Month: April 2017

Enlarge / Hydrophylax bahuvistara (credit: Sanil-George-Jessica-Shartouny)

From the slimy backs of a South Indian frog comes a new way to blast influenza viruses.

A compound in the frog’s mucus—long known to have germ-killing properties—can latch onto flu virus particles and cause them to burst apart, researchers report in Immunity. The peptide is a potent and precise killer, able to demolish a whole class of flu viruses while leaving other viruses and cells unharmed. But scientists don’t know exactly how it pulls off the viral eviscerations. No other antiviral peptide of its ilk seems to work the same way.

The study authors, led by researchers at Emory University, note that the peptide appears uniquely nontoxic—something that can’t be said of many other frog-based compounds. Thus, the peptide on its own holds promise of being a potential therapy someday. But simply figuring out how it works could move researchers closer to a vaccine or therapy that could take out all flus, ditching the need for yearly vaccinations for each season’s flavor of flu.

Enlarge / Hydrophylax bahuvistara (credit: Sanil-George-Jessica-Shartouny)

From the slimy backs of a South Indian frog comes a new way to blast influenza viruses.

A compound in the frog’s mucus—long known to have germ-killing properties—can latch onto flu virus particles and cause them to burst apart, researchers report in Immunity. The peptide is a potent and precise killer, able to demolish a whole class of flu viruses while leaving other viruses and cells unharmed. But scientists don’t know exactly how it pulls off the viral eviscerations. No other antiviral peptide of its ilk seems to work the same way.

The study authors, led by researchers at Emory University, note that the peptide appears uniquely nontoxic—something that can’t be said of many other frog-based compounds. Thus, the peptide on its own holds promise of being a potential therapy someday. But simply figuring out how it works could move researchers closer to a vaccine or therapy that could take out all flus, ditching the need for yearly vaccinations for each season’s flavor of flu.

Lionel Koretzky

We're three races into the 2017 Formula 1 season, and it's a new era for the sport. The cars are wider, heavier, faster, and more powerful. Lap times are down—although perhaps not by the "five seconds a lap" margin some predicted—and for the first time since we moved back to V6 engines, Mercedes-AMG is no longer winning everything in sight. And with Ross Brawn running the technical side of the sport now, it's likely we'll get some even bigger changes in 2020 aimed at reducing costs and improving the racing. Looking even further ahead, Renault has some ideas about the future of the sport, unveiling its R.S. 2027 concept at this year's Shanghai Auto Show.

The one megawatt race car

The R.S. 2027 is instantly recognizable as a Formula 1 car. It's lighter than current machinery, at just 1,322lbs/600kg (rather than the current lardy 1,591lbs/722kg). It's all-wheel drive, thanks to a pair of 250kW (335hp) motor/generator units, and there's also a small-capacity turbocharged V6 providing an extra 670hp (500kW) to the rear wheels.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we're back with a new list of deals and steals. Today you can get a stunning Dell 43-inch 4K monitor for $854, a steal compared to its market value of $1,199. We also have a deal for $50 off one of Dell's newest XPS tower PCs—the XPS 8920 comes with a Core i5 Kaby Lake processor, 8GB Radeon GPU, and a 256GB SSD.

Check out the full list of deals below.

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Enlarge (credit: Juicero/ PR Newswire)

A cold-press juice company called Juicero was one of the top-funded hardware startups in Silicon Valley last year. It promised a $400 countertop juice-pressing appliance that squeezes healthy beverages out of proprietary bags, delivered to a person’s doorstep on a subscription basis for $5 to $8 apiece.

But now that the hardware has hit the market, some investors have been disappointed after figuring out that Juicero owners can squeeze juice from the proprietary juice bags by hand, without the $400 appliance.

Bloomberg reporters found that a little elbow grease yielded as much juice as the machine produced. They were “able to wring 7.5 ounces of juice in a minute and a half. The machine yielded 8 ounces in about two minutes.”

Enlarge / Martin Shkreli. (credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Martin Shkreli will have his federal securities fraud trial separated from that of his former counsel and co-defendant Evan Greebel, US District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto wrote in an order filed Wednesday.

Shkreli and Greebel were jointly indicted by the FBI in December of 2015 on allegations that they ran an elaborate Ponzi-like scheme to defraud investors of hedge funds that Shkreli formerly managed and siphoned $11 million in assets from Shkreli’s former biopharmaceutical company, Retrophin.

Since then, both Shkreli and Greebel have pled 'not guilty' and asked the court to have their trials separated. They have made it clear that they intend to point fingers at each other in the cases.

(credit: IBM)

IBM's Watson Internet of Things (IoT) unit has teamed with audio giant Harman's Professional Solutions group to create an adaptive artificial intelligence service that can act as an "in-room cognitive concierge." In less tech-jargon, that's an AI able to respond to voice commands and questions based specifically on the context of the room its sensor is located in. The technology is currently being demonstrated as a cognitive conference room assistant, and it's already in use as a patient concierge in hospital rooms. Soon, this cognitive room capability could find its way into hotel rooms, cruise ship cabins, and other corporate spaces.

Called Voice-Enabled Cognitive Rooms, the technology uses IBM's Watson IoT application programming interfaces and cognitive computing service paired with Harman AKG microphones, JBL speakers, and control and switching systems from Harman subsidiary AMX. Similar technologies are already being embedded in Harman's consumer devices, including sound bars and alarm clocks, but these latest developments are opening up the system to integration with corporate information systems and building controls.

Using natural language voice commands, the system can be used to control conference room equipment, set up videoconferences, launch presentations, and adjust lighting. The commands are sent to the Watson IoT cloud service and then relayed back to systems in the room as software commands. As the system learns the preferences of each person that uses it, it can automatically adjust the room's system to their preferences.