1. One thing that helps
Artificial Kidneys
Dialysis or kidney transplant. The only two ways to deal with kidney failure are unpleasant, difficult and full of risk. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) are working together on a third option – the artificial kidney.
The artificial kidney has two primary components:
- A blood filter that removes toxins from the blood and eliminates them from the body as waste
- A bioreactor containing kidney cells that maintain water volume, balance electrolytes and perform metabolic functions.
Membranes provide filtration without pumps or electrical power and prevent the renal cells from an adverse immune response.
This development will liberate millions of patients from constant and painful dialysis treatment. It will also provide those who cannot find a compatible kidney donor with another option. This will be a gamechanger for people in need.
2. One to be wary of
If you are bombarded with annoying ads all over the internet, you’re not alone. It turns out that even the US Intelligence Community is growing so wary of ads that they built their own software to block them in their systems. But why?
From time to time, malicious ads pop up that can potentially hack your system or harvest sensitive data. Okay, let’s be clear, not all ads are harmful, however, there’s a practice called malvertising (seriously, who names these things?) where an ad redirects the victim to malware that can access the device. You still need to click on the ad for it to infect your system, so just stay away from dodgy-looking ads.
What else can you do to reduce risk and safeguard your private data? The easiest and best thing is to use the Brave browser instead of Safari, Chrome or Edge. It blocks ads by default, saving you time, data and risk. It uses the DuckDuckGo search engine by default (instead of Google) which doesn’t track anything about you. This means you will notice an immediate drop in getting ads for the things you have just searched for – not using Google means they can’t store your entire internet life on their servers. The below is a screenshot from my Brave browser stats
257,583 trackers and ads blocked! Enough said.
3. One to amaze
The skincare ads tell me I want “crystal clear skin”. Stuff that, I want chameleon skin!
Researchers from Seoul National University in South Korea developed a “skin” that can change its colours to match the environment.
Check out the above video where a robot lizard is fitted with the “chameleon skin”. As it walks across different colours, the sensors identify the current colour and adjust the temperature so the magic ink in the skin imitates its environment. The colour change is done using thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) ink that changes colour based on temperature.
The chameleon skin itself is thinner than a strand of human hair and can be modified to create more complex patterns. The obvious application is in designing military camouflage uniforms that blend into the current environment dynamically. It may even be found in a future fabric in the fashion industry and built into all sorts of displays. Strangely they say it could also be used on the exterior of cars but I am not sure I want my car to be less visible on the road. We could adjust the code to say “car colour != current colour” – sorry but it’s been a while since I put something in for us nerds.