During the millions of years they've been on earth horseshoe crabs have developed a trick that can save our lives even now — and may be especially useful in the fight against healthcare-associated infections.
The next time you suffer a cut or abrasion, think twice before you reach for the Neosporin. It's time, and mom, tested — you get a cut, you wash it carefully, then apply some triple-threat antimicrobial ointment. You may or may not slap on a band-aid. We won't cover it here, but so that you know, covering the wound with a sterile dressing or band-aid is a good idea.
Killing more than 29,000 people each year, infection with Clostridium difficile (C. diff or CDI) is the most common healthcare-associated infection in the US. In a disturbing development, new research reveals recurring cases of the infection are soaring.
Type 1 diabetes is an attack on the body by the immune system — the body produces antibodies that attack insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. Doctors often diagnose this type of diabetes in childhood and early adulthood. The trigger that causes the body to attack itself has been elusive; but many research studies have suggested viruses could be the root. The latest links that viruses that live in our intestines may yield clues as to which children might develop type 1 diabetes.
There is an Indian story called the Legend of Paal Paysam, and while it doesn't seem like it at first, it has a lot to say about what motivated Paul Travers in the augmented reality space.
Tell the truth. The bat picture creeps you out. You are not alone. But in reality, bats truly are some of our best friends. They gobble thousands of disease-spreading bugs a night. But they also carry viruses that can be deadly to humans. So, bats — friend or foe?
Bed bugs are brown and creepy. Could you spot one in your hotel room? A new study reveals most people are freaked out by bed bugs, but only about 35% could identify one.
A new technological movement without the technology itself is just an idea sitting and waiting. Once the technology is present in the equation, movement forward can begin. This is how many of us see the head-mounted displays (HMDs) and smartglasses that have recently entered the augmented and mixed reality market — or are coming out in the next few months. This is a movement that will sweep over the world, changing everything in its path, and these are some of the people behind it.
If you have encountered bed bugs lately, you are not alone. While the pesticides used to fight these pests are losing effectiveness, a fungus shows promise in knocking the bugs out of beds everywhere.
As you may have heard, Verizon has jumped on the "giving up users' data to whomever will pay" bandwagon with its new AppFlash spyware app that's all set to be pre-installed on at least one of the Android phones they sell.
You can get eggs and high-quality compost from backyard chickens—but you can also get Salmonella.
With new diet and health claims coming at you everyday, it's sometimes hard to know what to believe. Well, here's a bright spot: A pair of studies confirm that whole grains are healthy for you, and for the diversity of microbes living in your gut.
Jostled in the airport, someone is coughing in line. The air looks empty but it is loaded with microbes that make their way into your body. You get sick. You give it to your family, and that's pretty much it. But what if you were so contagious that you spread it to your entire community and beyond?
As researchers learn more and more about our intestinal bacteria—also called the gut microbiome—we're finding out that these microbes aren't just influencing our health and wellness, they're a useful tool for improving it, too.
The presence of certain bacteria can indicate whether the vaginal tract is healthy or not. It could also impact the likelihood of acquiring certain sexually transmitted diseases, like HIV, a new study suggests.
Bacteria gets a bad rap. Most headlines focus on the danger and discomfort posed by pathogens like bacteria, but many of the bacteria that live on and in us are vital to our health. Many products out there, called probiotics, are sold with the implication that they're supporting these healthy bacteria that share our bodies — but do they actually work?
To much of the United States, Zika seems like a tropical disease that causes horrible problems in other countries but is nothing to be worried about stateside. It may make you rethink your beach vacation abroad, but not much more than that. However, if you live in Florida or Texas, the possibility of getting a Zika infection where you live is real — and local outbreaks are more and more a possibility.
The big night is less than a week away, so how do you not have a costume yet?! In my world, Halloween is the night of all nights. It's the only day of the year when it's socially acceptable to dress and walk around like an insane person, eat too much sugar, and scare the hell out of total strangers. What's not to love?
Thanks to Project-Infrared, there's now a pretty straightforward way to add motion tracking to the HoloLens: Connect it to a Kinect.
Virtual reality holds the promise of electronically visiting distant places we'd otherwise struggle to reach, but that teleportation-esque ability isn't possible without the right content. YouVisit created a platform that makes it easy for almost anyone to create immersive 360-degree experiences so we can map our lives and see the world through the eyes of our fellow humans.
I truly don't understand why anyone would pay $10.99 for a case of carbonated water just to feel like a Midwest mom on a diet. Every time I talk about LaCroix, pronounced La-CROY (rhymes with enjoy), it's like I take all the money I spent on my French major and light it on fire.
Google is working on something so big they had to name it after an entire galaxy: A new operating system that merges Android and Chrome OS into one unified front.
My husband's and my daily schedules are constantly changing. Frankly, it's complete chaos sometimes, so I can't plan to have elaborate dinners on the table at six o'clock every day. And by the time we actually get to eating in the evening, we've become so hungry that our moods have taken a nosedive.
During our high school years, one of us (hint: her name starts with a B) worked at Cold Stone Creamery. She loved working there, and from this love emerged a fascination with adding creative ingredients to plain ol' vanilla ice cream.
I recently wrote about fast food fakeouts you can make at home, but people cannot live off fast food alone. Sometimes you need to step up your game a little and enjoy the fare at a popular chain restaurant with a bit more variety to its menu.
It was definitely a shocker when Microsoft proposed cross-network play between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 last month. After all, Microsoft and Sony have been competing for the same user base for more than a decade now, and this new feature might actually decrease console sales as a whole.
Hello everyone! How's subnetting going? Did you practice a lot? I hope you did, but even if you didn't we will go through some more examples so you can be feeling confident after reading this article. It's all about that bad boy binary!
There are plenty of legitimate reasons that you might want to record a phone conversation. Let's say you operate a business and take orders over the phone, and you don't want to miss an item. Or perhaps you need to jot down some notes from a recent conference call, and things were just happening too quickly in real time.
My daughter moved into her first apartment last year, a huge rite of passage in any young person's life. With a mother and two grandmothers who are good cooks (to say the least, in the case of the latter), it's not surprising that she turned to us for some advice about how to improve her own skills in the kitchen. Without question, the single best piece of advice we have given her is to employ mise en place each and every time she prepares a meal.
Have you ever used an open wifi, which after you connect displays a website to enter your credentials to get internet? That website is called captive portal and widely used in airports, hotels, universities etc. Have you ever wondered what would happen if someone would set up an open wifi with the same name displaying a very similar web page asking for credentials? Usually if there are multiple wifi networks with the same name and encryption, devices only display the one with the highest sign...
In 1987, two brothers, Thomas and John Kroll, began work on an image editing software, which was eventually acquired in 1988 and released to the world in 1990 by Adobe. That software was Photoshop 1.0, initially exclusive for the Macintosh platform. Over the years, Photoshop became a great wizard of image editing and gained application rockstar status.
Your brain holds a lot of precious information and is capable of great feats. However, there's one quality that doesn't lie among its strengths—memory security. Yes, that's right, your brain can be hacked, and it doesn't take a psychologist to do it. Anyone with the right know-how can change your memories for their own personal benefit, and you can do so to others, too.
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! So many readers come to Null Byte to learn how to hack Wi-Fi networks (this is the most popular hacking area on Null Byte) that I thought I should write a "how-to" on selecting a good Wi-Fi hacking strategy.
Welcome back, my novice hackers! Previously in my "Spy on Anyone" series, we used our hacking skills to turn a target's computer system into a bug to record conversations and found and downloaded confidential documents on someone's computer. In this tutorial, I will show you how to spy on somebody's Internet traffic.
As someone with a pretty nice TV, I've never found the allure in purchasing a projector. While they're certainly smaller and sleeker than a television, and more portable, they can be pricey and produce a less than stellar image. And who really buys a projector anyways? They're for school, they're for work, they're for theaters, but they're not really for my apartment, right?
If you've ever attended school or held a job, you're probably well familiar with Microsoft Office, whether you used it or not. It's the most popular office suite available, and has been for some time. Apple does have its own suite of productivity apps (iWork), but Microsoft Office has always been the industry leader for word documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
People tend to skip toasting nuts in recipes or before adding them to salads because it seems time-consuming and the margin for error is high. However, skipping this step is a big mistake. Why? Because when you skip toasting your nuts (go ahead, you can laugh, we're all doing it), you sacrifice flavor and texture. And not just a little flavor, but a lot. Alton Brown recommends wok-frying peanuts before making your own nut butter for this very reason.
Fifty-four percent of Americans 18 and older drink coffee every day, and why not? With 100 milligrams of caffeine per six ounces of drip coffee, it's just the morning beverage to wake you up and kickstart your day. You can feel the caffeine surge through your body like the Holy Ghost, making you aware, focused, and ready for action.
We all know that it's important to drink water regularly throughout the day. After all, it has so many benefits, including flushing toxins out of the body and maintaining kidney health and good bowel movements. Turns out that's only part of the story. While being properly hydrated is key to maintaining overall health, it's also a big component of maintaining and even increasing cognitive ability. Plus, drinking enough water regularly can help you lose weight, if you know when to drink it and ...
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! In previous tutorials, I have shown you how to scan the globe for vulnerable servers and write simple scripts in BASH and Perl to perform other reconnaissance tasks. In a very recent guide, I taught how to scan vulnerable servers for Heartbleed.
