Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Toray’s touchscreen film self-repairs a scratch in 10 seconds


The issue of carrying around mobile devices with large, brittle glass displays was solved when Gorilla Glass came on the scene. But those shiny touchscreens are still prone to picking up the odd scratch while nestled in your pocket.
You can put a screen protector over the top to help prevent them, but then if the protector gets damaged they need replacing. However, Japanese company Toray believes it has a solution in the form of a self-repairing film.
The film actually isn’t that new. Toray has been offering it as a decorative solution for applying to laptop casing and other larger devices. Until now it hasn’t been considered for actual screens, but with a move to mass production and a few properties that make it suitable, self-repairing touchscreen film is on its way to market.
At room temperature the film is capable of repairing minor scratches in as little as 10 seconds. At the same time it is very flexible, meaning it won’t crack or peel, and allows 90% of light to pass through it making it suitable for placing over a bright display. As for how long it lasts, Toray’s tests have shown no degradation in performance after 20,000 scratch repairs.
The film will be on display next week at the Highly-functional Film Technology Expo in Tokyo. Hopefully we’ll get to see video footage of a 10-second scratch repair during the show as well as finding out just how much of an impact the film has when attached to a smartphone or tablet.
Toray has another film in the works that solves a different problem for touchscreens: that of fingerprints. By employing a surface that is wrinkled at the nanometer level and coated with oil-repellent material, the company has managed to significantly reduce the marks fingers leave on a display. If only they could combine the self-repair and fingerprint repellent films they’d have device manufacturers and consumers falling over each other to place orders.

Plasma flashlight instantly kills any bacteria on your skin


A new plasma device, created by the joint efforts of the Australian national science agency CSIRO and China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), is capable of ridding your skin from harmful bacteria in just a few seconds. According to a paper submitted to the Journal of Physics last February, the “Portable Plasma Flashlight” is able to burn through 17 different layers of bacteria that could reside on human skin without any tissue damage. With the device emitting plasma that only reaches temperatures between 68 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit, the door has opened to using the technology in the field of medicine.
For years researchers have been looking for a way to make bacteria inactive, and thus non-harmful, to humans. Until this current plasma breakthrough, high levels of heat were required to destroy the harmful micro-organisms making it impractical for medical use. You wouldn’t want a doctor aiming a 185 degree light onto an open wound on your arm would you? The reason for this is the fact that bacteria create thick biofilms to protect themselves from outside anti agents, a sort of molecular armor if you will. While heat and everyday soaps and washing can remove the bacteria, they don’t necessarily render them inert. This is where the plasma flashlight comes in.
While the exact biological process is not fully understood, the theory is that plasma interacts with the air around it to create a reaction that acts like our immune systems. To test out their theories, the joint research team allowed bacteria to culture for seven days to make sure they had a vibrant colony in a petri dish. Upon applying the plasma directly to this grouping of bacteria, the scientists witnessed it not only making the top layer of organisms inactive, but burning all the way down to the very last layers and killing those as well. It was a huge success.
With the fact that the device only costs $100 to manufacture, it’s a good bet that you’ll be seeing this technology available commercially in the near future. The research team sees the units being carried by ambulances, military medical personnel and emergency rooms the world over. It’s also not too far-fetched of an idea that miniaturized versions of the flashlight can be carried in a person’s purse or pocket in place of the bottle of hand sanitizer  that occupies that space now. Right now the large device pictured above is powered by just a 12-volt battery that doesn’t require any kind of external power. In addition, the unit’s plasma processing faculties are entirely self-contained. To control the unit from overheating, resistors have been installed to regulate the unit from becoming too hot to touch.
Some of the more immediate applications reside in your dentist’s office, as the testing for the device was done on Enterococcus faecalis, the bacterial culprit for many of the infections that result from a person undergoing a root canal. Potentially fatal to humans, the bacteria has created a strong immunity to antibiotics over the years. So the next time your dentist tells you to open up and then he shines a light on your teeth and gums, feel secure in knowing that it’s helping to keep you healthy.

Check if your Mac has the Flashback trojan


If you’ve been following the tech news over the past few days, you’ve probably seen a few mentions of the Flashback trojan. It’s been said that over 550,000 Macs have been infected, which is a staggering amount considering the relative safety (or at least the perceived safety) of OS X. The malicious software has been known of for a few months now — it disguised itself as a Flash installer, making it seem like an innocuous addition to your computer, when it was anything but.
But how to do you find out if your Mac is infected with Flashback? It’s surprisingly easy — a tool that will diagnose your computer is available here. You just need to download it, unzip the package, and then run the two applications within. Hopefully you’ll see something like this:


                             



If you were affect, the removal process is outlined here. F-Secure’s instructions look pretty complex, they mostly involve finding the terminal and then copying and pasting.
And, don’t worry, the good folks at Apple are on top of the issue. An update made available today, known as Java for OS X 2012-002, will address the problem. It might seems like a nondescript OS update but it includes two important components. The eponymous one is a Java update that brings Java SE 6 to version 1.6.0_31. The other, HT1222, is the security component, though no explanation is offered as to what was specifically changed aside from it dealing with Java.
This is the second update Apple has issued in response to Flashback. And, this time, only OS X 10.7 (Lion) systems received the patch. Java for OS X 2012-002 is available now and does not require a restart. OS X Lion users simply need to go to the Apple icon (on the top left) and then choose “Software Update” to get it.
While Macs are affected, the malware exploits a flaw in Java not OS X specifically (though Apple maintains its own version of Java, so you can look at the situation either way). Even so, this can be seen as a sign of things to come for Mac users — as the operating system get more popular the computers using it will increasingly be a target for attacks like this one. The install base is still relatively small compared to that of Windows, but it’s large enough that OS X is a worthwhile target. The days of OS X users gallivanting around the internet with impunity are over, so get some security software and think twice about what you install.




April 10 is the day Vista dies


When you log on to a Windows PC, odds are good that there will be updates of some sort waiting for you. The bubble pops up, and you grudgingly apply the updates, restart if necessary, then go on with your day. This is an experience users of Windows Vista will be having a lot less often going forward. No, Microsoft isn’t streamlining the updates — April 10, 2012 is the end of full support for the black sheep of the Redmond family, Windows Vista.
Windows Vista launched back in 2007 to a nearly unanimous chorus of jeers from reviewers and users alike. The OS was plagued with odd bugs and random slowdowns. Hardware compatibility was also atrocious. Patches and Service Packs eventually fixed most of the problems, but Vista’s name was too sullied to succeed.
Perhaps this disastrous launch is the reason for Windows XP’s continued use. A huge number of PCs still run Microsoft’s 11 year-old software, and support for XP is continuing for two more years. Not bad considering it came out 6 years before Vista.
This doesn’t mean that users of Vista are being left totally out in the cold. While full support is ending, the operating system will be entering what is generously known as “extended support.” Microsoft will continue to offer important security patches, but that’s just about it. All other updates and support for the software will be provided on a paid-only basis. For regular people, though, this is the end of Vista updates.
The bubble of extended support will continue until 2017, when the handful of remaining Vista users will finally have to update to some other flavor of Windows. In addition to Vista, Office 2007 is exiting full support. Whether or not you personally used Vista, it’s been fascinating to watch the world’s biggest software company take a mulligan on an entire operating system.