Gene-Altered Apples Get U.S. Approval

U.S. government has approved the commercial planting of Apples, which are genetically engineered to develop the resistant against turning brown, when bruised or sliced. The researcher of Okanagan Specialty Fruits said that it seems that non-browning feature will be popular among both consumers and food service companies as it has ability to make sliced apples more appealing than normal apple.

But many other executives in the apple industry stated that we are worry that the biotech apples are safe to eat or not or will consumers accept it or not? They also express their concern that exports of apples from other countries will like genetically modified foods or not?

The Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for the approval of genetically engineered apples said, that they have considered these issues, however this approval was based on whether; a genetically modified crop poses a threat to other plants or not and the Department of Agriculture confirmed that these apples posed no such risk.

These Arctic apples will be available in the Golden Delicious and Granny Smith varieties as they are genetically engineered with a technique to suppress the production of an enzyme, which causes browning when cells in the apple get injured from slice. The non-browning effect is not comes in existence by putting genes from another species into the apple’s DNA, which is widely used method with most of the genetically altered crops.

In this process, apple’s own genes are manipulated in a way to turn down the browning mechanism. Before that in November 2014, the Agriculture Department has approved a genetically engineered potato, which was developed by the J.R. Simplot Company, which has used similar technique to prevent browning. Now apple will join the community of other genetically modified fruits and vegetables such as; sweet corn and papaya.

A representative of the Agriculture Department said that it will take a time to analyze the issues and all comments, which we have received as in two different public comment periods we have received more than 175,000 comments and it is clear indication that majority have opposed the approval.

While majority in the apple industry had opposed the approval as some of them are saying that they will work to ensure that customers and clients know most apples are not modified and when modified apple’s comes in market so they will be safe. This approval was unusual in Okanagan, which is in Summerland, British Columbia. Most of the genetically modified crops are developed through large chemical and seed companies such as; DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto.

It is expected that Arctic apples will be available in few years because trees have to first be planted and then they will get mature enough to bear fruit. In a recent conversation with press Mr. Carter said that in this spring four growers will plant a total of 20,000 trees within the covering of 20 acres or more and it is expected that by fall of 2016, from 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of apples would come in market, which will be great amount to provide samples to food service companies and for other potential buyers, whereas; in stores product will reach in very small amount.

Accessory Lens for Google Glass Invented

Latest Invention – Google Lens

The latest invention which has been developed by Wichita State University professor Jibo He and Barbara Chaparro who worked with graduate student Long Wang on the project known as Google Lens, have found ways to be more creative and innovative on inventing a device which could have positive development in the medical field in the future.

The device has been invented which can be attached to the Google Glass wearable computer and gives the user an enlarged image. The device seems to be an accessory lens; a wearable product which uses voice control to enable users to check information easily when their hands tend to be busy and the information is displayed in Google Glass see through head mounted display with its built-in camera enabling video sharing as well as remote conference.

The Google Glass responds to voice commands and has a tiny screen with a camera which is placed to a glass-like frame but the display seems to have one setback wherein its webcam has a narrow field of vision of 54.8 degrees horizontally by 43.5 vertically with limitation to its use in some applications. The attachment of Google lens enables the user to capture an enlarge vision of 109.8 degrees horizontally and 57.8 vertically.

The Importance of Expanding Google Glass view

Several professionals have the need to use Google Glass for many things like surgery and medical training to usability research as well as flying an aircraft. Most of the hospitals which include Wesley Medical Centre in Wichita and the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston are developing Google Glass applications in order to enhance their medical services, new doctor training and surgery.

It is said that `the object needed to broadcast may be out of the field of view of Google glass and despite all of its remarkable features, Google Glass has some limitations in its hardware and Google lens solves the problem’. The device includes a holder which is attached to the lens of the frame of Google Glass where the lens that is fixed into the accessory has the capabilities of being changed with ease. Moreover, the accessory lens is helpful in the bottleneck of Google Glass camera improving and expanding Google Glass’ application in professional areas.

Patent Files for Google Lens – Awaiting Approval

Both Jibo along with Chaparro has applied for a U.S. patent for Google Lens and are waiting for its approval. They are both part of Wichita State University psychology department where Chaparro is the director of WS’s Software Usability Research Laboratory studying human-computer interaction and working with industry on software design and usability.

Jibo He on the other hand was among the first Google glass Explorers in 2013 and through the Explorer program, was granted by Google, programmers and researchers early access to the Google Glass device prior to going on sale to the general public and though it is not available to the general public, some businesses like hospitals having been using Google Glass.

Initial research related to whether it would be safe to drive while interacting with Google Glass and later on studied how Glass could be used in detecting when the driver was fatigued.

Google's Vint Cerf Warns of 'digital Dark Age'

In recent interview with Pallab Ghosh, Google's Vint Cerf warns about 'digital Dark Age'. Vint Cerf, who is a Vice-president of Google, says that he is worry about all the images and documents, which we have saved on our computers or on other devices because in future we can eventually lost them. He believes that it could occur as software and hardware become obsolete.

Vint Cerf fears that in future our generations will have very little or no record about 21st Century, if we will face digital Dark Age scenario. He made his comment at science conference in San Jose, where he arrived in a three-piece suit, for annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science. We all know that he is an iconic figure, who love to define that how data packets moves in all over internet and he is the only Google employee who love to wear tie and suit.

Now his main focus is to solve this new problem of digital Dark Age, which is threatens to eradicate our past or history. Our memories, our life, our happiness, our sorrows and cherished family photographs now exist as bits of information on our hard drives or in cloud. But change is the law of nature and so technology moves on and we can lose them while accelerating the digital revolution.

What is Digital Dark Age? 

In report, Pallab Ghosh from BBC told that “I worry as Mr. Cerf told me that in near future you and I can experience the things like this because old formats of documents, which we have created in present they may not be readable in future when latest versions will come in existence and we all know that software’s backwards compatibility is not guaranteed.

And due to that in the presence of archives of digital content, we will not be able to scratch or use it as we may not know what it is. While promoting the idea to preserve each and every piece of software, technology and hardware he said that with the help of this idea we will be able to overcome from this issue and we can store them in the form of digital or in servers over could as things happens in a museum. If this idea of Mr. Cerf, will work, so our memories could be accessible for upcoming generations.

The recommended solution is to take an X-ray snapshot of the operating system, application, and content together with the detailed description of the machine, which runs on and able to preserve that for long periods such as; 100 to 200 years.

And these digital snapshots will be helpful to recreate the past in the future. There will be companies in future who will provide these services and therefore I suggested to Mr Cerf that how companies will exist for hundreds of years and because of that we cannot guarantee that both personal and human history would be safeguarded in the long run.

But Vint Cerf replied that we are trying to capture X-ray snapshot and they will be transportable from one place to another and so it will be easy to move them from Google cloud to some other cloud or move it into a machine.

Lab on a Chip Turns Smart Phones Into Mobile Disease Clinics

A Device – Easy to Use Smartphone – Test Multiple Diseases

Early detection of any infectious disease is a very important public health issue and the development from web and mobile based communication together with novel bio-molecular detections abilities have come up with regards to public health infrastructure.

Progress in communications, computation and materials had given rise to new technologies like mobile phones and microfluidic chips. A cheap device has been created by researchers from U.S. and Rwandan, who have been making progress in designing cheap, easy to use smartphone attachments which could test patients for multiple dangerous infectious diseases within fifteen minutes. In the present world, smart phone have been paying up bills, tracking diets as well as recording our sleep and soon they will be utilised in the global fight against the various diseases with researcher making headway in this field.

A drop of blood is all that is needed from a finger prick of the person and on pressing the device’s big black button would create a vacuum that can suck the blood into a maze of tiny channels in its disposable cartridge which is the size of a credit card.

Functions – Lab Based Blood Test

Several detection areas trace any antibodies in the blood which could reveal the presence of a certain disease. It needs a little bit of power of the smartphone which helps in detecting and displaying the results of a disease. The team states that an iPod Touch has the potential of screening 41 patients on a single charge. A field test was conducted by the researchers of the device at three Community clinics at Rwandan where the health care workers screened ninety six patients for HIV and active and latent forms of syphilis.

A Lab on a chip could turn smart phones into mobile disease clinics and HIV and syphilis can now be detected in minutes with the use of cheap lab on chip device. The dongle being small and light, can be easily connected to a smartphone or a computer for the required power and the device provides the test results on the phone screen in fifteen minutes, instead of the two or more hours with the prevailing method.It is similar to all the functions of a lab based blood test and works by detecting antibody markers of any infectious diseases.

High Sensitivity & Ease of Use – Powerful Tool

On comparing with the gold standard laboratory tests, the team’s online report in Science Translational Medicine stated that the dongle was ninety six percent accurate in detecting infections, missing one case of latent syphilis. Inspite of a 14% false alarm rate, the researcher state that the device’s high sensitivity and ease of use makes it a powerful tool for diagnosing deadly diseases especially in the case of pregnant women.

They are now making progress in preparing a large scale trial for the $34 device which probably would enable mobile clinics and health workers with reliable and quick disease screening especially in the remote locations of the globe. Detecting a disease in time helps in timely diagnosis and treatment which could be helpful in early recovery from the ailment. Timely detection of the infection of those that are not common or have not been diagnosed in certain areas could be more vital.

New Algorithms Locate Where a Video Was Filmed From Its Images and Sounds

Creation of A System to Geolocate Video

A system capable of geo-locating video on comparing with their audio visual content with worldwide multimedia database has been created by researchers from Ramon Llull University in Spain for instances when textual metadata is not relevant or available. This could be helpful in the future, in locating people who could have gone missing after posting images on social networks or to recognize areas of terrorist activities. Several of the available online videos have text providing information on the destination it was filmed though there are others which do not provide the information which complicates the application of the frequent geo-location tools of multimedia content.

To resolve this issue, scientists from the La Salle campus at Ramon Llull University – Barcelona - Spain, have come up with a system which helps in locating the videos without any indication of the location where they were produced on the map, which is very challenging, taking into account the major part of the scenes of daily life minus the appearance of clearly recognizable places. Since they are not accompanied with text, the system is based on the recognition of the images or frames and the audio.

Physics & Mathematical Vectors Taken

One of the authors, Xavier Sevillano, states that `the acoustic information can be as valid as the visual and on occasion even more when it comes to geo-locating a video. In this field the use of some physics and mathematical vectors is taken from the field of recognition of acoustic sources because they have already demonstrated positive results’. Data gathered is put together and diverted into clusters, to enable using computer algorithms that has been developed by researchers and compared with a large collection of recorded video that have already been geo-located across the world. The team in their study published in the journal - `Information Sciences’, used around 10,000 sequences as reference from the MediaEval Placing task audio-visual database which is a benchmarking initiative or assessment of algorithms for the purpose of multimedia content. Sevillano states that `the videos that are similar in audio-visual terms to what they need to find, are searched for in the database, to identify the most probable geographical coordinates’.

Recognized the Need for Greater Audio-Visual Base

The researchers also indicate that the proposed system inspite of a limited database with regards to size and geographical coverage has the potential of geo-locating video accurately than its competitors. Moreover, it is also capable of locating 3% of videos within a radius of ten kilometres of its actual geographical location and in 1% of the cases; it tends to be accurate to one kilometre.

The researchers have also recognized that their system may need a greater audio-visual base in order to apply it to millions of videos that tend to circulate across the internet though they highlight the usefulness in locating those which do not have textual metadata as well as the capable possibilities it offers. Sevillano further states that `this system could help rescue teams in tracking down where a person or a group may disappear in a remote area and detect the locations portrayed in the video that could have been uploaded in a social network before they lost contact.