Here Is The Way To Check If Your Facebook Data Was Leaked

Recently, there has been a huge uproar on social media on how Facebook revealed information about millions of users that was used to influence politics. It is now known as the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook made a move that allows the users to check if they were the victims of this scandal.

(Source: FB News Post)

Millions of users chose to deactivate their Facebook accounts after the scandal came to light. Here are the simple steps you can follow to check if your personal data was revealed:

First of all, go to the top right corner and click the “Help” button.

(Source: FB News Post)

After clicking the help button, you will see a menu. In the menu, click on “Help Center”.

(Source: FB News Post)

Once you are there type in “Cambridge Analytica” and select the page “How can I tell if my info was shared with Cambridge Analytica?”.

(Source: FB News Post)

It will then tell you if your data was shared or not. The message suggests that only a small number of people who had the app “This Is Your Digital Life” had their data shared and it was not millions of users but it is just another stunt to save face.

(Source: FB News Post)

Many people are still not convinced and are still choosing to stay away from Facebook after the recent scandal.

Source : Wonderful Engineering

Scientists Develop Brain Prosthesis That Boosts Memory

A study funded by DARPA increased the possibility of memory-enhancing brain prosthetics. The animal research done previously showed successful results after which the study was conducted on patients at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. The patients there were already having brain implants as a part of their epilepsy treatment. They experienced major improvements in both short-term and long-term memory. The patients were asked to play a memory-related computer game in which they were asked to remember specific things.

When the patients were trying to remember those things, the researchers recorded various patterns of neural firing in the brain’s hippocampus area. The hippocampus area of the brain is responsible for the memory. They also paid attention to neural patterns that resulted in the correct memory being encoded. After that, they made the patients play the game again and electrically simulated each patient’s brain by using the encoding patterns studied earlier. They were hoping to use those electrical simulators to trigger more effective memory storage of the data which they have.

The method worked successfully and showed results that were better than what the team was expecting. The results on the short-term memory tests jumped by a huge 37% and the long-term memory tests enhanced by 35%. Robert Hampson, the lead author of the study said, “We showed that we could tap into a patient’s own memory content, reinforce it and feed it back to the patient. Even when a person’s memory is impaired, it is possible to identify the neural firing patterns that indicate correct memory formation and separate them from the patterns that are incorrect. We can then feed in the correct patterns to assist the patient’s brain in accurately forming new memories, not as a replacement for innate memory function, but as a boost to it.”

The research has opened the door to the memory-enhancing brain implants. These implants might give a button which can be pressed when looking at something to increase the chances of remembering it later. The researchers are looking at this as a potential medical device to help the patients with Alzheimers, stroke or traumatic brain injury patients. The implant will help them re-start the process of forming new memories using their brain’s own activity patterns. The team is also hoping that the technology might be able to assist people in keeping memories which they have encoded already. Hampson says, “In the future, we hope to be able to help people hold onto specific memories, such as where they live or what their grandkids look like when their overall memory begins to fail.”

source : wonderful engineering

These Smart Glasses Convert Text To Sound For The Visually Challenged

A Japanese company is developing a pair of smart glasses to help the visually impaired to read the written text more easily. The smart glasses called Oton Glass are meant to translate text into audio using two cameras and an earpiece, both fitted to the frame of the glasses.

Half of the lens is a mirror reflecting the wearer’s eyes back to the first camera, which tracks eye movement. The camera can detect blinking while the other one is used to capture text. The wearers used the smart glasses by staring at the text they can’t read and blinking in order to trigger the glasses.

(Source: The Verge)

A Rasberry Pi is used as the glasses’ computer and the text captured by the glasses is sent to Raspberry Pi cloud system which converts the text into audio and the audio is played through the earpiece. In the case that the text is not identified by the computer, it is sent to a remote worker who can decipher it.

The Oton Glass is a little like Google Translate but you don’t have to pull out your phone and swipe over the text. This makes Oton glass much easier to use. Keisuke Shimakage, the lead designer, started working on the glasses in 2012 to aid his father who had developed dyslexia. His father eventually recovered but he continued developing the glasses to help others suffering from the disorder.

(Source: Hypestation)

The Oton Glass is a Campfire (Japanese version of Kickstarter) project and you can get a pair of glasses for around $47. Smart glasses have not been a success in the past but that has been due to the fact that the developers wanted to include literally everything in the glasses and this led to steep prices. The Oton Glass is simple to use and comes at a much lower price and should be a huge convenience for people who have trouble reading the text around them.

This Artificial Heart Will Work Forever

The artificial heart is not something completely new. There are a number of options available, but there is only one that is approved for human use and even that is only intended to keep the patients going until they can get a heart transplant. However, a device being developed by the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) is hoped to be a permanent fix.

The OHSU artificial heart was invented by the Dr. Richard Wampler, who is now retired, with the spinoff company OregonHeart. The device has been in the works since 2014. The company stopped working on the device so the University took over its development last year.

(Source: Medical Xpress)

The chance of mechanical failure increases with the increased number of moving parts and the device has been kept simple with just one moving part so no valves can get stuck. The moving part is a titanium alloy-coated hollow rod that shuttles back and forth inside a titanium tube.

This is suspended within the tube on hydrodynamic bearings. This is used to serve the same purpose as that of the lower chambers of the heart. The first step is to move blood to the lungs and then through the rest of the body. One thing that the OHSU artificial heart has is that it creates a blood flow that mimics a natural human pulse as opposed to others that create a continuous flow. This minimizes the blood damage and clotting and reduces the risk of a stroke.

(Source: New Atlas)

The device gets its power from a combined control unit/rechargeable battery pack. This can be carried in the pocket or can be worn on the belt. There are talks about further developments that would allow the battery to be implanted under the skin and recharged through external sources.

The OHSU artificial heart has been tested successfully in cows and sheep for short periods. The scientists are now developing a smaller model that is hoped to be implanted for three months. If this proves successful, then they will look forward to human trials. We will have to wait for the results to know if a permanent heart solution is going to become a reality or not.

source: Wonderful Engineering

SpaceChain, Aim to Archive Human Knowledge in Space

SpaceChain on Monday announced that it has entered a partnership with theArch Mission Foundation to use open source technology to launch an ambitious project involving the storage of large data sets in spacecraft and on other planets.

Arch Mission will load large quantities of data onto SpaceChain's satellite vehicles with the eventual aim of storing data on other planets.

"The goal of archiving and preserving knowledge of future generations will advance archiving science and human knowledge by itself," SpaceChain cofounder Zheng Zuo said. "The ambitious goal of disseminating this knowledge throughout the solar system is finally achievable today, thanks to greatly reduced launch costs through new space launch providers."

SpaceChain's decision to support the Arch mission to archive human data in space will help launch the Earth Library -- a ring of backup data orbiting around the Earth -- said Nova Spivack, cofounder of the Arch Mission Foundation.

The goal of the foundation is to "preserve and disseminate humanity's most important information across time and space, for the benefit of future generations," he told LinuxInsider.

Data Preservation

Among the data sets that are included are Wikipedia, the human genome, Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive and the Rosetta Project, Spivack said. The project ultimately will include a vast library of books, music, photos, film, video and other data sets.

The partnership would allow SpaceChain's long-term goal of storing data archives throughout the solar system come to fruition.

The venture follows an earlier partnership involving Elon Musk's Space X, which launched its Falcon Heavy rocket into space last month. Among other things, the launch carried a cherry red Tesla Roadster into space. The car is expected to circumnavigate the sun for at least 30 million years.

The Arch Mission included its first library, including the Isaac Asimov Foundation Trilogy, in that Falcon Heavy payload. There are plans to include additional libraries on future space flights, including a Lunar Library scheduled for delivery to the moon by 2020, and a Mars Library that is designed to accompany the first human settlers to the red planet.

SpaceChain, which was co-founded by CTO Jeff Garzik, a pioneer in the blockchain field and a key Linux kernel engineer, recently entered a critical venture with Qtum Foundation, in order to launch the world's first blockchain node in space.

Qtum launched a CubeSat into space that uses its blockchain technology on a Raspberry Pi.

"Blockchain is an interesting technology as a foundational infrastructure for future space colonies," said Aditya Kaul, research director at Tractica.

"Beyond the secure storage of data, I am personally very excited about how these could come together to create decentralized economies and possibly even governing mechanisms," he told LinuxInsider.

"There is an interesting conference on some of these themes coming up in June in London," Kaul noted.

Race to Space

The efforts to put a decentralized ledger into space follow an earlier effort involving nanosatellite firm Vector and blockchain firm Nexus to develop a cryptocurrency that is hosted in space, noted Jessica Groopman, industry analyst at Kaleido Insights.

Blockstream last year announced plans to launch Blockstream Satellite, a venture to enable satellites to broadcast real-time bitcoin data down to Earth from space, she told LinuxInsider.

"The general push 'to the outer limit' is one driven by intense distrust not only in existing centralized structures, but in the potential for the blockchain market itself to float too far in that direction, as more and more of the world's largest institutions are investing in the technology," Groopman pointed out.

In the early days of the sharing economy, that same sensibility existed in the peer-to-peer community, she recalled, but firms like Uber and Airbnb eventually became dominant.

Source : technewsworld

Scientists Have Discovered A New Organ We Never Knew About

Just when we think, we know everything there is to know about the human body, we are proved wrong. The use of a new microscopic technique led a team of scientists to identify a previously unknown human anatomical feature. There are calling it the interstitium. It was previously thought to be simply dense connective tissue sitting below the skin’s surface and surrounding the organs but it is actually a complex series of interconnected, fluid-filled compartments.

While examining a patient’s bile duct with a new type of endoscope that uses laser and fluorescent dyes to examine the living tissue, researchers identified a pattern of cavities that didn’t fit with the known anatomy of the bile duct. They took their results to pathology expert Neil Theise and the team proceeded to take bile duct biopsies in a way that did not dehydrate the samples.

(Source: New Atlas)

Theise explained to ResearchGate, “Rather than process the sampled bile duct tissue as usual, with dehydration and chemical fixation to make slides, we quickly froze the tissue, keeping the resected piece as close to the normal living tissue as possible.”

The previously assumed dense connective tissue was actually revealed to be a network of tiny fluid-filled cavities supported by a lattice meshwork of proteins. It could never be identified before as prior microscopic analysis involved some degree of cellular dehydration.

(Source: New Atlas)

“We would often see little “cracks” between collagen bundles in these layers,” says Theise. “I was taught, and in turn taught many of my trainees, that these cracks were artifacts of processing. We had pulled the tissue too hard in preparing the slide and separations had formed. But these were not artifacts: these were the remnants of the collapsed spaces. They had been there all the time. But it was only when we could look at living tissue that we could see that.”

Once identified, it was seen across the entire human body from the linings of organs to the surrounding muscles. The aspect of the research that has gained the most traction is the suggestion that the interstitium should be classified as a new organ. Theise says that it fulfills the criteria for the definition of a new organ and could be the 80th organ to be classified in the human body.

“The definition of ‘organ’ is imprecise, but usually implies that there is a unity and uniqueness of structure or of function,” says Theise. “This space has both: unique properties and structures not seen elsewhere and functions that are highly specific and dependent on the unique structures and cell types that form it.”

(Source: The Daily Beast)

Everyone is not convinced that it is enough to be classified as a new organ and even though they agree that this is a huge scientific discovery and will help in understanding the human body better, they feel that it is not enough to be classified as a new organ.

“I would think of this as a new component that is common among a variety of organs, rather than a new organ in and of itself,” says Nathanson in an interview with CNN. “It would be analogous to discovering blood vessels for the first time, in that they are in every organ but they aren’t an organ themselves.”

The coming months will give us a better idea of what this discovery signifies.

Source : wonderful Engineering

Charles – A Robot That Can Read And Interpret Human Facial Expressions

A team of researchers from Cambridge University’s Department of Computer Science and Technology has successfully created a robot which can copy human emotions. This implies that humans have crossed into the final frontier of artificial intelligence (AI) research and development (R&D). The robot is named Charles and it can scan and interpret several expressions which are written on a person’s face. The process takes only a few seconds and starts with a camera capturing images of a person’s face.

After capturing the images, the data is transferred to a computer for analysis of facial expressions. Charles then closely matches the subject’s facial’s expressions. The robot looks like a very friendly creation from a Hollywood special effects studio. He has a large humanoid expressive face and eyes. This is because of the high-quality prosthetics which went into his design.

Cambridge University Professor Peter Robinson explained about their robot saying, “We’ve been interested in seeing if we can give computers the ability to understand social signals, to understand facial expressions, the tone of voice, body posture and gesture. We thought it would also be interesting to see if the computer system, the machine, could actually exhibit those same characteristics, and see if people engage with it more because it is showing the sort of responses in its facial expressions that a person would show. So we had Charles made.”

The reason behind the production of Charles is that the researchers want to use Charles as a tool for analyzing the perceptions of robotics and robots by the public. He said, “The more interesting question that this work has promoted is the social and theological understanding of robots that people have. Why do, when we talk of robots, always think about things that look like humans, rather than abstract machines, and why are they usually malicious?”

Charles is able to project a lot of emotions including shock, fear, and anger. It can also capture some subtle and complex expressions like arrogance and grumpiness. It can detect these intended emotions without any prompts or indications. It also shows that in terms of the future of emotional robot, R&D has the larger task of creating a platform for understanding the surface of the human heart and hidden deep emotions. However, for now, we are content with the capabilities and potential of Charles.

Source: wonderful Engineering

Scientists developing a new device that give humans ‘cat-like hearing’

Scientists developing a new device that 

give humans ‘cat-like hearing’

Scientists are developing an atomically thin device that could receive and transmit signals 

across a radio frequency range far greater than what humans can hear.

Scientists are developing an atomically thin device that could receive and transmit signals across a radio frequency range far greater than what humans can hear. Representational Image. ThinkStock.

Scientists are developing an atomically thin device that could receive and transmit signals across a radio frequency range far greater than what humans can hear. The “drumhead” device being developed by researchers at Case Western Reserve University in the US is trillion times smaller in volume and 100,000 times thinner than the human eardrum.

The advance may lead to the next generation of ultra-low-power communications and sensory devices smaller and with greater detection and tuning ranges, researchers said. Dynamic range is the ratio between the signal ceiling over the noise floor and is usually measured in decibels (dB).

Human eardrums normally have dynamic range of about 60 to 100dB in the range of 10Hz to 10kHz, and our hearing quickly decreases outside this frequency range. Other animals, such as the common house cat or beluga whale, can have comparable or even wider dynamic ranges in higher frequency bands.

The vibrating nanoscale drumheads developed by Philip Feng, an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University, and his team are made of atomic layers of semiconductor crystals, with diameters only about one micron. In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers demonstrated the capability of their key components – the atomic layer drumheads or resonators – at the smallest scale yet.

The work represents the highest reported dynamic range for vibrating transducers of their type, researchers said. To date, that range had only been attained by much larger transducers operating at much lower frequencies – like the human eardrum, for example, they said.

“What we have done here is to show that some ultimately miniaturised, atomically thin electromechanical drumhead resonators can offer remarkably broad dynamic range, up to 110 dB, at radio frequencies (RF) up to over 120 MHz,” Feng said.  “These dynamic ranges at RF are comparable to the broad dynamic range of human hearing capability in the audio bands,” said Feng.

Enthusiast From Japan Makes Insane Wristwatches

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Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. There are many people around the world that practice it regularly. One such person is the Japanese designer FRISK_P. She makes the most insane wristwatches that will just blow your mind.

Her mission is “to make wristwatches that nobody else makes” and she has succeeded. The insane wristwatches might not be practical or very compact but they are definitely one of a kind.

(Source: Oddity Central)

Looking at them, it is hard to tell what went into making them. All we can be sure about is that they took a lot of effort.

If you are a steampunk fan then you might have seen steampunk accessories before but FRISK_P is one a completely different level as all her inventions are fully functional. They can tell time in the craziest ways possible.

(Source: Oddity Central)

Lucky for us, she posts a lot of pictures and videos of her inventions.

An article on IT Media states that FRISK_P uses software like 3D CAD and Fusion 360 to design the steampunk wristwatches.

(Source: Oddity Central)

She then uses a 3D printer to bring these to life.