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(credit: Apple)

Following the huge success of Apple’s ResearchKit—which connected tens of thousands of patients with clinical research in its first year—comes the release today of its medical sibling, the open source platform CareKit.

First unveiled by Apple last month, the platform is set up to be a springboard for apps that will allow users to manage their own health through mobile devices. Specifically, the platform includes four modules designed to allow patients to: monitor their progress through medical treatment plans; aggregate health and activity data via device sensors and manual logs; analyze that data in graphical interfaces; and share all of the information with health professionals and care takers by easily creating PDF files that can be e-mailed.

(credit: Glow)

The goal, according to Apple, is to empower patients to control and personalize their own medical care while providing doctors with more complete pictures of their patients’ health and progress. Inspiration for the new platform came from ResearchKit users who, after logging and tracking health data in apps, felt as though their phones were more in tune with their medical status than their doctors.

The new, "improved" United Cyber Caliphate—the power of four jihadi hacktivist cells fused together like some sort of cyber-Voltron.

The Islamic State has been deft in its use of the Internet as a communications tool. ISIS has long leveraged social media to spread propaganda and even coordinate targets for attacks, using an ever-shifting collection of social media accounts for recruitment and even to call for attacks on individuals ISIS leaders have designated as enemies. But the organization's efforts to build a sophisticated internal “cyber army” to conduct information warfare against the US and other powers opposing it have thus far been fragmented and limited in their effectiveness—and more often than not they've been more propaganda than substance.

Now, ISIS is taking another crack at building a more credible cyber force. As analysts from Flashpoint note in a report being published today (entitled "Hacking for ISIS: The Emergent Cyber Threat Landscape"), ISIS earlier this month apparently merged four separate pro-ISIS “cyber” teams into a single group called the United Cyber Caliphate.

“Until recently, our analysis of the group's overall capabilities indicated that they were neither advanced nor did they demonstrate sophisticated targeting,” said Laith Alkhouri, Director of Research & Analysis for the Middle East and North Africa and a co-founder at Flashpoint. “With the latest unification of multiple pro-ISIS cyber groups under one umbrella, there now appears to be a higher interest and willingness amongst ISIS supporters in coordinating and elevating cyber attacks against governments and companies.”