Month: September 2017

Enlarge / The estrogen receptor, bound to a steroid. (credit: PDB)

Studying alternate realities has traditionally been the purview of physicists, cosmologists, and philosophers. Maybe theologians. But at the University of Chicago, biochemists, molecular biologists, and geneticists in Joseph Thornton’s lab are examining why things in biology have turned out as they have and not some other way. They note that “history leaves no trace of the roads it did not take” and ask: is the current state of things inevitable?

And, if it's not, it’s worth figuring out why things aren’t different—and whether the outcome could have been better than the solution life on Earth ended up with.

Remaking the past

By “things” here I mean proteins. For Thornton’s lab, this means the estrogen receptor and a related receptor that handles other steroid hormones like androgens, progestogens, and corticosteroids. These receptors bind their preferred steroid, then bind to specific DNA sequences and control the activity of a particular suite of genes. The DNA sequence that the estrogen receptor binds—called the estrogen response element—differs from the DNA sequence that the more generic steroid receptor sticks to, though only in two locations.

Enlarge (credit: Motorola)

Motorola’s Moto X4 is coming to Google’s Project Fi network, and it’s bringing Android One along with it.

On Wednesday, Google announced that Motorola’s latest smartphone will work with its cellular MVNO service, which piggybacks off the networks run by T-Mobile, Sprint, and US Cellular in the US. As a result, the Moto X4 will be the first smartphone that isn’t part of Google’s own Nexus or Pixel family devices to support Project Fi.

The company also brings a relatively affordable option to the network; ever since Google stopped selling the older and more affordable Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X through Project Fi, the only Project Fi devices available have been the year-old Pixel and Pixel XL, which cost a minimum of $650. Sequels to those phones are coming soon and are all but guaranteed to support Project Fi, but they are expected to be even pricier. At $399 outright, the Moto X4 isn’t exactly cheap, but it should still be more manageable for a wider audience.

The drone delivery startup Matternet is getting ready to put its technology into commercial use. The company has announced that it will soon be launching a drone delivery network in urban areas of Switzerland to ferry medical samples between labs and hospitals. The company has also announced the Matternet Station, which is an answer to one of the big questions facing drone delivery companies: how to handle the beginning and end of a trip.

Matternet is taking a different approach than Amazon, which envisions drones dropping packages off in a customer's yard. This is an approach that could work well in suburban and rural areas but won't work as well in big cities where people might not have suitable places for package drop-offs.

The Matternet station works like a drone mailbox. Customers insert a package into a slot in the station, and a robot arm hands the package off to a Matternet drone for takeoff. If the customer arrives at the drop-off station before the drone, the station can hold the package until the drone gets there. The drone then flies to another Matternet station, which stores the package until the recipient arrives to pick it up.

Enlarge (credit: https://securityequifax2017.com/)

The official Equifax Twitter account encouraged people to visit a knock-off website that mocks the company's security practices instead of the site the company created to warn of a massive data breach. That recent breach exposed personal details for as many as 143 million US consumers.

In a tweet on Tuesday afternoon, an Equifax representative using the name Tim wrote: "Hi! For more information about the product and enrollment, please visit: securityequifax2017.com." The message came in response to a question about free credit monitoring Equifax is offering victims. The site is a knock-off of the official Equifax breach notification site, equifaxsecurity2017.com. A security researcher created the imposter site to demonstrate how easy it is to confuse a legitimate name with a bogus one. The Equifax tweet suggests that even company representatives can be easily fooled. The tweet was deleted late Wednesday morning, more than 18 hours after it went live.

Identity thieves and hackers often rely on this kind of confusion to trick people into divulging passwords or installing malware. By using domains that are similar to the domains of a bank or Web service and copying the overall look and feel of the site, attackers can often fool people into thinking they're visiting a site they know and trust, rather than a malicious one set up for purposes of fraud.

Enlarge / The all-glass back of the HTC U11. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Evidence is mounting that Google is going to buy HTC. Bloomberg's Tim Culpan is reporting HTC shares will halt trading tomorrow pending a "major announcement" from the company. The speculation is that the struggling smartphone and VR headset company is going to be sold, and further speculation suggests the buyer is Google.

The "Google to buy HTC" rumors have been churning for some time. The local Taiwan media has been reporting whispers of talks between the two companies since the beginning of September, and one site, Apple Daily, is reporting that the sale is already a done deal.

So what would Google want with HTC? Any tech watchers' mind should immediately jump to the last time Google bought a failing Android OEM: its acquisition of Motorola. Along with a ton of patents, Google got a bunch of factories dedicated to producing smartphones and other products. It sold off the parts it didn't want, like the cable modem business, and then it set about whipping Motorola into shape. After clearing the 18-month product pipeline the old Motorola execs left in place, Motorola turned into one of the better Android OEMs out there, offering stock Android, fast updates, and a simple lineup of about three main phones across the pricing spectrum. Google eventually got rid of Motorola, though, probably as a result of negotiations with other Android OEMs.

Enlarge / A beach on Mornington Peninsula, a hotbed for the mysterious disease. (credit: Fir0002)

In the last year, cases of a ghastly but mysterious flesh-eating bacterial infection have more than doubled in Victoria, Australia, raising alarm among health experts.

There were 239 cases of the flesh-eating infections in the past 12 months, according to figures (PDF) released this week by health authorities. In 2016, there were only 102 reported cases, while 2015 and 2014 tallied just 58 and 47. And the rate of new infections is currently skyrocketing: in the past few months, case counts hit nine per week, according to Australia’s Nine News. The number of severe cases has also doubled.

While the rises alone are enough to worry health experts, the fact that virtually nothing is known about the cause of the infection has some dismayed.