Month: December 2016

From left: the foam, the cellulose wrapping, and the graphene oxide.

We don't often think about our access to clean water, but water scarcity is an everyday problem for many parts of the world. Technologies that can cheaply deliver clean water hold tremendous potential, especially in light of our growing population and changing climate.

Solar steam generation and desalination represent a water-purification strategy that has the added benefit of a minimal carbon footprint. Unfortunately, generating steam with solar power is challenging, and it works most efficiently in very large systems. That's in part because water's handled in bulk, and a lot of the energy is lost into heating water that isn't converted to steam. Two other concerns with such systems are the need for thermal insulation and the limited quantities of water that can be generated with smaller systems.

Recently, a team of scientists and engineers designed a solar desalination device with a constrained, effectively two-dimensional water path that provides both an efficient water supply and minimizes heat loss.

Enlarge / The future of electronics, Army style. (credit: ARL's Eric Proctor)

If you’re not familiar with the terms "synthetic biology" or "biohybrid systems," you may want to add them to your vocabulary. If the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and other research institutions are able to follow through on their plans, the technology will be mainstream in a decade.

ARL is betting that engineered living organisms—termed synthetic biology—can be integrated into living and non-living (abiotic) systems to perform material synthesis, enhance human performance, provide environmental sensing, and control autonomous biohybrid devices.

“As synthetic biology has realized new capabilities, we’ve really started looking at how we can engineer organisms to control devices,” Bryn Adams affirms. Dr. Adams is a biotechnology research scientist ARL’s Adelphi, Maryland facility. She recently published an editorial in the Synthetic Biology edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society in which she predicted a future where scientists place engineered DNA into systems including engineered versions of the genes for photosynthetic proteins, which could be introduced into bacteria integrated into electronic devices to power them.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Alexander Rhind)

For cable and satellite TV customers who want to cancel and switch to online streaming, the shortage of local sports has long been a major drawback. But regional sports networks that air your local baseball, basketball, and ice hockey teams are starting to come to online streaming services, and AT&T's DirecTV Now has rights to most of the US-based MLB, NBA, and NHL teams in local markets.

The coverage isn't perfect. DirecTV Now has rights to all three leagues in some cities, and none in others. For example, Chicago-area subscribers to DirecTV Now can watch the Cubs, White Sox, Bulls, and Blackhawks, but Philadelphia-area customers would have no access to the regional sports channel covering the Phillies, 76ers, and Flyers. It's a mix in cities where DirecTV Now has rights to some regional sports networks but not others. DirecTV Now in New York thus has the Yankees but not the Mets, the Nets but not the Knicks, and neither of the NY-based hockey teams. Boston-area subscribers to DirecTV Now can watch the Celtics on Comcast SportsNet New England, but there's no Red Sox or Bruins coverage because DirecTV Now lacks rights to New England Sports Network.

Limitations are due to what programming contracts AT&T was able to strike. More teams and networks could be added in the future if AT&T agrees on prices with other programmers.

Enlarge / Avalanche once hosted ransomware that spoofed messages from law enforcement. Now, a team of 40 law enforcement agencies has shut it down. (credit: Symantec)

A botnet that has served up phishing attacks and at least 17 different malware families to victims for much of this decade has been taken down in a coordinated effort by an international group of law enforcement agencies and security firms. Law enforcement officials seized command and control servers and took control of more than 800,000 Internet domains used by the botnet, dubbed "Avalanche," which has been in operation in some form since at least late 2009.

"The operation involves arrests and searches in five countries," representatives of the FBI and US Department of Justice said in a joint statement issued today. "More than 50 Avalanche servers worldwide were taken offline."

The domains seized have been "sinkholed" to terminate the operation of the botnet, which is estimated to have spanned over hundreds of thousands of compromised computers around the world. The Justice Department's Office for the Western Federal District of Pennsylvania and the FBI's Pittsburgh office led the US portion of the takedown. "The monetary losses associated with malware attacks conducted over the Avalanche network are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide, although exact calculations are difficult due to the high number of malware families present on the network," the FBI and DOJ said in their joint statement.