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The experimental setups can be very complex, with imaging equipment, other sensors, sample handling hardware, and more all accessing the site where the beam comes through. (credit: John Timmer)

Today, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is starting construction on a second X-ray laser that will be even brighter and more intense than its first. The new hardware, based on a superconducting linear accelerator (or linac), will replace about a third of the length of the original accelerator and leave the facility's existing X-ray laser intact.

The SLAC facility is a linear electron accelerator that was originally built to characterize the W and Z bosons. After the frontier of high-energy physics shifted to CERN, the hardware was repurposed to create an extremely powerful X-ray laser.

When charged particles are forced to move along a curved path, they lose energy in the form of radiation. If they're moving at sufficiently high energies, that radiation takes the form of X-rays. At SLAC, an X-ray laser is generated by accelerating electrons and then forcing them through a series of carefully space magnets (called undulators or wigglers) that cause the particles to curve back and forth. The end result of all the radiation they emit is an intense beam of X-rays that can be used for a variety of imaging applications.

Transplantation of the bioengineered, 3D tissue using mouse iPS cells labeled with GFP. (credit: Takashi Tsuji, RIKEN)

For the first time, researchers have coaxed a primordial ball of cells into a multi-layered, transplantable patch of skin, sporting hair follicles and functioning glands.

The mouse-based study, published in Science Advances, brings scientists closer to pulling off the feat in humans, which would provide synthetic skin grafts that could treat burn victims and patients with various skin diseases. “We are coming ever closer to the dream of being able to recreate actual organs in the lab for transplantation and also believe that tissue grown through this method could be used as an alternative to animal testing of chemicals,” lead researcher Takashi Tsuji, of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan, said in a statement.

Researchers have been getting better and better and recreating tissues in lab—but for skin, they had gotten stuck at making simplified versions. Fully functioning skin includes three layers: the epidermis, an outermost protective layer that is mostly waterproof; the elastic dermis layer that gives skin flexibility as well as housing oil and sweat glands, hair follicles, nerve endings, and blood vessels; and the subcutaneous fatty layer that provides padding and insulation.

A worker moves crates for batteries on an assembly line at the A123 Systems lithium ion automotive battery manufacturing plant... but maybe someday will move on to lithium-oxygen? (credit: Getty Images)

Battery research is a fraught area to report on. In the lab, researchers manage to show something spectacular, like high current density or excellent recharge characteristics. But the part where the battery catches fire and destroys the lab is left out when the story makes the popular press. I am guilty of this myself, and I'm about to do it again. (Not really.)

Lithium-oxygen batteries are very promising, but most current iterations manage to destroy themselves after a few charge/discharge cycles. A recent publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society shows some progress in overcoming the problems associated with lithium-oxygen batteries.

Why lithium-oxygen?

We all love our lithium ion batteries. Even though they are the best that we have, they still suck pretty hard. To put it in perspective, lithium ion batteries top out at about 200mAh/g, so you need a very heavy battery to get much energy. Lithium-oxygen, on the other hand, promises 1675mAh/g, a very respectable energy density.

The Federal Communications Commission today unveiled new broadband labels modeled after the nutrition labels commonly seen on food products. Home Internet service providers and mobile carriers are being urged to use the labels to give consumers details such as prices (including hidden fees tacked onto the base price), data caps, overage charges, speed, latency, packet loss, and so on.

ISPs aren't required to use these labels. But they are required to make more specific disclosures as part of transparency requirements in the FCC's net neutrality order, which reclassified Internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. The FCC recommends that ISPs use these labels to comply with the disclosure rules and says use of the labels will act as a "safe harbor" for demonstrating compliance. However, ISPs can come up with their own format if they still make all the required disclosures in "an accurate, understandable, and easy-to-find manner," the FCC said today.

The labels were approved unanimously by the FCC's Consumer Advisory Committee, a group with both consumer advocates and industry representatives. ISPs on the committee include CenturyLink, Verizon, and T-Mobile USA. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the primary lobby group for the cable industry, is also on the committee.

(credit: Judit Klein)

Last week, a federal judge in Washington formally accepted the guilty plea of Brian Farrell, the 28-year-old who had been accused in 2015 of being the right-hand man to the head of Silk Road 2.0, the copycat website inspired by the infamous Tor-enabled drug website.

In a 2015 press release, the Department of Justice said that SR2 had generated approximately $8 million per month since it began in November 2013.

Farrell pleaded guilty in March 2016 to one count of distribution of heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine last month, which carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison. He will also be required to forfeit items that were seized at his arrest in Bellevue, Washington, which included $3,900 in silver bullion bars, $35,000 in cash, and "various computer media." Both Farrell’s lawyers and prosecutors have agreed to a sentence of eight years, but the judge is allowed to impose a harsher sentence if he chooses. (By comparison, Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of running the original Silk Road, was sentenced in 2015 to a dual life sentence.)

(credit: Valentina Palladino)

We're still trying to figure out what we want our wearables, particularly wristbands, to do for us. There are a number of devices including some smartwatches and fitness trackers that are truly multipurpose, but we have yet to see what features will stick in the long run. Now, a company called Mighty Cast is taking a slightly different approach to smart wristbands with its Nex Band—it's made to do pretty much anything that an existing fitness tracker or smartwatch can already do. It monitors activity and receives smartphone alerts, but you can personalize notifications and actions as much as you want by "hacking" its small, removable modules, creating numerous possibilities for new features.

The Nex Band has been floating around for the past couple years, but it has the chance to entice the most enterprising wearable users by giving them more personalization options than any other wristband. Mighty Cast bills it as a hackable smart band because you can assign functions to each of its five "mods" that are all independent from each other and can relate to different things. You might tap on of your mods to turn on your living room lights, while the mod next to it flashes when you receive an e-mail from your boss. A nearly infinite number of functions can be customized from within the Nex Band's companion app, and it's also compatible with all of IFTTT's control combinations.

When I sat down with Mighty Cast's CEO Adam Adelman to learn more about the Nex Band, I was initially confused as to how it worked. However, you don't need to be a developer or have special tech skills to "hack" the band—it's all done from the companion app. Once you choose which mod you want to customize, a basic hack has a two-step "when X happens, do Y" formula. It's really similar to how IFTTT sets up its automated actions by integrating social media, smartphone alerts, IoT products, and other devices to work more for you. For example, you could program a hack that say "when I double-tap, play My Workout Playlist." Then when you completed that action on that mod, your smartphone will start to play that particular playlist.

(credit: CNN)

Key evidence that helped convict two British men last week for terrorist offences was reportedly obtained from a locked phone using a simple but highly effective ruse.

According to CNN, which cited a source close to the investigation, undercover police officers visited Junead Khan, 25, of Luton posing as company managers and asked to check his driver and work records.

"When they disputed where he was on a particular day, he got out his iPhone and showed them the record of his work. The undercover officers asked to see his iPhone and Khan handed it over," CNN reported. At that point they apparently arrested Khan and changed the password settings on the iPhone to prevent it from becoming locked.