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Thursday, April 26, 2012
The MacPad Will Come - but Software Convergence Will Come First
Despite all the fantastic numbers delivered by Apple when it revealed its latest fiscal quarterly profits this week -- such as an eye-popping 94 percent net profit year-to-year increase -- one question and one rambling answer from Apple CEO Tim Cook made me sit up in my chair. The question: Will Apple create a converged iPad/MacBook with a built-in keyboard?
EyeRing finger-mounted connected cam captures signs and dollar bills, identifies them with OCR (hands-on)
Ready to swap that diamond for a finger-mounted camera with a built-in trigger and Bluetooth connectivity? If it could help identify otherwise indistinguishable objects, you might just consider it. The MIT Media Lab's EyeRing project was designed with an assistive focus in mind, helping visually disabled persons read signs or identify currency, for example, while also serving to assist children during the tedious process of learning to read. Instead of hunting for a grownup to translate text into speech, a young student could direct EyeRing at words on a page, hit the shutter release, and receive a verbal response from a Bluetooth-connected device, such as a smartphone or tablet. EyeRing could be useful for other individuals as well, serving as an ever-ready imaging device that enables you to capture pictures or documents with ease, transmitting them automatically to a smartphone, then on to a media sharing site or a server.
We peeked at EyeRing during our visit to the MIT Media Lab this week, and while the device is buggy at best in its current state, we can definitely see how it could fit into the lives of people unable to read posted signs, text on a page or the monetary value of a currency note. We had an opportunity to see several iterations of the device, which has come quite a long way in recent months, as you'll notice in the gallery below. The demo, which like many at the Lab includes a Samsung Epic 4G, transmits images from the ring to the smartphone, where text is highlighted and read aloud using a custom app. Snapping the text "ring," it took a dozen or so attempts before the rig correctly read the word aloud, but considering that we've seen much more accurate OCR implementations, it's reasonable to expect a more advanced version of the software to make its way out once the hardware is a bit more polished -- at this stage, EyeRing is more about the device itself, which had some issues of its own maintaining a link to the phone. You can get a feel for how the whole package works in the video after the break, which required quite a few takes before we were able to capture an accurate reading.
EyeRing finger-mounted connected cam captures signs and dollar bills, identifies them with OCR (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
AMD announces Radeon HD 7000M series with Enduro graphics-switching technology
AMD kicked off 2012 by refreshing its desktop graphics, and now it's back, giving its mobile GPUs the same treatment. The company just announced its third generation of DirectX 11 mobile chips, the Radeon HD 7000 family. All told, the collection includes three 28nm GPUs: the high-end 7900M, the mainstream 7800M and, last but not least, the 7700M, a darling little chip intended for AMD's thin and light Ultrabook competitors. Across the board, the series ushers in a new feature AMD is calling Enduro, a graphics-switching technology that takes direct aim at NVIDIA Optimus. Building on older AMD technologies like PowerXpress, it doesn't require you to close apps, reboot your system or manually specify which apps will trigger the GPU. Additionally, it's designed to work with both Intel CPUs and AMD's own application processing units, so presumably you'll find this inside some Ivy Bridge machines too. With this generation, too, the two higher-end chips support the PCI Express 3.0 interface, and all three make use of AMD's existing ZeroCore Power and Power Gating battery-saving features. That's the abridged version, but we also have a full breakdown of the specs awaiting you past the break.
Continue reading AMD announces Radeon HD 7000M series with Enduro graphics-switching technology
AMD announces Radeon HD 7000M series with Enduro graphics-switching technology originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google raises Gmail to 10GB free, 10-fold increase since launching in 2004
Eight years ago one gigabyte of online storage was a remarkable thing. One gigabyte of email? Preposterous, but that's exactly what Google offered back in 2004 with the launch of Gmail, and now that factor is increasing. Current Gmail users were floating at around 7.5GB of storage but, as part of all the Google Drive hoopla, that storage is now officially up to 10GB. That's a lot of spam and, for those of us who are already paying extra for more storage, it's even more room to grow before we upgrade to the next tier.
Google raises Gmail to 10GB free, 10-fold increase since launching in 2004 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Bacteria evolved way to safeguard crucial genetic material
ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2012) ? Just as banks store away only the most valuable possessions in the most secure safes, cells prioritise which genes they guard most closely, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) have found. The study, just published online in Nature, shows that bacteria have evolved a mechanism that protects important genes from random mutation, effectively reducing the risk of self-destruction. The findings answer a question that has been under debate for half a century and provide insights into how disease-causing mutations arise and pathogens evolve.
"We discovered that there must be a molecular mechanism that preferentially protects certain areas of the genome over others," says Nicholas Luscombe, who led the research at EMBL-EBI. "If we can identify the proteins involved and uncover how this works, we will be even closer to understanding how mutations that lead to diseases like cancer can be prevented."
Mutations are the reason each of us is unique. These changes to our genetic material are at the root of variation between individuals, and between cells within individuals. But they also have a darker side. If it affects an important gene -- for example, rendering a tumour-suppressing gene useless -- a mutation can have disastrous consequences. Nevertheless, protecting all genes from mutation would use up too many of the cell's resources, just like holding all deposits in maximum-security safes would be prohibitively expensive. I?igo Martincorena, a PhD student in Luscombe's lab, has now found that cells evolved a 'risk management' strategy to address this issue.
Looking at 120,000 tiny genetic mutations called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 34 strains of the bacterium E. coli, the scientists were able to quantify how random the mutation rate was in different areas of the bacterial genomes. Their results showed that key genes mutate at a much lower rate than the rest of the genetic material, which decreases the risk of such genes suffering a detrimental mutation. "We were struck by how variable the mutation rate appears to be along the genome," says Martincorena. "Our observations suggest these bacteria have evolved a clever mechanism to control the rate of evolution in crucial areas of the genome."
Using population genetics techniques, the researchers were able to disentangle the effects of mutation rate and natural selection on mutations, settling a long-standing debate in the field. Scientists have long thought that the chances of a mutation occurring were independent of its value to an organism. Once the mutation had occurred, it would undergo natural selection, spreading through the population or being eliminated depending on how beneficial or detrimental the genetic change proved to be.
"For many years in evolution there has been an assumption that mutations occur randomly, and that selection 'cleans them up'," explains Martincorena. "But what we see here suggests that genomes have developed mechanisms to avoid mutations in regions that are more valuable than others."
Observations from studies of cancer genomes suggest that similar mechanisms may be involved in the development of cancers, so Luscombe and colleagues would now like to investigate exactly how this risk-managing gene protection works at a molecular level, and what role it may play in tumour cells.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), via AlphaGalileo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- I?igo Martincorena, Aswin S. N. Seshasayee, Nicholas M. Luscombe. Evidence of non-random mutation rates suggests an evolutionary risk management strategy. Nature, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nature10995
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Tuesday, April 24, 2012
eMusic launches Android app
It may not have all the glitz of a Spotify or an Rdio, but eMusic is the one of the OGs of the online music game, serving up MP3s to internet citizens since the late-90s. The site today is celebrating the launch of an Android app, which brings curated radio stations, music recommendations, playlist mixes and downloads (with a subscription) to the Googley mobile OS. The app, which was created in conjunction with the folks at music discovery app, We Are Hunted, is available for devices running Android 2.3.3 or higher. More information can be found in the press release after the break.
Continue reading eMusic launches Android app
eMusic launches Android app originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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