Robot Stitches Tissue by Itself, a Step to More Automated OR

Getting stitched up by Dr. Robot may one day be reality: Scientists have created a robotic system that did just that in living animals without a real doctor pulling the strings.

Much like engineers are designing self-driving cars, Wednesday's research is part of a move toward autonomous surgical robots, removing the surgeon's hands from certain tasks that a machine might perform all by itself. No, doctors wouldn't leave the bedside — they're supposed to supervise, plus they'd handle the rest of the surgery. Nor is the device ready for operating rooms.

But in small tests using pigs, the robotic arm performed at least as well, and in some cases a bit better, as some competing surgeons in stitching together intestinal tissue, researchers reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. "The purpose wasn't to replace surgeons," said Dr. Peter C.W. Kim of Children's National Health System in Washington, a pediatric surgeon who led the project. "If you have an intelligent tool that

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Don’t look but, for the first time in almost a decade, Mercury will pass across the front of the sun

The solar system’s smallest and most remarkable planet, Mercury, will cross the face of the sun on May 9 – offering a great opportunity for people in many places across the world to see it.

Mercury is a dark and enigmatic world, which bears the scars of a strangely long history of volcanic eruptions and tectonic activity. Its crust is unreasonably rich in elements that normally easily evaporate from the surface, such as sulphur, sodium and potassium. This is odd, as these are the kind of substances that are most likely to have been lost during a hot and violent birth such as Mercury’s.

Mercury scoots round the sun in only 88 days, overtaking the more sedately moving Earth every three or four months. Because Mercury’s orbit is tilted at about seven degrees with respect to the Earth’s, it passes directly between us and the sun (a transit) only when both it and the Earth are close to the points where their orbital planes intersect. This can happen only in early May or early November.

In every century there are only 13 or 14 transits of Mercury and you have to

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Global, Local Leaders Vow Hard Work Against Temperature Rise

International leaders and local officials on Thursday pledged to work hard to stem the rise of global temperatures by investing in public transportation and electric cars, planting trees and switching to solar energy.At a climate action summit, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged governments, businesses and civil society to make good on the landmark climate agreement concluded late last year in Paris by more than 170 countries. 

The deal aims to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial times. Ban called on cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and on companies to invest in green technologies with the goal or cooling the planet and ensuring cleaner air and better health. "We need action now," Ban said. "Temperatures continue to rise. Arctic sea ice is melting fast. Droughts, storms and floods are costing lives and productivity." 

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said governments and corporations should

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Why Africa must look beyond fossil fuels

Modern, efficient and affordable energy services are among the essential ingredients of economic development, including the attainment of zero poverty as recognised in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Energy is the life blood of the global economy – a crucial input to nearly all of the goods and services of the modern world. Stable, reasonably priced energy supplies are central to maintaining and improving the living standards of billions of people.

In spite of the recognised role of energy in fostering economic development, it is worrisome to note that energy poverty remains rife. Energy poverty is defined by the International Energy Agency as “the lack of access to modern energy services. These services are defined as household access to electricity and clean cooking facilities e.g. fuels and stoves that do not cause air pollution in houses.”

Energy poverty is very severe in Africa. Currently, 18 per cent of global population (about 1.3 billion people) lack access to electricity despite modest improvements, and 38 per cent lack clean cooking facilities. Sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia account collectively for more than 95 per cent of the global total. Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa has been noted as the epicentre of the global challenge to overcome energy poverty. In its 2014 Africa Energy Outlook, the International Energy Association estimates that 620 million

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SpaceX readies Falcon 9 rocket for Friday launch

SpaceX engineers readied an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket for launch early Friday to boost a Japanese communications satellite into orbit, the California rocket builder's fourth launch so far this year.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in its hangar at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The booster is scheduled for launch early Friday to put a Japanese communications satellite

After propelling the rocket out of the thick lower atmosphere, the first stage will fall away and attempt a landing on a SpaceX "droneship" stationed well off shore east of Cape Canaveral. The Falcon 9's second stage, meanwhile, will continue the climb to space, releasing the JCSAT-14 relay station into an elliptical "transfer" orbit.

The satellite's on-board thrusters will be used to raise the low point of the ellipse, putting the spacecraft into a circular orbit 22,300 miles above

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Millions of Qualcomm-Based Android Devices Vulnerable to Attacks: Report

Mandiant, a cyber-security firm, has released a report which states that devices running on Qualcomm chips or code written by the chip maker are vulnerable to attack. This vulnerability has been identified as CVE-2016-2060 which exists in a software package maintained by Qualcomm and if exploited, can grant the attacker access to the victim's SMS database, phone history, and more. As this is an open source software package, it affects a variety of projects that use the said APIs, including Cyanogenmod

.

The CVE-2016-2060 vulnerability, as Mandiant puts it, is the lack of input sanitisation of the "interface" parameter of the "netd" daemon, which is part of the Android

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Under The Hood: Oil Market Price And Policy Conflicts

U.S. production continues to follow oil price's rules of engagement.

But Saudi Arabia's new policy directions may upend the cartel's cohesion.

Mixed signals make bear and bull arguments feasible.

Conventional wisdom and economics say U.S. oil production will decline because prices are low enough to dissuade previous production levels, and indeed this is the case. Roughly 600,000 barrels had come off of the U.S. tally for crude oil production in March 2016 from an April 2015 peak of 9.6 million barrels per day (b/d). U.S. shale players are expected to further reduce their production output as prices in the $40 range hold back production for many of the shale basins in the U.S. On Friday, April 29th, Brent crude oil futures prices for June reached $47 and WTI nearly reached the $47 level.

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Dollar Depreciates Further Against Major Currencies At Global Markets

The dollar reversed losses Tuesday after hitting multimonth lows against the euro and the yen, as investors took profits on bets against the U.S. currency. Measuring the greenback against a basket of 16 currencies, was recently up 0.7% at 85.20, boosted by gains against the euro, Australian dollar and emerging-market currencies. A sharp drop in oil prices is buoying the dollar against the currencies of commodity producing countries, including a broad swathe of emerging markets. The dollar was recently up 1.3% against the Canadian dollar at 1.2695. It gained 2% against the Brazilian real, at 3.5685, and increased 2.4% against the Russian ruble, to 66.74. Light, sweet crude for June delivery recently fell $1.20, or 2.7%, to $43.56 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on renewed concerns about weaker Chinese demand and growing global supplies.

The Australian dollar was recently down 2.1% at $0.7507 after

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Google Launches One-handed Mode Android keyboard

Now you can text with one hand! Google launches an Android keyboard that makes it easier to type messages on larger phones.

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Scientists unveil world's tiniest engine

"Now we can use light to power a piston engine at the nanoscale," said researcher Ventsislav Valev. The world's tiniest engine is powered by expanding polymer-coated gold nanoparticles. 

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have built a nano-engine small enough to fit inside a living cell. The engine, which measures

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Middle East and North Africa May Soon Be Uninhabitable Due to Climate Change

Over 500 million people living in Middel East and North Africa are goign to be dispaced due to the rising temparature making the two regions unable to support human life. Rising sea levels due to melting ice sheets may not be the only dangerous effect of global warming. A new study suggests that the continuous rise in temperature brought by climate change may soon turn the Middle East and North Africa into scorching terrain uninhabitable by humans. 

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Humans Are Not Alone, Ancient Alien Worlds May Have Existed

The question of whether there are other forms of life in the universe has boggled the minds of scientists for time immemorial. And now, University of Rochester physics and astronomy professor Adam Frank has gone on record to say that there may be, or have been other civilizations in our universe, though it would be virtually impossible to communicate with them.

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A New Climate Of Responsibility: New Developments Undermine Old Assumptions

The climate is changing. March marked the 11th straight month in which a global average temperature measure was set. But the climate of opinion is changing as well. Dramatic shifts are under way in how to grapple with the climate change threat.

In April, more evidence emerged about the oil industry’s early knowledge that global warming was real, before it switched into public denial mode.

We now know that warning signs were seen as early as the 1950s. Such evidence that has already lead to the opening of an FBI investigation, as well as state-level investigations announced by a coalition of 17 attorneys general in late March.

Also, in April, a federal judge allowed a landmark lawsuit to proceed against the federal government for discriminatory violations of the rights of youth and future generations by permitting and enabling fossil fuel use, leading to climate change.

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Google to Improve Vision by Injecting Smart Device into Eyeballs

A recently-published Google patent has revealed its plans to introduce an innovative, vision-improving lens. The patent, which was initially filed in 2014, outlines the procedure which will replace the wearer’s natural eye lens with an electronic lens. This will effectively help replace the wearer’s natural eye lens, which indicates that the procedure might not be one that users can discard if it does not work out.

The new lens will negate the need to wear glasses or contacts, but the procedure requires the user to accept a potentially permanent change. The intrusive procedure will see the person’s natural eye lens surgically removed, and

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