The VAIO Duo 11 is a Windows 8 based Ultrabook that easily transforms in to a tablet by hiding the keyboard. The base device features an Intel i5 dual-core processor, 11.6-inch Full-HD touchscreen, 128GB SSD, 6GB RAM, HD Webcam and backlit keyboard. It weighs in at 1.3kgs and has a battery life of up to 4hours 45 minutes.
The device starts at Rs 89,990. For more information, visit www.sony.co.in
How unsafe are mobile browsers? Unsafe enough that even cyber-security experts are unable to detect when their smartphone browsers have landed on potentially dangerous sites, according to a recent Georgia Tech study.
Like their counterparts for desktop platforms, mobile browsers incorporate a range of security and cryptographic tools to provide a secure Web-browsing experience. However in one critical area that informs user decisions – the incorporation of tiny graphical indicators in a browser’s URL field – all of the leading mobile browsers fail to meet security guidelines recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for browser safety, leaving even expert users with no way to determine if the Web sites they visit are real or imposter sites phishing for personal data.
“We found vulnerabilities in all 10 of the mobile browsers we tested,” said Patrick Traynor, assistant professor at Georgia Tech. “The basic question we asked was, ‘Does this browser provide enough information for even an information-security expert to determine security standing?’ With all 10 of the leading browsers on the market today, the answer was no.”
The graphic icons at issue are called either SSL (“secure sockets layer”) or TLS (“transport layer security”) indicators, and they serve to alert users when their connection to the destination Web site is secure and that the Web site they see is actually the site they intended to visit. The tiny “lock” icon that typically appears in a desktop browser window when users are providing payment information in an online transaction is one example of an SSL indicator. Another is the “https” keyword that appears in the beginning of a browser’s URL field.
The W3C has issued specific recommendations for how SSL indicators should be built into a browser, and for the most part, Traynor said, desktop browsers do a good job. In mobile browsers, however, the guidelines are followed inconsistently at best. The principal reason for this, is the much smaller screen size with which designers of mobile browsers have to work. Often there simply isn’t room to incorporate SSL indicators in same way as with desktop browsers. However, given that mobile devices are widely predicted to face more frequent attacks from cyber-criminals, the vulnerability is almost sure to lead to increased crime unless addressed.
“Research has shown that mobile browser users are three times more likely to access phishing sites than users of desktop browsers,” said Chaitrali Amrutkar, principal author of the paper that described the SSL research.
Researchers have created a spherical LCD display system that can be embedded in contact lenses. Breakthrough will usher the next generation of wearable displays
The Centre of Microsystems Technology at Ghent University (Belgium), announced today it has developed an innovative spherical curved LCD display, which can be embedded in contact lenses.
The first step toward fully pixelated contact lens displays, this achievement has potential widespread applications in medical and cosmetic domains.
Unlike LED-based contact lens displays, which are limited to a few small pixels, the innovative LCDbased technology permits the use of the entire display surface.
By adapting the patterning process of the conductive layer, this technology enables applications with a broad range of pixel number and sizes, such as a one pixel, fully covered contact lens acting as adaptable sunglasses, or a highly pixelated contact lens display.
The first prototype presented today contains a patterned dollar sign, depicting the many cartoons that feature people or figures with dollars in their eyes. It can only display rudimentary patterns, similar to an electronic pocket calculator. In the future, the researchers envision fully autonomous electronic contact lenses embedded with this display.
These next-generation solutions could be used for medical purposes, for example to control the light transmission toward the retina in case of a damaged iris, or for cosmetic purposes such as an iris with a tunable color. In the future, the display could also function as a head-up display, superimposing an image onto the user’s normal view.
However, there are still hurdles to overcome for broader consumer and civilian implementation.
“Normally, flexible displays using liquid crystal cells are not designed to be formed into a new shape, especially not a spherical one. Thus, the main challenge was to create a very thin, spherically curved substrate with active layers that could withstand the extreme molding processes,” said Jelle De Smet, the main researcher on the project.
“Moreover, since we had to use very thin polymer films, their influence on the smoothness of the display had to be studied in detail. By using new kinds of conductive polymers and integrating them into a smooth spherical cell, we were able to fabricate a new LCD-based contact lens display.”
“Now that we have established the basic technology, we can start working towards real applications, possibly available in only a few years time,” commented Herbert De Smet, who is supervising CMST’s display group.
Australian researchers are working on a new breed of pineapple – one that is not only sweet and juicy but which has the added tropical taste of coconut.
In what is thought to be a world first, the Department of Agriculture in Queensland state is in the final stages of developing the new variety of the fruit, to be known as the AusFestival pineapple.
“Taste tests tell us that AusFestival is a winner – it has this lovely coconut flavour, which you won’t find in any other pineapple in Australia,” horticulturalist Garth Senewski told the ABC in comments aired Wednesday.
“It’s sweet, low acid, very juicy.”
Senewski said the researchers did not initially intend to create a pineapple that tasted like coconut.
“When we’re doing the breeding, we’re not actually looking for a coconut-flavoured pineapple or any other particular flavour,” he told ABC.
“We’re looking for a nice flavoured pineapple. We’re looking for a variety that is sweet, low acid and aromatic.” The Department of Agriculture confirmed the development but said anyone hoping for a “pina colada” pineapple will have to wait as it will be two years before the first trees are planted commercially.
Fossilised bones unearthed by a British palaeontologist in colonial Tanzania in the 1930s may be those of the oldest dinosaur ever found, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The bones are either those of the earliest dinosaur or of the closest relative of dinosaurs discovered to date, they said.
A denizen of the Middle Triassic around 243 million years ago, the creature predates all previous dinosaur finds by 10 to 15 million years, the scientists said. The specimen also points to the possible birthplace of these enigmatic species in amega-continent called Pangaea, they added.
Dubbed Nyasasaurus, the putative dino was about three feet high, up to 10 feet in length and had a tail up to five feet long, according to their study. It weighed between 20 and 60 kilos.
“If the newly-named Nyasasaurus parringtoni is not the earliest dinosaur, then it is the closest relative found so far,” said Sterling Nesbitt of the University of Washington.
Nyasasaurus’ name derives from Lake Nyasa –now called Lake Malawi – and from a University of Cambridge palaeontologist, Rex Parrington. His team excavated the six vertebrae and upper arm bone from sediment in the Ruhuhu Valley of southern Tanzania in the early 1930s.
That location, said the authors, backs theories that dinosaurs evolved in the southern portion of the supercontinent of Pangaea, where Earth’s land masses were glommed together before the pieces drifted apart to form continents.
For decades, the Nyasasaurus bones languished and were never formally documented.
Their true importance has only been made clear today, thanks in part to modern scanning technology which compared Parrington’s specimens in London’s Natural History Museum against two other Nyasasaurus bones at the South African Museum in Cape Town
Using a souped up kid’s temporary tattoo, doctors and researchers can now painlessly monitor metabolic problems. It can be made in any shape from Superman to Disney princesses
A medical sensor that attaches to the skin like a temporary tattoo could make it easier for doctors to detect metabolic problems in patients and for coaches to fine-tune athletes’ training routines. And the entire sensor comes in a thin, flexible package shaped like a smiley face.
“We wanted a design that could conceal the electrodes,” says Vinci Hung, a PhD candidate at University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), who helped create the new sensor.
“We also wanted to showcase the variety of designs that can be accomplished with this fabrication technique.”
The new tattoo-based solid-contact ion-selective electrode (ISE) is made using standard screen printing techniques and commercially available transfer tattoo paper, the same kind of paper that usually carries tattoos of Spiderman or Disney princesses.
In the case of the smiley face sensor, the “eyes” function as the working and reference electrodes, and the “ears” are contacts to which ameasurement device can connect.
Hung contributed to the work while in the lab of Joseph Wang, a distinguished professor at the University of California San Diego.
“It was a wonderful opportunity,” Hung said. She worked directly with Wang, who is well-known for his innovations in the field of nanoengineering and is a pioneer in biosensor technology.
Kagan Kerman, assistant professor of bioanalytical chemistry and Hung’s PhD supervisor at UTSC, is co-author of an article describing the work which has been accepted for publication in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal, Analyst.
The sensor Hung helped make can detect changes in the skin’s pH levels in response to metabolic stress from exertion. Similar devices, called ion-selective electrodes (ISEs), are already used by medical researchers and athletic trainers. They can give clues to underlying metabolic diseases such as Addison’s disease, or simply signal whether an athlete is fatigued or dehydrated during training. The devices are also useful in the cosmetics industry for monitoring skin secretions.
But existing devices can be bulky, or hard to keep adhered to sweating skin. The new tattoobased sensor stayed in place during tests, and continued to work even when the people wearing them were exercising and sweating extensively. The tattoos were applied in a similar way to regular transfer tattoos, right down to using a paper towel soaked in warm water to remove the base paper.
To make the sensors, Hung and her colleagues used a standard screen printer to lay down consecutive layers of silver, carbon fibremodified carbon and insulator inks, followed by electropolymerization of aniline to complete the sensing surface.
By using different sensing materials, the tattoos can also be modified to detect other components of sweat, such as sodium, potassium or magnesium, all of which are of potential interest to researchers in medicine and cosmetology.
