group is working toward incorporating real heart cells into these 3-D printed tissue structures, providing a scaffold to help form contractile muscle.

Accessible bioprinters

Most 3-D bioprinters cost more than $100,000 and/or require specialized expertise to operate, limiting wider-spread adoption. Feinberg’s group, however, has been able to implement their technique on a range of consumer-level 3-D printers, which cost less than $1,000 and use open-source hardware and software.

“Not only is the cost low, but by using open-source software, we have access to fine-tune the print parameters, optimize what we’re doing, and maximize the quality of what we’re printing,” Feinberg said.

More than 4,000 Americans are currently on the waiting list to receive a heart transplant. With failing hearts, these patients have no other options; heart tissue, unlike other parts of the body, is unable to heal itself once it is damaged.

Abstract of Three-dimensional printing of complex biological structures by freeform reversible embedding of suspended hydrogels

We demonstrate the additive manufacturing of complex three-dimensional (3D) biological structures using soft protein and polysaccharide hydrogels that are challenging or impossible to create using traditional fabrication approaches. These structures are built by embedding the printed hydrogel within a secondary hydrogel that serves as a temporary, thermoreversible, and biocompatible support. This process, termed freeform reversible embedding of suspended hydrogels, enables 3D printing of hydrated materials with an elastic modulus <500 kPa including alginate, collagen, and fibrin. Computer-aided design models of 3D optical, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging data were 3D printed at a resolution of ~200 μm and at low cost by leveraging open-source hardware and software tools. Proof-of-concept structures based on femurs, branched coronary arteries, trabeculated embryonic hearts, and human brains were mechanically robust and recreated complex 3D internal and external anatomical architectures.

references:
Thomas J. Hinton, Quentin Jallerat, Rachelle N. Palchesko et al. Three-dimensional printing of complex biological structures by freeform reversible embedding of suspended hydrogels. Science Advances 2015: DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500758 (open access)
related:
Carnegie Mellon researchers hack off-the-shelf 3-D printer toward rebuilding the heart

http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-3-d-print-a-heart