Author Archives: Srinivas Chakravarty

NASA hopes to Launch Artemis I Moon Mission on Sept 3

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NASA will target Saturday, Sept. 3 at 2:17 p.m. EDT, the beginning of a two-hour window, for the launch of Artemis I, the first integrated test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and the ground systems at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Mission managers met Tuesday to discuss data and develop a forward plan to address issues that arose during an Aug. 29 launch attempt for the flight test. During that launch attempt, teams were not able to chill down the four RS-25 engines to approximately minus 420 degrees F, with engine 3 showing higher temperatures than the other engines. Teams also saw a hydrogen leak on a component of the tail service mast umbilical quick disconnect, called the purge can, and managed the leak by manually adjusting propellant flow rates.

Artemis I launch on Aug 27, 2022 / NASA

In the coming days, teams will modify and practice propellant loading procedures to follow a procedure similar to what was successfully performed during the Green Run at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The updated procedures would perform the chilldown test of the engines, also called the kick start bleed test, about 30 to 45 minutes earlier in the countdown during the liquid hydrogen fast fill liquid phase for the core stage.

Teams also are configuring platforms at Launch Pad 39B to enable engineers access to the purge can on the tail service mast umbilical. Once access is established, technicians will perform assessments and torque connection points where necessary.

Meteorologists with the U.S. Space Force Space Launch Delta 45 predict favorable weather conditions for Saturday. While rain showers are expected, they are predicted to be sporadic during the launch window.

The mission management team will reconvene Thursday to review data and overall readiness.

NASA Engineer Develops Tiny, High-Powered terahertz Laser to Find Water on the Moon

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Finding water on the Moon could be easier with a Goddard technology that uses an effect called quantum tunneling to generate a high-powered terahertz laser, filling a gap in existing laser technology.

Locating water and other resources is a NASA priority crucial to exploring Earth’s natural satellite and other objects in the solar system and beyond. Previous experiments inferred, then confirmed the existence of small amounts of water across the Moon. However, most technologies do not distinguish among water, free hydrogen ions, and hydroxyl, as the broadband detectors used cannot distinguish between the different volatiles.

Goddard engineer Dr. Berhanu Bulcha said a type of instrument called a heterodyne spectrometer could zoom in on particular frequencies to definitively identify and locate water sources on the Moon. It would need a stable, high-powered, terahertz laser, which was prototyped in collaboration with Longwave Photonics through NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

“This laser allows us to open a new window to study this frequency spectrum,” he said. “Other missions found hydration on the Moon, but that could indicate hydroxyl or water. If it’s water, where did it come from? Is it indigenous to the formation of the Moon, or did it arrive later by comet impacts? How much water is there? We need to answer these questions because water is critical for survival and can be used to make fuel for further exploration.”

As the name implies, spectrometers detect spectra or wavelengths of light in order to reveal the chemical properties of matter that light has touched. Most spectrometers tend to operate across broad sections of the spectrum. Heterodyne instruments dial in to very specific light frequencies such as infrared or terahertz. Hydrogen-containing compounds like water emit photons in the terahertz frequency range — 2 trillion to 10 trillion cycles per second — between microwave and infrared.

Like a microscope for subtle differences within a bandwidth like terahertz, heterodyne spectrometers combine a local laser source with incoming light. Measuring the difference between the laser source and the combined wavelength provides accurate readings between sub-bandwidths of the spectrum.

Traditional lasers generate light by exciting an electron within an atom’s outer shell, which then emits a single photon as it transitions, or returns to its resting energy level. Different atoms produce different frequencies of light based on the fixed amount of energy it takes to excite one electron. However, lasers fall short in a particular portion of the spectrum between infrared and microwave known as the terahertz gap.

“The problem with existing laser technology,” Dr. Bulcha said, “is that no materials have the right properties to produce a terahertz wave.”

This tiny laser capitalizes on quantum-scale effects of materials just tens of atoms across to generate a high-powered beam in a portion of the spectrum where traditional lasers fade in strength/NASA/Michael Giunto

Electromagnetic oscillators like those that generate radio or microwave frequencies produce low-powered terahertz pulses by using a series of amplifiers and frequency multipliers to extend the signal into the terahertz range. However, this process consumes a lot of voltage, and the materials used to amplify and multiply the pulse have limited efficiency. This means they lose power as they approach the terahertz frequencies.

From the other side of the terahertz gap, optical lasers pump energy into a gas to generate photons. However, high-powered, terahertz-band lasers are large, power hungry, and not suitable for space exploration purposes where mass and power are limited, particularly hand-held or Small Satellite applications. The power of the pulse also drops as optical lasers push towards the terahertz bandwidths.

To fill that gap, Dr. Bulcha’s team is developing quantum cascade lasers that produce photons from each electron transition event by taking advantage of some unique, quantum-scale physics of materials layered just a few atoms thick.

In these materials, a laser emits photons in a specific frequency determined by the thickness of alternating layers of semiconductors rather than the elements in the material. In quantum physics, the thin layers increase the chance that a photon can then tunnel through to the next layer instead of bouncing off the barrier. Once there, it excites additional photons. Using a generator material with 80 to 100 layers, totaling less than 10 to 15 microns thick, the team’s source creates a cascade of terahertz-energy photons.

This cascade consumes less voltage to generate a stable, high-powered light. One drawback of this technology is its beam spreads out in a large angle, dissipating quickly over short distances. Using innovative technology supported by Goddard’s Internal Research and Development (IRAD) funding, Dr. Bulcha and his team integrated the laser on a waveguide with a thin optical antenna to tighten the beam. The integrated laser and waveguide unit reduces this dissipation by 50% in a package smaller than a quarter.

He hopes to continue the work to make a flight-ready laser for NASA’s Artemis program.

The laser’s low size and power consumption allow it to fit in a 1U CubeSat, about the size of a teapot, along with the spectrometer hardware, processor, and power supply. It could also power a handheld device for use by future explorers on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Twitter saga continues after Zatko revelations; Parag ridicules false claims

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Twitter’s Indian-origin CEO Parag Agrawal has lashed out at the company’s former security chief Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko terming his claims false and riddled with inaccuracies.

Reacting to ongoing saga over bots controversy with Zatko, who was fired in January, he said, “We are reviewing the redacted claims that have been published, but what we’ve seen so far is a false narrative that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and presented without important context.”

Zatko claimed that Twitter lied about the actual number of bots on its platform and misled federal regulators about users’ data safety, substantiating Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s takeover bid and withdrawal from the move.

“There are news reports outlining claims about Twitter’s privacy, security, and data protection practices that were made by Mudge Zatko, a former Twitter executive who was terminated in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance,” Agrawal said in an internal message sent to the staff.

Zatko also alleged that the Indian government forced the micro-blogging platform to hire a “government agent” and allow him access to users’ sensitive data, a claim that was trashed by Twitter.

Agrawal said that this is frustrating and confusing to read, “given Mudge was accountable for many aspects of this work that he is now inaccurately portraying more than six months after his termination”.

“But none of this takes away from the important work you have done and continue to do to safeguard the privacy and security of our customers and their data,” he told employees.

Zatko’s disclosure before SEC

According to Zatko’s disclosure before the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Twitter has “major security problems that pose a threat to its own users’ personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy”.

Agrawal said that given the spotlight on Twitter, “we can assume that we will continue to see more headlines in the coming days — this will only make our work harder. We will pursue all paths to defend our integrity as a company and set the record straight.”

Emotional AI and gen Z: The attitude towards new technology and its concerns

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Artificial intelligence (AI) governs all that come under “smart technology” today. From self-driving cars to voice assistants on our smartphones, AI has ubiquitous presence in our daily lives. Yet, it had been lacking a crucial feature: the ability to engage human emotions.

The scenario is quickly changing, however. Algorithms that can sense human emotions and interact with them are quickly becoming mainstream as they come embedded in existing systems. Known as “emotional AI,” the new technology achieves this feat through a process called “non-conscious data collection”(NCDC), in which the algorithm collects data on the user’s heart and respiration rate, voice tones, micro-facial expressions, gestures, etc. to analyze their moods and personalize its response accordingly.

However, the unregulated nature of this technology has raised many ethical and privacy concerns. In particular, it is important to know the attitude of the current largest demographic towards NCDC, namely Generation Z (Gen Z). Making up 36% of the global workforce, Gen Z is likely to be the most vulnerable to emotional AI. Moreover, AI algorithms are rarely calibrated for socio-cultural differences, making their implementation all the more concerning.

“We found that being male and having high income were both correlated with having positive attitudes towards accepting NCDC. In addition, business majors were more likely to be more tolerant towards NCDC,” highlights Prof. Ghotbi. Cultural factors, such as region and religion, were also found to have an impact, with people from Southeast Asia, Muslims, and Christians reporting concern over NCDC.

Research by Team:

“Our study clearly demonstrates that sociocultural factors deeply impact the acceptance of new technology. This means that theories based on the traditional technology acceptance model by Davis, which does not account for these factors, need to be modified,” explains Prof. Mantello.

The study addressed this issue by proposing a “mind-sponge” model-based approach that accounts for socio-cultural factors in assessing the acceptance of AI technology. Additionally, it also suggested a thorough understanding of the potential risks of the technology to enable effective governance and ethical design. “Public outreach initiatives are needed to sensitize the population about the ethical implications of NCDC. These initiatives need to consider the demographic and cultural differences to be successful,” says Dr. Nguyen.

Overall, the study highlights the extent to which emotional AI and NCDC technologies are already present in our lives and the privacy trade-offs they imply for the younger generation. Thus, there is an urgent need to make sure that these technologies serve both individuals and societies well.

How to detect nanoplastics present in air

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Large pieces of plastic can break down into nanosized particles that often find their way into the soil and water. Perhaps less well known is that they can also float in the air. It’s unclear how nanoplastics impact human health, but animal studies suggest they’re potentially harmful. As a step toward better understanding the prevalence of airborne nanoplastics, researchers have developed a sensor that detects these particles and determines the types, amounts and sizes of the plastics using colorful carbon dot films.

The researchers will present their results today at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fall 2022 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person Aug. 21–25, with on-demand access available Aug. 26–Sept. 9. The meeting features nearly 11,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

“Nanoplastics are a major concern if they’re in the air that you breathe, getting into your lungs and potentially causing health problems,” says Raz Jelinek, Ph.D., the project’s principal investigator. “A simple, inexpensive detector like ours could have huge implications, and someday alert people to the presence of nanoplastics in the air, allowing them to take action.”

Of the many well-documented risks of dirty air, one potential danger is lesser known: chronic kidney disease. Learn about new research and how to protect yourself. CREDIT: Michigan Medicine

Millions of tons of plastic are produced and thrown away each year. Some plastic materials slowly erode while they’re being used or after being disposed of, polluting the surrounding environment with micro- and nanosized particles. Nanoplastics are so small — generally less than 1-µm wide — and light that they can even float in the air, where people can then unknowingly breathe them in. Animal studies suggest that ingesting and inhaling these nanoparticles may have damaging effects. Therefore, it could be helpful to know the levels of airborne nanoplastic pollution in the environment.

Previously, Jelinek’s research team at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev developed an electronic nose or “e-nose” for monitoring the presence of bacteria by adsorbing and sensing the unique combination of gas vapor molecules that they release. The researchers wanted to see if this same carbon-dot-based technology could be adapted to create a sensitive nanoplastic sensor for continuous environmental monitoring.

Carbon dots are formed when a starting material that contains lots of carbon, such as sugar or other organic matter, is heated at a moderate temperature for several hours, says Jelinek. This process can even be done using a conventional microwave. During heating, the carbon-containing material develops into colorful, and often fluorescent, nanometer-size particles called “carbon dots.” And by changing the starting material, the carbon dots can have different surface properties that can attract various molecules.

To create the bacterial e-nose, the team spread thin layers of different carbon dots onto tiny electrodes, each the size of a fingernail. They used interdigitated electrodes, which have two sides with interspersed comb-like structures. Between the two sides, an electric field develops, and the stored charge is called capacitance. “When something happens to the carbon dots — either they adsorb gas molecules or nanoplastic pieces — then there is a change of capacitance, which we can easily measure,” says Jelinek.

Then the researchers tested a proof-of-concept sensor for nanoplastics in the air, choosing carbon dots that would adsorb common types of plastic — polystyrene, polypropylene and poly(methyl methacrylate). In experiments, nanoscale plastic particles were aerosolized, making them float in the air. And when electrodes coated with carbon-dot films were exposed to the airborne nanoplastics, the team observed signals that were different for each type of material, says Jelinek. Because the number of nanoplastics in the air affects the intensity of the signal generated, Jelinek adds that currently, the sensor can report the amount of particles from a certain plastic type either above or below a predetermined concentration threshold. Additionally, when polystyrene particles in three sizes — 100-nm wide, 200-nm wide and 300-nm wide — were aerosolized, the sensor’s signal intensity was directly related to the particles’ size.

The team’s next step is to see if their system can distinguish the types of plastic in mixtures of nanoparticles. Just as the combination of carbon dot films in the bacterial e-nose distinguished between gases with differing polarities, Jelinek says it’s likely that they could tweak the nanoplastic sensor to differentiate between additional types and sizes of nanoplastics. The capability to detect different plastics based on their surface properties would make nanoplastic sensors useful for tracking these particles in schools, office buildings, homes and outdoors, he says.

This tiny sensor detects medicine levels from sweat drop in 30 seconds

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Lithium can alleviate the symptoms of bipolar disorder and depression — if taken in just the right amount. Too little won’t work, while too much can bring on dangerous side effects. To precisely monitor the amount of this medication in the body, patients must undergo invasive blood tests. But today, scientists report the invention of a tiny sensor that detects lithium levels from sweat on the surface of a fingertip in as little as 30 seconds, without a trip to the clinic.

The researchers will present their results today at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fall 2022 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person Aug. 21–25, with on-demand access available Aug. 26–Sept. 9. The meeting features nearly 11,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

Not only must lithium be taken at a certain dosage, but patients often struggle to take it as prescribed and may miss pills. So, when the medication doesn’t appear to be working, health care providers need to know how much medication the patient is actually swallowing. But current options for monitoring have significant drawbacks. For example, blood draws produce accurate results, but they are invasive and time consuming. Pill counters, meanwhile, don’t directly measure the intake of the medication. To address these limitations, the team turned to another body fluid.

“Although it may not be visible, the human body constantly produces sweat, often only in very small amounts,” says Shuyu Lin, Ph.D., a postgraduate student researcher who is co-presenting the work with graduate student Jialun Zhu at the meeting. “Small molecules derived from medication, including lithium, show up in that sweat. We recognized this as an opportunity to develop a new type of sensor that would detect these molecules.”

“Through a single touch, our new device can obtain clinically useful molecular-level information about what is circulating in the body,” says Sam Emaminejad, Ph.D., the project’s principal investigator, who is at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “We already interact with a lot of touch-based electronics, such as smart phones and keyboards, so this sensor could integrate seamlessly into daily life.”

Devising a sensor to detect lithium presented some technical challenges, however. Sweat is generally only present in minute amounts, but the electrochemical sensing needed to detect charged particles of lithium required an aqueous, or watery, environment. To provide it, the team engineered a water-based gel containing glycerol. This extra ingredient prevented the gel from drying out and created a controlled environment for the electronic portion of the sensor.

To trap the lithium ions after they traversed the gel, the team used an ion-selective electrode. The accumulating ions generate a difference in electrical potential compared with a reference electrode. The researchers used this difference to infer the concentration of lithium present in sweat. Together, these components comprise a tiny, rectangular sensor that is smaller than the head of a thumbtack and can detect lithium in about 30 seconds. The sensor is still in the preliminary testing phase, but ultimately, the researchers envision incorporating it into a larger, yet-to-be designed system that provides visual feedback to the provider or the patient.

After characterizing the sensor using an artificial fingertip, the team recruited real people to test it, including one person on a lithium treatment regimen. The researchers recorded this person’s lithium levels before and after taking the medication. They found that these measurements fell close to those derived from saliva, which prior research has shown to accurately measure lithium levels. In the future, the researchers plan to study the effects of lotion and other skin products on the sensor’s readings.

This technology also has applications beyond lithium. Emaminejad is developing similar touch-based sensors to monitor alcohol and acetaminophen, a painkiller also known as Tylenol®, while also exploring the possibility of detecting other substances. The complete sensing systems could include additional features, such as encryption secured by a fingerprint, or, for substances prone to abuse, a robotic dispensing system that releases medication only if the patient has a low level in their bloodstream.

The researchers acknowledge support and funding from the National Science Foundation, Brain and Behavior Foundation, Precise Advanced Technologies and Health Systems for Underserved Populations and the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

ACS Fall 2022 will be a vaccination-required and mask-recommended event for all attendees, exhibitors, vendors and ACS staff who plan to participate in-person in Chicago. For detailed information about the requirement and all ACS safety measures, please visit the ACS website.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

ACS team unveils a more environment friendly air conditioner

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Summer is in full swing in the U.S., and people are turning up their air conditioners to beat the heat. But the hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants in these and other cooling devices are potent greenhouse gases and major drivers of climate change. Today, scientists report a prototype device that could someday replace existing “A/Cs.” It’s much more environmentally friendly and uses solid refrigerants to efficiently cool a space.

The researchers will present their results today at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fall 2022 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person Aug. 21–25, with on-demand access available Aug. 26–Sept. 9. The meeting features nearly 11,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

“Just installing an air conditioner or throwing one away is a huge driver of global warming,” says Adam Slavney, Ph.D., who is presenting this work at the meeting. The refrigerants used in these systems are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide and can accidentally leak out of systems when they are being handled or disposed of.

Traditional cooling systems, such as air conditioners, work by causing a refrigerant to cycle between being a gas or a liquid. When the liquid becomes a gas, it expands and absorbs heat, cooling a room or the interior of a refrigerator. A compressor that works at about 70–150 pounds per square inch (psi) turns the gas back into a liquid, releasing heat. In the case of air conditioners, this heat is directed outside the home. Though this cycle is efficient, concerns about climate change and stricter regulations on hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants are spurring the search for more environmentally responsible ones.

Solid refrigerants could be an ideal solution. Unlike gases, solids won’t leak into the environment from A/C units. One class of solid refrigerants, called barocaloric materials, work similarly to traditional gas-liquid cooling systems. They use pressure changes to go through heat cycles, but in this case, the pressure drives a solid-to-solid phase change. That means the material remains a solid, but the internal molecular structure changes. The key structural aspect of these barocaloric solid materials is that they contain long, flexible molecular chains that are typically floppy and disordered. But under pressure, the chains become more ordered and rigid — a change that releases heat. The process of going from an ordered to a relaxed structure is like melting wax, but without it becoming a liquid, says Jarad Mason, Ph.D., the project’s principal investigator, who is at Harvard University. When the pressure is released, the material reabsorbs heat, completing the cycle.

A disadvantage of barocaloric systems, however, is that most of these materials require massive pressures to drive heat cycles. To produce these pressures, the systems need expensive, specialized equipment that’s not practical for real-world cooling applications. Mason and his team recently reported barocaloric materials that can act as refrigerants at much lower pressures. They’ve now shown that the refrigerants, which are called metal-halide perovskites, can work in a cooling system they’ve built from scratch. “The materials we reported are able to cycle at about 3,000 psi, which are pressures that a typical hydraulics system can work at,” says Slavney.

The team has now built a first-of-its-kind prototype that demonstrates the use of these new materials in a practical cooling system. The device has three main parts. One is a metal tube packed with the solid refrigerant and an inert liquid — water or an oil. Another piece of the device is a hydraulic piston that applies pressure to the liquid. Finally, the liquid helps transfer that pressure to the refrigerant and helps carry heat through the system.

After solving several engineering challenges, the team has shown that the barocaloric materials work as functional refrigerants, turning pressure changes into full temperature-changing cycles. “Our system still doesn’t use pressures as low as those of commercial refrigeration systems, but we’re getting closer,” says Mason. To the team’s knowledge, this is the first working cooling system using solid-state refrigerants that rely on pressure changes.

With the device now in hand, the team plans to test a variety of barocaloric materials. “We’re really hoping to use this machine as a testbed to help us find even better materials,” says Slavney, including ones that work at lower pressures and that conduct heat better. With an optimal material, the researchers believe solid-state refrigerants could become a viable replacement for current air conditioning and other cooling technologies.

The researchers acknowledge support and funding from the Harvard University Materials Science Research and Engineering Center, the Harvard Climate Change Solutions Fund, and the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.

Super-fast electric car charging is here with Mida’s touch

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Despite the growing popularity of electric vehicles, many consumers still hesitate as it may take longer to power up an electric car than it does to gas up a conventional one.

Another concern is that frequent charging or speeding up the charging process can damage the battery and reduce its lifespan. Now, scientists have developed a superfast charging methods tailored to power different types of electric vehicle batteries in 10 minutes or less without harm.

The researchers will present their results Monday at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall 2022, a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person on Aug. 21-25, with nearly 11,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

“Fast charging is the key to increasing consumer confidence and overall adoption of electric vehicles,” says Eric Dufek, who is presenting this work at the meeting. “It would allow vehicle charging to be very similar to filling up at a gas station.” Such an advance could help the US reach President Biden’s goal that by 2030, half of all vehicles sold should be electric or hybrid.

When a lithium-ion battery is being charged, lithium ions migrate from one side of the device, the cathode, to the other, the anode. By making the lithium ions migrate faster, the battery is charged more quickly, but sometimes the lithium ions don’t fully move into the anode. In this situation, lithium metal can build up, and this can trigger early battery failure and reducing the lifetime of the battery.

To address these challenges, Dufek and his research team at Idaho National Laboratory used machine learning to create unique charging protocols. By inputting information about the condition of many lithium-ion batteries during their charging and discharging cycles, the scientists trained the machine learning analysis to predict lifetimes. The team then analyzed to identify and optimize new protocols.

“We’ve significantly increased the amount of energy that can go into a battery cell in a short amount of time,” says Dufek. “Currently, we’re seeing batteries charge to over 90% in 10 minutes without lithium plating or cathode cracking.”

Going from a nearly dead battery to one at 90% power in only 10 minutes is a far cry from current methods, which, at best, can get an electric vehicle to full charge in about half an hour. While many researchers are looking for methods to achieve this sort of super-fast charging, Dufek says that one advantage of their machine learning model is that it ties the protocols to the physics of what is actually happening in a battery.

The researchers plan to use their model to develop and design new lithium-ion batteries that are optimized to undergo fast charging.

Sony opens Play Station 5 at 12 noon for pre-order in India, here’s how to book

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Sony’s PlayStation 5 and PS5 Digital Edition gaming consoles was made available in India starting 12PM today at Sony Centre, and other online retailers including Amazon India, Flipkart, Vijay Sales, Croma, Reliance Digital, Game the Shop, Prepaid Gamer Card, and Games the Shop.

Available at Sony Centre, the Play Station 5 gaming console will be available with a combination of Horizon Forbidden West game at a price of Rs 53,990 while the PS5 Digital Edition gaming console with the game will be available at a price of Rs 43,990.

Sony Centre said the pre – bookings will begin at 12PM today, deliveries for the Play Station 5 and Play Station 5 Digital Edition gaming console in India will start from September 5, 2022. On offer is an EMI option on the purchase of PlayStation 5 and Play Station 5 Digital Edition gaming consoles — Rs 8,998 for six months or Rs 17,996 for a span of three months.

Sony PS5 console

Sony’s next-generation gaming console – PS5 is available in two editions- the Standard and the Digital Edition, the latter supports physical Blu-ray discs.

Comes with lightning-fast loading with an ultra-high-speed SSD, deeper immersion with support for haptic feedback, adaptive triggers and 3D Audio, and an all-new generation of incredible PlayStation games.

PS5 Digital Edition

Besides lightning-fast loading with an ultra-high-speed SSD, the digital edition provides support for haptic feedback, adaptive triggers and 3D Audio, and an all-new generation of incredible PlayStation games.

Sony open PS5 for pre-booking in India

PS5 Digital Edition is an all-digital version of the PS5 console with no disc drive. You have to sign into your account for PlayStation Network and go to PlayStation Store to buy and download games.

PS5’s Digital Edition supports 16GB GDDR6 RAM and 825GB of internal storage with expansion support using PS5 SSDs. It is also the cheaper than the standard model and powered by an octa-core CPU based on Zen 2 architecture.

Transcription service Otter limits access to archives, free users

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Automated transcription provider Otter has reduced the free hours for transcription from 600 to 300 minutes per month for free users, said the company on Thursday.

The popular tool to record interviews with real-time transcription is now limited for free access to 25 most recent conversations, with older ones available via paid mode only.

The company said it is making some big changes to its offerings for both free and paying customers, applicable from September 27. It will add Otter Assistant which will automatically join meetings (even if you don’t) on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet to capture and share notes and meeting insights.

“We’re also adding our recently launched ‘Automated Outline’ feature. Now you’ll have access to automatic meeting summaries curated and displayed in the Outline panel so you and your colleagues can easily access a summary of what was discussed,” said the company.

The company is also making changes to Otter Pro, including expanding Otter Assistant features, adding Automated Outline, raising the price, and changing other features and usage limits.

While Otter Pro annual pricing will remain the same at $8.33 per month (billed annually), the company will increase Otter Pro monthly pricing from $12.99 a month to $16.99 a month.

Otter Pro users will get 1,200 minutes of transcription per month, 90 minutes per conversation, 10 imports per month, 100 names aling with 100 other terms custom vocabulary with ‘no Dropbox sync’ (available on Otter Business).

TikTok in-app browser on iOS monitoring keystrokes, taps: Cybersecurity researcher

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Chinese short-form video app TikTok may be monitoring all keyboard inputs and taps via its in-app browser on iOS, said independent cyber-security researcher Felix Krause.

Founder of Fastlane that was acquired by Google, Krause said that when the user opens any link on the TikTok iOS app, it’s opened inside their in-app browser leveraging access to other information.

“While you are interacting with the website, TikTok subscribes to all keyboard inputs (including passwords, credit card info) and every tap on the screen, like which buttons and links you click,” Krause claimed in a blog post on Thursday.

From a technical perspective, it amounts to installing a keylogger on third-party websites and the company confirmed those features exist in the code but deneid that it was using them.

It proves that “TikTok injects code into third party websites through their in-app browsers that behaves like a keylogger. However, claims it’s not being used,” said the researcher. “This was an active choice the company made. This is a non-trivial engineering task. This does not happen by mistake or randomly.”

“Like other platforms, we use an in-app browser to provide an optimal user experience, but the Javascript code in question is used only for debugging, troubleshooting and performance monitoring of that experience – like checking how quickly a page loads or whether it crashes,” a company spokesperson was quoted as saying in a Forbes report.

 

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip4, Z Fold4 sweep market; Specs, Prices, All Details

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Samsung, India’s largest consumer electronics brand, today launched the latest Galaxy Z series in India. The fourth generation foldables, Galaxy Z Fold4 and Galaxy Z Flip4 are now open for pre-book online and across retail stores in the country.

Equipped with flagship camera, the fastest processor and all new design, Galaxy Z Fold4 is the most powerful smartphone yet. Galaxy Z Flip4’s compact clamshell design offers unique experiences and its FlexCam enables shooting hands-free videos.

“At Samsung, we continuously push the boundaries of innovation to create new smartphone experiences for consumers. Our latest Galaxy Z series is a testimony to just that. Now, in its fourth generation,” said Aditya Babbar, Senior Director and Head, Product Marketing, Samsung India.

Galaxy Z Flip4

Galaxy Z Flip4 sports compact clamshell design and offers unique smartphone experiences. The innovative form factor allows you to go truly hands-free and do more without even unfolding the phone, including answering calls and replying to texts.

 

With Quick Shot, users can click selfies in portrait mode and see the preview in actual photo ratio. Additionally, with upgraded camera equipped with 65 percent brighter sensor, Galaxy Z Flip4 comes with Samsung’s flagship Nightography feature ensuring your photos and videos are crisper and more stable through the day or night.

Galaxy Z Flip4 comes with the latest Snapdragon 8+ Gen1 processor and 10% higher battery capacity at 3700mAh, allowing users to capture, watch and connect longer between charges. With Super Fast Charging, users can charge up to 50 percent in around 30 minutes.

With slimmer hinge, straightened edges, contrasting hazed back glass and glossy metal frames, the design is sleeker and the most refined one yet. Additionally, you can customize the cover screen clock with your AR emoji character. With Galaxy Themes on both Cover and Main Screen, users can tailor-make their Galaxy Z Flip4 inside out to complement their style with custom fonts, icons and designs.

Galaxy Z Fold4

The most powerful and productive smartphone in your pocket, Galaxy Z Fold4 combines balanced and premium design, enhanced durability and powerful performance. Galaxy Z Fold4 offers increased functionality whether opened, closed or in Flex mode.

With slimmer hinge, lighter-than-ever body and even narrower bezels, the wider screen enables easier one-handed interactions while using the Cover Screen.

Content is even more immersive and distinctive on the 7.6-inch main screen with improved 1Hz-120Hz adaptive refresh rate and less visible Under Display Camera (UDC).

Take stunning photos and videos with its flagship camera hosting 50MP wide lens, 30X Space Zoom lens and 3x optical zoom – all significant improvements as compared to its predecessor. Galaxy Z Fold4 also gets Samsung’s flagship Nightography feature owing to 23 percent brighter sensor, enhanced Optical Image Stabilization and Video Digital Stabilization (OIS+VDIS) and all new AI Image Signal Processor (AI ISP).

 

Galaxy Z Fold4 comes with the latest Snapdragon 8+ Gen1 processor that among other things improves the output of the flagship camera producing stunning images during the day or at night. Variety of camera modes, including Capture View Mode, Dual Preview and Rear Cam Selfie are also custom-built to take advantage of the unique form factor for increased capturing flexibility.

The new taskbar provides PC-like multitasking enabling smooth switching between apps, easy access to favourite and recently used apps and launch of multiple windows instantly from the task bar. You can also easily switch full-screen apps to pop-up windows or split your screen in half for more ways to multitask.

Galaxy Z Fold4 is the first device to ship with Android 12L, a special version of Android created by Google for large-screen experiences, including foldables.

Samsung’s partnerships with Google and Microsoft take multitasking to the next level. Google apps, including Chrome and Gmail now support drag-and-drop, allowing users to quickly copy and paste links or other files.

With Google Meet, users can now connect with more people while enjoying virtual co-activities, including co-watching videos on YouTube or playing games together on a video call. Microsoft’s full Office suite and Outlook provide more information on the large foldable screen offering faster ways to interact with content.

The useful S Pen coupled with the Flex mode enables on-the-go drawing and note-taking while also simultaneously attending back-to-back calls and meetings. The S Pen also comes with streamlined storage inside the Standing Cover with Pen case.

With Armor Aluminum frames and hinge cover along with exclusive Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ on the Cover Screen and rear glass, along with IPX8 water resistance, the latest Galaxy Z series are our toughest foldables ever.

Price and Availability

Pre-book for Galaxy Z Flip4 and Galaxy Z Fold4 started on August 16, 2022 across all leading online and offline retails stores. Consumers can also pre-book on Samsung Live at 12 noon on August 16.

Available in Bora Purple, Graphite and Pink Gold colours, Galaxy Z Flip4 is priced at Rs.89,999 for 8GB+128GB variant and Rs.94,999 for 8GB+256GB variant. Bespoke Edition that offers glass colours and frame options will be available on Samsung Live and Samsung Exclusive Stores for Rs.97,999.

Available in Graygreen, Beige and Phantom Black colours, Galaxy Z Fold4 is priced at Rs.154,999 for 12GB+256GB variant and Rs.164,999 for 12GB+512GB variant. Consumers can purchase 12GB+1TB variant exclusively on Samsung Live and Samsung Exclusive Stores for Rs.184,999.

Pre-book customers will also get 1 year Samsung Care Plus worth Rs. 11,999 at just Rs. 6,000. They can also opt for No Cost EMI offer up to 24 months.

 

SPECIFICATION GALAXY Z FLIP4 GALAXY Z FOLD4
Display Main: 6.7’’ Dynamic AMOLED 2X with Adaptive 120Hz FHD+ Infinity-O Display

Cover: 1.9’’ Super AMOLED 60Hz

 Main: 7.6’’ Dynamic AMOLED 2X 1Hz-120Hz with Infinity Flex Display

Cover: 6.2’’ Dynamic AMOLED 2X 48Hz-120Hz with Infinity-O Display
Camera Rear: 12MP (Ultra-wide) + 12MP (Wide)

Front: 10MP

 Rear: 12MP (Ultra-wide) + 50MP (Wide) + 10MP (Tele)

Front: 10MP

UDC: 4MP
Battery 4400mAh 3700mAh
Processor Snapdragon 8+ Gen1 4nm Snapdragon 8+ Gen1 4nm
Memory RAM: 8GB

Storage: 128GB/256GB/512GB

 RAM: 12GB

Storage: 256GB/512GB/1TB

Apple unveils ‘Lockdown Mode’ to protect iPhone users from Pegasus spyware

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Apple has recently unveiled two initiatives to help protect users who may be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats, such as those from private companies developing state-sponsored mercenary spyware.

Lockdown Mode — the first major capability of its kind, coming this fall with iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura — is an extreme, optional protection for the very small number of users who face grave, targeted threats to their digital security. Apple also shared details about the $10 million cybersecurity grant it announced last November to support civil society organizations that conduct mercenary spyware threat research and advocacy.

“Apple makes the most secure mobile devices on the market. Lockdown Mode is a groundbreaking capability that reflects our unwavering commitment to protecting users from even the rarest, most sophisticated attacks,” said Ivan Krstić, Apple’s head of Security Engineering and Architecture. “While the vast majority of users will never be the victims of highly targeted cyberattacks, we will work tirelessly to protect the small number of users who are. That includes continuing to design defenses specifically for these users, as well as supporting researchers and organizations around the world doing critically important work in exposing mercenary companies that create these digital attacks.”

Lockdown Mode offers an extreme, optional level of security for the very few users who, because of who they are or what they do, may be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats, such as those from NSO Group and other private companies developing state-sponsored mercenary spyware. Turning on Lockdown Mode in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura further hardens device defenses and strictly limits certain functionalities, sharply reducing the attack surface that potentially could be exploited by highly targeted mercenary spyware.

At launch, Lockdown Mode includes the following protections:

  • Messages: Most message attachment types other than images are blocked. Some features, like link previews, are disabled.
  • Web browsing: Certain complex web technologies, like just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compilation, are disabled unless the user excludes a trusted site from Lockdown Mode.
  • Apple services: Incoming invitations and service requests, including FaceTime calls, are blocked if the user has not previously sent the initiator a call or request.
  • Wired connections with a computer or accessory are blocked when iPhone is locked.
  • Configuration profiles cannot be installed, and the device cannot enroll into mobile device management (MDM), while Lockdown Mode is turned on.

The Lockdown Mode capability further hardens device defenses and strictly limits certain functionalities, sharply reducing the attack surface that could potentially be exploited by highly targeted mercenary spyware.

Apple will continue to strengthen Lockdown Mode and add new protections to it over time. To invite feedback and collaboration from the security research community, Apple has also established a new category within the Apple Security Bounty program to reward researchers who find Lockdown Mode bypasses and help improve its protections. Bounties are doubled for qualifying findings in Lockdown Mode, up to a maximum of $2,000,000 — the highest maximum bounty payout in the industry.

Apple is also making a $10 million grant, in addition to any damages awarded from the lawsuit filed against NSO Group, to support organizations that investigate, expose, and prevent highly targeted cyberattacks, including those created by private companies developing state-sponsored mercenary spyware. The grant will be made to the Dignity and Justice Fund established and advised by the Ford Foundation — a private foundation dedicated to advancing equity worldwide — and designed to pool philanthropic resources to advance social justice globally. The Dignity and Justice Fund is a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity.

“The global spyware trade targets human rights defenders, journalists, and dissidents; it facilitates violence, reinforces authoritarianism, and supports political repression,” said Lori McGlinchey, the Ford Foundation’s director of its Technology and Society program. “The Ford Foundation is proud to support this extraordinary initiative to bolster civil society research and advocacy to resist mercenary spyware. We must build on Apple’s commitment, and we invite companies and donors to join the Dignity and Justice Fund and bring additional resources to this collective fight.”

The Dignity and Justice Fund expects to make its first grants in late 2022 or early 2023, initially funding approaches to help expose mercenary spyware and protect potential targets that include:

  • Building organizational capacity and increasing field coordination of new and existing civil society cybersecurity research and advocacy groups.
  • Supporting the development of standardized forensic methods to detect and confirm spyware infiltration that meet evidentiary standards.
  • Enabling civil society to more effectively partner with device manufacturers, software developers, commercial security firms, and other relevant companies to identify and address vulnerabilities.
    Increasing awareness among investors, journalists, and policymakers about the global mercenary spyware industry.
  • Building the capacity of human rights defenders to identify and respond to spyware attacks, including security audits for organizations that face heightened threats to their networks.
  • The Dignity and Justice Fund’s grant-making strategy to research, track, and hold the enhanced cyber weapons trade accountable will be advised by an independent, global Technical Advisory Committee.

“There is now undeniable evidence from the research of the Citizen Lab and other organizations that the mercenary surveillance industry is facilitating the spread of authoritarian practices and massive human rights abuses worldwide,” said Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto. “I applaud Apple for establishing this important grant, which will send a strong message and help nurture independent researchers and advocacy organizations holding mercenary spyware vendors accountable for the harms they are inflicting on innocent people.”

What happens when weakening magnetic field creates 3 poles, instead of 2 on Earth?

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NASA has taken it seriously as this unique phenomenon will finally result in weakening the earth’s magnetic field and eventually affects the protective field that shields us from solar flares, and disrupts satellite communication.

Already, over South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean, this unusually weak spot in the field – called the South Atlantic Anomaly, or SAA – allows these particles to dip closer to the surface than normal. Earth’s magnetic field acts like a protective shield around the planet, repelling and trapping charged particles or solar flares from the Sun.

Currently, the SAA has shown no visible impact on daily life on earth but some recent observations and forecasts show that the region is expanding westward and continuing to weaken in its intensity, making NASA to study the phenomenon.

The South Atlantic Anomaly is also of interest to NASA’s Earth scientists who monitor the changes in magnetic strength there, both for how such changes affect Earth’s atmosphere and as an indicator of what’s happening to Earth’s magnetic fields, deep inside the globe. Instead of two poles, what happens if the earth has many more poles or even three poles?

The future remains unimaginable but a certainty that geophysicists are wary of. See the NASA video here:

How SAA affects satellites?

In order to understand how the SAA and to prepare for future threats to satellites, the Godard team of NASA is assessing the current state of the magnetic field using data from the European Space Agency’s Swarm constellation, previous missions from agencies around the world, and ground measurements.

The geo-dynamo models are unique in their ability to use core physics to create near-future forecasts, said Andrew Tangborn, a mathematician in Goddard’s Planetary Geodynamics Lab. “This is similar to how weather forecasts are produced, but we are working with much longer time scales,” he said. “This is the fundamental difference between what we do at Goddard and most other research groups modeling changes in Earth’s magnetic field.”

One such application is the International Geomagnetic Reference Field, or IGRF — used for a variety of research from the core to the boundaries of the atmosphere, collecting candidate models made by worldwide research teams that describe Earth’s magnetic field and track how it changes in time.

As of now, the changing SAA poses a great challenge to researchers on earth’s dynamics influence other aspects of the Earth system, by tracking this slowly evolving “dent” in the magnetic field.

Google COVID-19 Global Case Map now available throughout world

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Google in collaboration with Stanford University has launched a global COVID-19 map to provide media tools to embed up-to-date visualizations of the pandemic in media earlier this year and now extended to throughout the world.

The ‘COVID-19 Global Case Mapper’ allows local reporters to embed a map of their area showing cases and analytics with comparison to the entire local population. “It’s colored by numbers of cases per 100,000 people over the past 14 days and shows you the severity of outbreak by the number of people in each location,” said Simon Rogers, Data Editor, Google News Lab.

Johns Hopkins Covid-19 map

Available for nearly 200 countries, the map is accessible in more than 80 languages worldwide. The data is from the New York Times’ open COVID-19 county dataset and the COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University and is updated daily.

Stanford University’s Big Local News and Pitch Interactive has launched the new global map originally with support from the Google News Initiative (GNI). “More in-depth, country-level data will be added over time as the map is developed further and as journalists around the world use it to explain how the pandemic has spread,” Rogers said in a statement.

The overall number of global coronavirus cases has surpassed the 20 million mark, while the deaths have increased to over 734,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Ahead of US schools reopen, study finds kids 100 times more potential to spread Covid-19

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As schools in the United States are gearing up to open, anew study has come out stating that children are equally susceptible to infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) but exhibit mild symptoms compared with adults. Though data is sparse on children, they do spread respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses far wider than previously thought.

Early reports did not find strong evidence of children as major contributors to SARS-CoV-2 spread owing to school closures ahead of the pandemic and no large-scale investigations of schools in community transmission had been conducted, said the researchers. Now that public health systems ponder to reopen schools and day cares, the new study on children’s transmission potential has sent alarm bells to public health officials in the US and elsewhere.

The study conducted between March 23 and April 27, 2020 on replication of SARS-CoV-2 in older children found similar levels of viral nucleic acid as adults, but significantly greater amounts of viral nucleic acid among those younger than 5 years. The SARS-CoV-2 reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was performed on nasopharyngeal swabs collected at various hospitals and clinics including drive-through testing sites at a pediatric tertiary medical center in Chicago, Illinois.

This cohort included all individuals aged younger than 1 month to 65 years who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 or those with symptoms suggestive of a COVID-19–compatible illness and/or high-risk exposures. In all, 145 patients with mild to moderate illness within 1 week of symptom onset were tested.

Divided in 3 groups — young children younger than 5 years, older children aged 5 to 17 years, and adults aged 18 to 65 years — researchers found young children had significantly equivalent or more viral nucleic acid in their upper respiratory tract compared with older children and adults. Some had even 100-fold greater amount of SARS-CoV-2 in the upper respiratory tract.

Thus, the study suggests that young children can potentially be important drivers of SARS-CoV-2 spread in the general population, and are more likely to transmit. “Behavioral habits of young children and close quarters in school and day care settings raise concern for SARS-CoV-2 amplification in this population as public health restrictions are eased,” wrote authors in their paper published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Study in polluted Taiwan shows regular exercise still prevents high blood pressure

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People who regularly exercise are at a lower risk of high blood pressure, even if they live in highly polluted areas, found a new research, since the risk-benefit relationship between air pollution and physical activity is a major concern as more than 91% of people worldwide live in areas where air quality fails to meet World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.

The paper published in the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation, is based on a study of more than 140,000 adults without high blood pressure in Taiwan, who are followed for five years. Researchers classified the weekly physical activity levels of each adult as inactive, moderately active or highly active.

Researchers also classified level of exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) as low, moderate and high. PM2.5 is the most commonly used indicator of air pollution. High blood pressure was defined as 140/90 mm Hg, though the American Heart Association 2017 Guideline defines high blood pressure as 130/80 mm Hg.

Exercise helps despite high pollution 

Study author Xiang Qian Lao, an associate professor at the Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shatin, said: “While we found that high physical activity combined with lower air pollution exposure was linked to lower risk of high blood pressure, physical activity continued to have a protective effect even when people were exposed to high pollution levels. The message is that physical activity, even in polluted air, is an important high blood pressure prevention strategy.”

Highlights of the study show that people who are highly active and exposed to low levels of pollution had a lower risk of developing high blood pressure, whereas those who were inactive and exposed to highly polluted air had a higher high blood pressure risk.

High risk levels

Each increase in PM2.5 level was associated with a 38% increase in risk of incident hypertension, whereas each increase in physical activity level lead to a 6% lower risk of hypertension, suggesting that reducing air pollution is more effective in preventing high BP.

Regardless of pollution level, people who exercised moderately had a 4% lower risk of high blood pressure than those who didn’t exercise. People who exercised at a high level had a 13% lower risk of high blood pressure than those who don’t.

The findings of this study are limited to air pollution because it only included people living in Taiwan, where ambient air was moderately polluted (the annual PM2.5 concentration was 2.6 times of the limit recommended by the World Health Organization).

Trump lights diya as White House celebrates Diwali 2019

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Video grab of PM Narendra Modi with US President Donald Trump on Monday (White House)

US President Donald Trump has followed the tradition set by his predecessor Barack Obama in 2009 and lit the light in White House marking the Festival of Lights, an Indian celebration. This was Trump’s third Diwali celebrations at the Oval Office.

“For many Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhists in the United States and around the globe, this sacred period is an opportunity to commemorate the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance,” Trump said.

Diwali or the festival of lights is marked by prayers, light diyas and electric lighting with traditional feasts and other festivities which mark reverence to Goddess Lakshmi of wealth among the Indian business classes.

Describing the festival as a symbol of religious liberty, the US President said, “My Administration will continue to defend the rights enshrined in our Constitution that enable people of all faiths to worship according to their beliefs and conscience.”

Trump participated in the first Diwali celebrations at the White House in 2017 with a group of Indian-Americans and last year, the then Indian Ambassador to the US, Navtej Singh Sarna, was present for Diwali celebrations in the Roosevelt room.

Diwali 2019:

The legend goes that Lord Rama and Sita returned to Ayodhya, after 14 years of exile. Diwali coincides with the festival of lights and followed by worship of Goddess Lakshmi. It is celebrated on Amavasya, the darkest day of of the Hindu lunar-solar calendar. Here are some key timings for the pooja this year:

Lagna Puja is on Sunday, October 27, 2019

Kumbha Lagna Muhurat – 2:21 pm to 3:57 pm

Vrishabha Lagna Muhurat (evening) – 7:15 pm to 9:15 pm

Simha Lagna Muhurat (midnight) – 1:41 am to 3:49 am, October 28, 2019

Amavasya Tithi begins – 12:23 pm on October 27, and ends at 9:08 am on October 28, 2019.

Deny teenagers any screen, they’ll soon go to sleep: Study

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Sleep in teenagers can be improved by just one week of limiting their evening exposure to light-emitting screens on phones, tablets and computers, said a study whose findings will be presented in Lyon, at the European Society of Endocrinology annual meeting, ECE 2019.

The study indicates that by simply limiting their exposure to blue-light emitting devices in the evening, adolescents can improve their sleep quality and reduce symptoms of fatigue, lack of concentration and bad mood, after just one week.

Recent studies have indicated that exposure to too much evening light, particularly the blue light emitted from screens on smartphones, tablets and computers can affect the brain’s clock and the production of the sleep hormone melatonin, resulting in disrupted sleep time and quality.

The lack of sleep doesn’t just cause immediate symptoms of tiredness and poor concentration but can also increase the risk of more serious long-term health issues such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Other studies have suggested that sleep deprivation related to screen time may affect children and adolescents more than adults, but no studies have fully investigated how real-life exposure is affecting sleep in adolescents at home and whether it can be reversed.

In this collaborative study between the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience, the Amsterdam UMC and the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, researchers investigated the effects of blue light exposure on adolescents at home. Those who had more than 4 hours per day of screen time had on average 30 minutes later sleep onset and wake up times than those who recorded less than 1 hour per day of screen time, as well as more symptoms of sleep loss.

The team conducted a randomised controlled trial to assess the effects of blocking blue light with glasses and no screen time during the evening on the sleep pattern of 25 frequent users. Both blocking blue light with glasses and screen abstinence resulted in sleep onset and wake up times occurring 20 minutes earlier, and a reduction in reported symptoms of sleep loss in participants, after just one week.

Dr Dirk Jan Stenvers from the department of Endocrinology and Metabolism of the Amsterdam UMC says, “Adolescents increasingly spend more time on devices with screens and sleep complaints are frequent in this age group. Here we show very simply that these sleep complaints can be easily reversed by minimising evening screen use or exposure to blue light. Based on our data, it is likely that adolescent sleep complaints and delayed sleep onset are at least partly mediated by blue light from screens”

Dr Stenvers and his colleagues are now interested in whether the relationship between reduced screen time and improved sleep has longer lasting effects, and whether the same effects can be detected in adults.

Dr Stenvers comments, “Sleep disturbances start with minor symptoms of tiredness and poor concentration but in the long-term we know that sleep loss is associated with increased risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. If we can introduce simple measures now to tackle this issue, we can avoid greater health problems in years to come.”

There’s an insane inner pickpocket in everyone of us, says study

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Researchers have identified how the human brain is able to determine the properties of a particular object using purely statistical information, thus suggesting that there is an ‘inner pickpocket’ in all of us.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, the Central European University, and Columbia University, found that one of the reasons that successful pickpockets are so efficient is that they are able to identify objects they have never seen before just by touching them. Similarly, we are able to anticipate what an object in a shop window will feel like just by looking at it.

In both scenarios, we are relying on the brain’s ability to break up the continuous stream of information received by our sensory inputs into distinct chunks. The pickpocket is able to interpret the sequence of small depressions on their fingers as a series of well-defined objects in a pocket or handbag, while the shopper’s visual system is able to interpret photons as reflections of light from the objects in the window.

Our ability to extract distinct objects from cluttered scenes by touch or sight alone and accurately predict how they will feel based on how they look, or how they look based on how they feel, is critical to how we interact with the world.

By performing clever statistical analyses of previous experiences, the brain can immediately both identify objects without the need for clear-cut boundaries or other specialised cues, and predict unknown properties of new objects. The results are reported in the open-access journal eLife.

Lengyel and his colleagues designed scenes of several abstract shapes without visible boundaries between them, and asked participants to either observe the shapes on a screen or to ‘pull’ them apart along a tear line that passed either through or between the objects.

Participants were then tested on their ability to predict the visual (how familiar did real jigsaw pieces appear compared to abstract pieces constructed from the parts of two different pieces) and haptic properties of these jigsaw pieces (how hard would it be to physically pull apart new scenes in different directions).

The researchers found that participants were able to form the correct mental model of the jigsaw pieces from either visual or haptic (touch) experience alone, and were able to immediately predict haptic properties from visual ones and vice versa.