They also contain vitamins B1, B2, C and D, and minerals such as phosphorus, potassium, iron, copper, magnesium and zinc.

“We decided to produce cosmetics such skin creams – variations for the body and the face—and shampoos and hair rinses,” Naranjo, a tenured professor at the Inter-Disciplinary Research Center for Regional Integral Development (CIIDIR), said.

The lotions moisturize and clean the skin and in “many cases,” combat superficial skin conditions or diseases, which has created demand for the products in some municipalities and rural communities where the team has begun a small-scale marketing effort.

The shampoos, according to Naranjo, help promote healthy and shiny hair because the bio-particles they contain strengthen the capillary fibers, nurturing and hydrating the hair.

The line of cosmetic products includes an anti-blotches cream for day or overnight use that is mild enough to be used on all types of skin.

For the team, the next step is securing financing to launch a commercial enterprise.

“As a research center, we will offer the micro-biological testing to certify the safety of the products,” Naranjo said.

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“ELISA is an important technology for biochemical analysis of proteins and hormones and is critical for the diagnosis of many diseases, such as HIV and Lyme Disease,” said corresponding author Anna Pyayt, Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, US.

“But the machines required for the incubation and reading are expensive and bulky,” Pyayt said.

Instead of sending patients to a laboratory, the new cellphone-based technology – Mobile Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (MELISA) — allows for the very same test to be conducted in the doctor’s office, clinic or even in a remote area.

“The MELISA allows patients to undergo testing and obtain results at point-of-care,” Pyayt said.

The device accurately measures progesterone levels, a key hormone that impacts female fertility and is indicative of some cancers.

It consists of a water bath heater that incubates samples at a target temperature and analyses them via images taken by mobile phone.

The device uses colour analysis to determine the RGB (red, green, blue) colour components of each sample.

The blue colour component is used for further analysis due to its sensitivity to the changes in progesterone concentration.

“It is designed to make biomedical testing simple and affordable. When low cost testing can be integrated with routine clinic visits, this would greatly improve the quality of healthcare and detect worrisome signs earlier,” Pyayt added.

The portable MELISA weighs less than half a kilogram and the researchers believe that it has the potential help older patients suffering chronic conditions and those across the world.

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The app allows them to keep track of medications, follow-up appointments and lifestyle changes needed after a heart attack.

“We have found that there are many gaps in care in patients recovering from a heart attack,” said lead author William Yang, from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US.

“We wanted to engage patients in their own care, and help them transition from the hospital to home using existing technology,” Yang added.

Heart attack patients “may suddenly have new doctors and more medical visits, including cardiac rehab, and the app helps them track and centralise all those appointments”, he said.

The app helps patients to keep track of all their medications, including how much to take and at what time.

It also syncs with the Apple Watch to monitor heart rate and keep track of how much they are walking and with a Bluetooth blood pressure monitor.

Yang said the app has also proven useful to patients even while they were still in the hospital as it allows patients to store important medical information on the app.

The results were presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Cardiovascular Summit in Las Vegas.

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The study, published online in the journal Scientific Reports, demonstrated fast, scalable and high-resolution 3D printing of hydrogels, which remain solid and retain their shape despite containing water.

Hydrogels are everywhere in our lives, including in contact lenses, diapers and the human body.

The smart gel could provide structural rigidity in organs such as the lungs and can contain small molecules like water or drugs to be transported in the body and released.

It could also create a new area of soft robotics and enable new applications in flexible sensors and actuators, biomedical devices and platforms or scaffolds for cells to grow, Lee said.

“The full potential of this smart hydrogel has not been unleashed until now,” said Lee.

“We added another dimension to it and this is the first time anybody has done it on this scale. They’re flexible, shape-morphing materials. I like to call them smart materials,” he added.

The engineers worked with a hydrogel that has been used for decades in devices that generate motion and biomedical applications such as scaffolds for cells to grow on.

They learned how to precisely control hydrogel growth and shrinkage.

In temperatures below 32 degrees Celsius, the hydrogel absorbs more water and swells in size.

When temperatures exceed 32 degrees Celsius, the hydrogel begins to expel water and shrinks, the study showed.

The engineers also found that the objects they could create with the hydrogel range from the width of a human hair to several millimeters long.

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The vessel will be put into service by the end of the year, said the university, adding that “Dongfanghong Number-3 would work with other scientific ships to conduct surveys and analyses of air, water and the seabed”.

The 2,500-tonne Dongfanghong and 3,500-tonne Dongfanghong Number-2, built in the 1960s and 1990s, respectively, made a great contribution to ocean research in China.

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The videos has been reportedly rolled out for some users.

However, it is not known if the feature will make its way for all users.

Users can open the Google Photos app and tap the “Assistant” icon at the bottom of their screen to check whether the feature is available or not.

Google Photos service was announced in May 2015 and spun out from Google+ — the company’s social network.

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The researchers believe their work, published in the journal Cryptology ePrint Archive, highlights a significant flaw in smartphone security, as using the sensors within the phones require no permissions to be given by the phone user and are openly available for all apps to access.

Led by Shivam Bhasin of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), the researchers used sensors in a smartphone to model which number had been pressed by its users, based on how the phone was tilted and how much light is blocked by the thumb or fingers.

The team of researchers took Android phones and installed a custom application which collected data from six sensors: accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, proximity sensor, barometer and ambient light sensor.

“When you hold your phone and key in the PIN, the way the phone moves when you press 1, 5 or 9, is very different. Likewise, pressing 1 with your right thumb will block more light than if you pressed 9,” Bhasin said.

The classification algorithm was trained with data collected from a group of people, who each entered a random set of 70 four-digit PIN numbers on a phone. At the same time, it recorded the relevant sensor reactions.

Known as deep learning, the classification algorithm was able to give different weightings of importance to each of the sensors, depending on how sensitive each was to different numbers being pressed.

Although each individual enters the security PIN on their phone differently, the scientists showed that as data from more people is fed to the algorithm over time, success rates improved.

So while a malicious application may not be able to correctly guess a PIN immediately after installation, using machine learning, it could collect data from thousands of users over time from each of their phones to learn their PIN entry pattern and then launch an attack later when the success rate is much higher.

This study shows how devices with seemingly strong security can be attacked using a side-channel, as sensor data could be diverted by malicious applications to spy on user behaviour and help to access PIN and password information, and more, said Professor Gan Chee Lip, Director of the Temasek Laboratories at NTU.

The researchers said mobile operating systems should restrict access to the six sensors in future, so that users can actively choose to give permissions only to trusted apps that need them.

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“They are packing extreme cold-weather gear and scientific instruments onto sleds pulled by two tank-like snow machines called PistenBullys,” the US space agency added.

The expedition will ultimately help scientists to make the best assessment of the accuracy of data collected from space by the Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), set to launch in 2018.

With a fast-firing laser instrument, ICESat-2 will measure the elevation of ice sheets and track change over time.

Even small amounts of melt across areas as vast as Greenland or Antarctica can result in large amounts of meltwater contributing to sea level rise.

To help document this, ICESat-2’s height change measurements will have a precision of less than an inch – ground-truthed, in part, with efforts like this Antarctic campaign.

The team will collect precise GPS data of the elevation at 88 degrees south, where ICESat-2’s orbits converge, providing thousands of points where the survey measurements can be compared to satellite data, NASA said.

“This traverse provides an extremely challenging and extremely cold way to assess the accuracy of the data,” said Kelly Brunt of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and a research scientist at the University of Maryland.

“ICESat-2’s datasets are going to tell us incredible things about how Earth’s ice is changing, and what that means for things like sea level rise,” Brunt added.
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“Within Resume Assistant you’ll also see relevant job listings from LinkedIn’s over 11 million active job openings to jump start your search.

“Along with job openings, you’ll see details of what the job requires, helping you to tailor your resume to a specific role,” LinkedIn said in a blog post on Wednesday.

Within Resume Assistant, users will also see the option to turn on Open Candidates. This feature on LinkedIn quietly signals to recruiters that you are open to new opportunities, and makes you twice as likely to hear from recruiters.

Resume Assistant will be rolling out to Microsoft Insiders starting this week on Windows and will be generally available to Office 365 subscribers in the coming months, the Microsoft-owned firm said.

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‘Disaster Maps’, which was introduced globally in June, uses aggregated, de-identified Facebook data to help organisations address the critical gap in information they often face when responding to natural disasters.

“In times of disaster, our platform is a valuable source of information—whether it’s letting your friends and family know you are safe with ‘Safety Check’ feature or using Facebook to raise donations for relief efforts,” said Ritesh Mehta, Head of Programmes, India, South and Central Asia at Facebook.

“Through our work with the National Disaster Management Authority and the roll out of Disaster Maps in India and the disaster information volunteers initiative, we hope we can help communities get the information they need to prepare, respond and recover if disaster strikes,” he added.

The measures were announced at Facebook’s first annual ‘Disaster Response Summit’ here, attended by policy makers, think tanks and humanitarian organisations.

Facebook will provide multiple types of maps during disaster response efforts.

’Location Density Maps’ show where people are located before, during and after a disaster.

“We can compare this information to historical records, like population estimates based on satellite images. Comparing these data sets can help response organizations understand areas impacted by a natural disaster,” Facebook said in a statement.

‘Movement Maps’ illustrate patterns of movement between different neighbourhoods or cities over a period of several hours.

By understanding these patterns, response organisations can better predict where resources will be needed, gain insight into patterns of evacuation or predict where traffic will be most congested.

“Safety Check” maps are based on where Facebook community uses ‘Safety Check’ feature to notify their friends and family that they are safe during a disaster.

Facebook is also supporting the pilot of the ASK-DIV (Disaster Information Volunteers) scheme where a network of trained volunteers provide supplementary information to inform relief efforts through the Facebook ‘Workplace’ platform.

This programme with SEEDS will establish a network of volunteers to provide real-time, first-hand information on disasters in their local communities. The programme will be piloted in two disaster-prone states—Assam and Uttarakhand.

“NDMA is proactively utilising social media for awareness generation. This is an important benchmark towards integrating social media with disaster response activities. I am sure this partnership will open new avenues for using mobile technology in disaster situation,” said RK Jain, Member, NDMA.

”The disaster information volunteer network and Facebook’s Disaster Maps will play a key role in helping us get the right help to the right people at the right time,” added Manu Gupta, Director, SEEDS.

IANS

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