Technology

Using an inexpensive 3-D printer, Washington University biomedical engineers have developed a custom-fitted, implantable device with embedded sensors that could transform treatment and prediction of cardiac disorders.

Igor Efimov, PhD, at the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis and an international team of biomedical engineers and materials scientists have created a 3-D elastic membrane made of a soft, flexible, silicon material that is precisely shaped to match the heart’s epicardium, or the outer layer of the wall of the heart.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Basis has been actively seeking a buyer for its health tracking smartwatch business over the "past few weeks" and has talked with Apple, Google and possibly others about an acquisition, reports TechCrunch.

Basis is supposedly shooting for a "sub-hundred million" dollar price target, which narrows down potential buyers to a select few with deep pockets and serious interest in entering the health tracking device market. Barring a buyout, Basis could go for round C funding, the people said.

Not ready to don a Google Glass headset? An alternative way to access smartphone content could hang around your neck.

A digital device disguised as a necklace or brooch could one day project email, tweets and text alerts onto nearby surfaces, allowing you to open them with hand gestures.

Federal regulators have taken their first major step in accelerating the country's move toward high-capacity, fiber optic phone networks. In a unanimous vote Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission approved a program of trials designed to study the effects of shifting consumers onto next-generation infrastructure that will be able to carry advanced services like HD voice calls and video.

A secretive EU body has agreed to develop a device to be fitted to all cars allowing police to cut off any engine at will, it emerged today.

Leaked paperwork has revealed the 'remote stopping' technology could be activated by a switch in a control room, shutting off the fuel and cutting the ignition.

Blu-ray discs can apparently be used for more than just movies and console games. Facebook has announced it is developing a prototype for a new data storage system that will be able to use 10,000 Blu-ray discs to store up to a petabyte of data, with the possibility of increasing that space to five petabytes.

Recent massive data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus have re-ignited a campaign by retailers to get U.S. consumers to carry "PIN and chip" credit and debit cards to replace the decades-old magnetic stripe cards used by 90% of Americans.

Such PIN and chip cards would do what dozens of newer-model smartphones with NFC chips are already doing while using payment apps like Google Wallet and Isis. So why isn't the focus on promoting near-field communication smartphones instead of PIN and chip cards?

We're all in this together. The authorities are peeking in on our progress thought life, and we accept it as part of our security.

But they don't want us to feel left out. So now they're wondering whether they might be able to use our security for, you know, everyone's. An imaginative proposal emerging from San Jose, Calif., City Councilman San Liccardo asks for citizens to donate their own home security systems for the greater good.

Build a better mousetrap, and someone will use it to kill humans. It seems inevitable that technological advances always seem to come with misuses or some kind of maluse. The technology isn't bad, just its use.

What if, when you were up at a ridiculous hour Skyping your relatives in Australia, you could borrow unused bandwidth from your sleeping neighbors to make your own broadband connection faster and stronger?

High up in a glass tower in Barcelona, Telefonica's research and development team has been attempting to tackle exactly this question. The solution they have come up with, BeWifi, is a technology that gathers bandwidth from local Wi-Fi routers in order to enhance the connection of the users that happen to be on the Internet at exactly that moment in time.