Carlo Orlando

The surgical process of stitching up a patient will soon receive a hi-tech makeover. The change could reduce the chance of infection and decrease healing times. A team of researchers at the University of Illinois have created the first ever ... 'electronic suture' (a stitch used by doctors and surgeons to hold tissue together). The special suture contains ultrathin silicon sensors integrated on polymer or silk strips that penetrate the skin and knot, just like standard medical stitches. To create the 'electronic sutures,' the researchers first use chemicals to cut an ultrathin film of silicon ... (view more)

A newly discovered type of malware is designed to avoid detection by severely damaging a victim's computer once it has harvested sensitive data. The new 'Trojan horse' software is called "Shamoon" by most antivirus companies. It focuses on grabbing ... information housed in the 'Users', 'Documents and Settings', 'System32/Drivers' and 'System32/Config' folders on Windows systems. While this new piece of malware is primarily designed to attack large businesses, some of them specifically by name, it will apparently target home users, as well. Malware Packs Two-Fisted Punch Shamoon is unique in ... (view more)

Disney researchers at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University have successfully given common houseplants electronic sensors that make them responsive to human touch. Called Botanicus Interacticus, the project leverages an innovative technology that ... allows humans to interact with everyday inanimate objects in ways never before thought possible. At the heart of the project is a custom-built 'capacitive sensor module' which transmits a low current through an otherwise ordinary plant. This allows the plant to 'sense' when and where an individual touches it. Because the human body is naturally ... (view more)

McAfee has released a new browser add-on that allows Facebook users to more privately post personal pictures. The app reportedly prevents strangers from viewing these images. Called Social Protection, it's a plug-in that offers two viewing features: ... First, it allows users to blur all their uploaded photos, and allow only the contacts the user selects to see them clearly. Second, the software allows a user to select which images will be blurred. This allows all the other photographs to remain visible to Facebook friends, by default. Images Blurred in Timeline, News Feed Using this new system, ... (view more)

A new Apple iOS app that transmits data via "virtual birdsong" is making file sharing between smart devices easier than ever. "Chirp" is the brainchild of Animal Systems, a company started by researchers in the Computer Science Department at the ... University College of London. Essentially, the app emits a two-second noise that sounds as if it were made by a robotic bird. The noise indicates that an instant download is being received from a trusted source. App Uses Sound to Transfer Data To send a chirp, an individual simply activates the app from their smartphone and selects the desired ... (view more)

An international security campaign has taken down Grum, a hacker-controlled botnet responsible for the daily release of 18 billion spam emails. The takedown effort began two weeks ago, when authorities in the Netherlands pulled the plug on Grum's ... two main servers. Other servers in Panama went offline earlier this week. Grum's last servers were disconnected in Russia, effectively killing the botnet. Group Effort Stops Grum The demise of the Grum botnet was confirmed by security vendor FireEye in a recent blog post. Grum's termination apparently resulted from a group effort. To kill the ... (view more)

A team of Ukrainian researchers calling themselves "QuadSquad" are breaking down barriers between people who communicate with sign language and those who hear and speak. Their method is based on an ingenious glove-based system that allows people ... using the two different modes of communication to understand each other easily. Called EnableTalk, the specially-designed glove senses the movements of the wearer's fingers and translates each meaningful sign into spoken words. Glove Features Special Sensors, Accelerometers The glove is quite remarkable. It is lined with more than a dozen flex sensors ... (view more)

Rumors of a rampant Android-based botnet that is spamming individuals around the world are now proving to be unfounded. Instead, experts have discovered that Yahoo Mail may have been compromised. Rumors of an Android-based botnet first began ... circulating last week. Reportedly, the botnet was sending out waves of pharmacy, penny stock, and e-card spam emails. Terry Zink, a program manager for Microsoft's Forefront security product team, added credibility to the rumors by claiming, "a spammer has control of a botnet that lives on Android devices. These devices login to user's Yahoo Mail account ... (view more)

After quietly changing the default email addresses of all its users to @facebook.com, on their profile pages, Facebook is now being blamed for causing multiple unwanted (and unwarranted) address book changes. The end result: an even fiercer backlash ... from Facebook's member base than we saw just a few days ago. It was bad enough when Facebook decided to overstep its boundaries and force an email change on all its users, whether or not they had agreed to sign on for the new email service. But further tensions arose when the company also decided to splash those new email addresses across each ... (view more)

While the prospect of Microsoft manufacturing its own tablet computer will bring about a number of firsts for the software giant, one in particular will present an unusual dilemma: this will be the first time Microsoft competes against its very own ... hardware partners. Here's the issue: Microsoft will be trying to sell its Windows 8 operating system (OS) to hardware makers at the same time it will be trying to convince consumers to buy its Surface tablet computer, instead of PCs and slate devices made by those same hardware partners. As shown in a recent product unveiling, Surface will come in ... (view more)