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From Engadget: Samsung’s defense against Apple patents begins with DiamondTouch table, LiveTile UI prior art

Samsung's defense against Apple patents begins with DiamondTouch table, LiveTile UI prior art

Samsung may have convinced Judge Koh to toss a few international handsets out of Apple’s lawsuit, but the Korean firm still has Cupertino’s patent licensing accusations to contend with. Their tactic? Convince the court that Apple’s claim to the inventions are invalid, and that the technology was developed prior to the disputed patent’s filing. It’s called showing “prior art,” and Sammy’s done it before — famously showing a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey in an attempt to put Apple’s iPad design claims to rest. Today’s examples were more grounded in reality, focusing on debunking Cupertino’s claim to the “bounce back” effect that happens when a user reaches the end of a page and common multitouch zoom / navigation gestures.

Samsung pitted the famous “bounce back” feature against an old PocketPC interface called LaunchTile, which allowed users to navigate through 36 applications by zooming in and out and a panning across a grid-like “world view” of said apps. Movement between grids snap to each zone, marking the end of a page. Apple shot back, noting that LiveTile’s snapping navigation didn’t work on diagonals, and cited other differences as well. Samsung wasn’t deterred, however, and brought out DiamondTouch, a projector based multitouch table that utilized both one touch scrolling and pinch-based zoom gestures. The table even takes aim at the aforementioned bounce-back patent with a technology called TableCloth, which bounces back images that are pulled off screen. DiamondTouch’s creator, Adam Bogue, told the court that he had demoed the technology to Apple privately back in 2003, noting that it was also available to anyone who visited the Mitsubishi Electronic Research Laboratories’ lobby.

If the jury takes to Samsung’s claims of prior art, it could severely cut Apple’s claims against it. Even so, Cupertino’s lawyers aren’t going down without a fight, and still have a number of navigation and design claims that Samsung hasn’t addressed. The two parties are expected to keep up the fight for about a week, we’ll keep you posted on the inevitable revelations as they come.

 

 

from Engadget

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From Discover Magazine: Light-activated, Nano-sized Protein Factories Show Promise For Drug Delivery | 80beats

particle

Some of the most exciting medical research these days involves light. Light therapy for cancer, in which a tumor-seeking dye becomes toxic as soon as a light is switched on, manages to avoid slaughtering nearby healthy cells. Optogenetics—using light to turn on or off the expression of neurons—has advanced researchers’ understanding of neurological diseases.

Now, a recent paper is a reminder that light might someday be used for exquisitely tailored drug delivery: in this paper, tiny packages bearing all the molecular machinery to build a protein are idle when injected into mice, but spring into action when exposed to UV light.

The nanoparticles, which you can see a schematic of above, are little envelopes of cellular membrane, wrapped around a basic set of protein-building machinery and the gene for whatever you’d like manufactured—the researchers used a glowing fluorescent protein for their test. The gene can’t be accessed by the machinery because it is sealed into a loop by a piece of molecular adhesive, but shine a UV light on it, and the adhesive unsticks. Then the machinery transcribes the gene, and the protein is expressed. The researchers found that when they injected the particles into mice and …

 

from Discover Magazine

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From Wired Top Stories: It’s Do or Die For Military’s Mach 5 Missile

On Tuesday, an Air Force B-52 bomber will take off from Edwards Air Force Base in California and fire off an experimental hypersonic missile. If all goes well for the military’s flight test, the missile will accelerate past Mach 5, rush more than 300 miles in less than five minutes, and usher in a new chapter in high-speed warfare. If it fails — and the last two tests of this X-51A Waverider have fallen short — then the Pentagon will have sent something on the order of $300 million to the bottom of the Pacific.

from Wired Top Stories

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From Engadget: Amateur archaeologist finds possible pyramids using Google Earth

Amateur archaeologist finds possible pyramids using Google Earth

While most Google Earth hobbyists are satisfied with a bit of snapping and geotagging, some have far loftier ambitions. Satellite archaeologist Angela Micol thinks she’s discovered the locations of some of Egypt’s lost pyramids, buried for centuries under the earth, including a three-in-a-line arrangement similar to those on the Giza Plateau. Egyptologists have already confirmed that the secret locations are undiscovered, so now it’s down to scientists in the field to determine if it’s worth calling the diggers in.

 

from Engadget