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Wednesday 24 April 2013

Thalmic Labs Shows Off MYO Development Process, Demos The Armband Controlling Tetris And A Sphero

myo-armband

Waterloo-based Thalmic Labs is working on getting the MYO armband into the waiting arms of pre-order customers, which now number well above the 25,000 announced in March, Thalmic told me, making up over $4 million in total sales to date. MYO is a unique control device worn around the forearm, which measures muscle movement and electrical impulses and translates those into a control mechanism for various devies over Bluetooth.


This new video by Thalmic is a solid explainer for those curious about the engineering that goes into the MYO, and acts as a sort of general FAQ about how it works and what’s going on in terms of ongoing third-party development from the community MYO is trying to build. MYO’s official dev program is slated to come online in the coming months, and will include early access to hardware.


The new video is more about what’s going on within the company as Thalmic continues to build momentum ahead of its targeted ship date of sometime late in 2013, but the Sphero cameo is cool enough to make me slightly giddy. In case you didn’t know, the Sphero is the best dog toy ever created, and the MYO looks like it’ll make it even better in that regard.


On the business side of things, Thalmic passing the $4 million pre-order mark means that it has added over $300,000 in pre-sales since April 11, so over the course of just two weeks.








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Digital Storm goes after DIY gaming PCs with its $699 Vanquish (video)



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Reminder: Webby Awards voting ends tomorrow, help the Engadget Show out



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Lo que nos perdemos por culpa de la contaminación lumínica

Han pasado por mis feeds un par de fotazas de la Vía Láctea que me han hecho acordarme, una vez más, de lo que supone la pérdida de la oscuridad a la que nos hemos visto abocados en los últimos tiempos.


LPOD 16 de abril 2013


Esta primera es la Lunar Photo Of the Day del 16 de abril 2013 y está tomada por Miguel Claro en la reserva de Cielo Oscuro de Alqueva, Monsaraz, Portugal. La tomó el 6 de abril de 2013 hacia las 5 y media de la madrugada, aunque es un mosaico de 21 imágenes individuales, cada una de ellas con sólo 15 segundos de exposición.


La Vía Láctea por Mike Salway


La segunda, titulada Within Reach , es obra de Mike Salway, y está tomada desde la región del Valle de Hunter en Nueva Gales del Sur, Australia. La exposición es de 30 segundos.


Cualquiera de las dos hay que verla en grande para apreciarla en todo su esplendor, pero incluso al tamaño en las que las publicamos en Microsiervos son impresionantes.


(La de Miguel vía El Lobo Rayado, la australiana vía Bad Astronomy).


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Acer announces Liquid E2 smartphone with quad-core processor, optional dual-SIM slots



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Verizon's Samsung Galaxy S 4 pre-orders kick off tomorrow



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MightyText web app lets you sync photos, videos from Android to PC



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NASA Fires Cellphones Into Space



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The Father of Cyberpunk Tries Google Glass



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MightyText, “The iMessage for Android,” Targets iCloud With New Cross-Device Photo And Video Sync

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Today, our lives are spread across a growing array of digital devices, from smartphones and laptops to tablets and connected TVs. While each device tends to perform certain tasks better than others, as we use tablets to read books and shop, laptops for work-related tasks and smartphones to check the weather, stocks and email, increasingly, our devices are working together in concert and becoming interchangeable by keeping us connected to the cloudy Web. Yet, in spite of the fact that we live in an increasingly connected and multi-platform world, when it comes to texting, we find ourselves locked in to our phones.


As former Googlers, Maneesh Arora and Amit Sangani set out to develop a solution for those who find themselves sending and receiving text messages and phone calls all the live-long day, while, in turn, giving Android users an open, cross-device equivalent to Apple’s iMessage. In 2011, the two co-founded and launched MightyText, a cross-platform app that today works natively on Android tablets and phones (and as an extension for Firefox and Chrome), and allows Android-ers to view and reply to texts regardless of what device they happen to be using.


Given our growing reliance on our digital gadgets, by offering a tool that allows users to send SMS, MMS and make calls from your PC, Mac, Kindle, Galaxy S III and even your iPad, MightyText has been quick to find an audience and has grown steadily since launching officially in July of last year. In November, MightyText launched its first tablet app and, since then, Arora tells us that MightyText has seen over two million installs, tripling its user base over the past five months. As of today, he adds, MightyText is on pace to hit six billion messages per year.


But, today, MightyText is looking to take the first step in a strategy that the founders hope will take the startup beyond texting and, rather than simply being an alternative to iMessage will begin to put it head-to-head with iCloud. “There are a lot of other things that people want to sync between their devices besides texts,” Arora tells us. So, this morning the startup is officially expanding to support photo and video sync, a new addition to its platform launching in beta that allows users to sync their photos and videos between their phone and computers instantly and securely — and soon to their tablets.



Since MightyText already syncs texts, calls and contacts between users’ phones and their other devices, adding photo and video sync capabilities requires no work from MightyText users, Arora says. Once users activate the photo service, as they capture photos and videos on their Android phones, that media will show up in realtime on their computer.


While Arora admits that MightyText is hardly the only company looking to provide simple, cross-device sync and backup — Dropbox being the foremost example — he thinks that the “daily productivity piece” is still missing from current options. While Dropbox does sync and backup well, people don’t have a reason to “check Dropbox” daily, he says. Meanwhile, people are sending and receiving texts every day en masse. So, for those already using MightyText on their computer, tablet and phones, the service now gives them a photo and video experience that’s tied into their daily SMS habit.


“We think the photo syncing and sharing solutions out there aren’t working at full capacity just yet,” Arora continues. “You don’t hear too many people raving about the iCloud user experience.” Photos and videos become far more useful and relevant if they are part of your daily activity stream. “Imagine if every photo you take on your phone were to show up on the left side of Gmail for easy consumption and sharing,” he says. This would make consuming and sharing media among your devices — and your friends — more frictionless, and that Gmail integration is something the founders hope to add going forward.


After all, sharing photos and videos on your phone tends to be a multi-step process — six steps are required to share a single photo on Facebook, for example. Sharing, syncing and storing content across your devices should be as easy as using an email client, but, while the phone is great at capturing photos and quick videos while you’re on the go, it’s not quite as adept at publishing and sharing. With the rise of the “Instagrams of video,” particularly Vine, people are increasingly beginning to share video from their phone.


But, traditionally, mobile video has been hamstrung by tedious uploading thanks to slow data networks, poorly compressed video files, along with the multi-step process of sharing. While Vine and others remove some of this friction and allow you to share videos on social networks and access the app on multiple devices, it’s still its own network.


MightyText wants to make uploading, sharing and viewing video that you captured on your phone happen in a couple of clicks — and enable you to access videos instantly on any device. That makes a lot of sense, and if the startup is able to follow through, removes a lot of friction from the process.


Lastly, MightyText’s new photo sync service displays your phone’s battery status on your computer or your tablet and will warn you when it’s getting low. The more nifty features like this it can add, the more stickiness MightyText’s service will create.


For more, check it out at home here.









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Apple adds iPhone upgrade, delivery reminders to Store app for iOS



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Sprint delays Galaxy S 4 in-store launch due to inventory issues, online and phone sales aren't affected



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Tweetbot iOS app update brings new media timeline, redesigned image viewer



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MetroPCS shareholders vote to approve T-Mobile merger



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HTC One gets camera update, improves HDR images and audio recording



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Betaworks-Backed Blend.io Lets Musicians Collaborate Without Ever Abandoning Ableton

Screen Shot 2013-04-24 at 10.06.21 AM

We’ve heard musicians despair over the same issue for a while now: There’s great music creation software out there, but nothing that makes it truly easy to collaborate with people who are far away in real time. People have tried to solve this problem, with companies like Vinylmint launching on our Disrupt stage in SF, but these solutions often force musicians to learn a whole new program.


Blend.io, a new startup launching out of betaworks and led by co-founders Paul Murphy and hacker-in-residence Aleksandar Kolundzija, looks to change all that.


The service is a social, collaborative platform that’s laid on top of Ableton Live and Maschine. Users of those programs will be able to set up a music profile to show off their tunes, much like a LinkedIn. As expected, these users will be able to browse other profiles and comment on tracks.


But it gets much more intensive. Blend actually lets musicians pull tracks from the service, remix them, and push them back out to the world. According to Kolundzija, there are more music producers than there are tech developers, but getting these producers to migrate to new software is asking too much.


That’s why Blend is built on top of Ableton, one of the most dominant music creation platforms out there right now.


The parallel between developers and music producers has clearly been in mind during the development of Blend. “Intentionally, we’ve made it so that no project on Blend is closed or private,” said Koludzija. “We think of Blend as a place for social productivity, so it’s not just about connecting with others. It’s about going through a workflow built around making music.”


Blend will begin looking at other platforms like GarageBand and Apple Logic, among others, but for now they just want to make sure Ableton and Maschine users are getting what they need from the platform.


It’s free to join, so if you’re amped about getting on Blend, sign up for an invite here.








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Workplace Collaboration Service Convo Releases Updated iOS App With Redesigned News Feed And Comment System

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There are very few platforms that have are something that you use on a daily basis, let alone on a minute by minute basis. Team communication platform service, Convo, is one of those for us at TechCrunch.


Today, the company has released an update for its essential iOS app, something that we use here quite often to communicate about everything you can think of. Since using the service, our team has generated over 100,000 interactions, averaging 1,200 of them a day, with 95% of our team present on the platform on those days. Its desktop version is completely in real-time, acting like a threaded IRC chat.


The service overall isn’t without its faults, but it’s difficult to build team and enterprise software that can make everyone happy. One of the top complaints that we had was about its iOS app, which was lacking proper iPhone 5 and retina support, along with some general usability issues. Today’s app udpate is all about speed, commenting and a slicker design that will help you get through all of the threaded discussions your team is having since you checked in last.


The feed



This is the most important part of Convo, especially when you’re on the go. In today’s update, you’re able to scan and refresh the main feed quickly, and when you tap on the comments for any given thread, they slide over from the right. This is a huge improvement from the previous version, which loaded the thread into a new page:



That update alone will save time, as you can jump back and forth between threads that you’re participating in and make decisions on whether to get involved in one quicker. Additionally, you’ll be able to “Like” things, which is a passive way of saying that you’ve seen something or agree with something, depending on how your team uses it.


Images are also clearer thanks to the retina support and complete overhaul of how they’re displayed. Depending on how you use the service, images could play a huge role in the conversation that you’re having. If you’re having a conversation about a piece of artwork for your app, seeing images at the highest resolution possible are the only way that you’ll be able to make a decision on whether to use them or feedback that you might have for your designer.


Cleanup and sharing


In addition to the feed overhaul, Convo has been cleaned up and designed from scratch for iOS. One of the issues that we had was how the app acted in low or no connectivity situations. For example, if you were to enter in a long comment but have no connection, your comment would be lost. It was a maddening user experience that we complained about, and the Convo team was clearly receptive to fixing our pain.


The other feature that made its way into this update is a bookmarklet that will let you drop links into Convo right from Safari. This is a trick that a few other apps have been using for a while, but given that we do what we do here at TechCrunch, sharing links is essential. This is another one of those things that we complained heavily about, so it’s nice to see the feature.


As I mentioned, Convo isn’t without its faults, especially on the web where it still uses Flash, but for $9/seat monthly, you really can’t go wrong. Competing services like Salesforce’s Chatter and Microsoft’s Yammer lack the real-time aspects of Convo’s desktop and web apps, and with this iOS update, I suspect that we’ll see our mobile interaction increase as well.








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Engadget Eurocast 024 - 04.24.13



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Hearsay Social Brings Its Social Media Tools To Europe With New London Office

hearsay-social

Hearsay Social, a Sequoia- and NEA-backed company that helps large organizations manage their social media presence across local branches and sales teams, is announcing that it has opened an office in London. Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Steve Garrity said is the first step in the company’s European expansion.


The new office will be led by Peter Caryotis, who previously managed IBM’s Northern Europe Platform Computing business. The company says it has also updated its products to support German, French, and Spanish.


One of Hearsay’s big selling points is the fact that it enables salespeople to post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and elsewhere in a way that’s compliant with regulations. That’s presumably one of the reasons why Hearsay customers include a number of financial and insurance firms, including Zurich Insurance, Allstate, AXA Equitable, and Northwestern Mutual. So does expanding into countries with different regulatory requirements present a big challenge?


“Although regulations are different worldwide, they are generally focused on the same key issues, such as privacy and consumer protection,” Garrity said, adding that the team wants “to enable social selling in diverse regulatory environments.”


In the press release, Caryotis made a related point: “Social media usage continues to grow in the UK, but many organisations, especially those in highly regulated markets such as financial services, are still trying to figure out how to leverage the social networks to generate revenue.”


Garrity added that Europe isn’t an entirely new market for Hearsay, since it already works with some US companies that have a European presence.








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Apple Announces WWDC 2013: June 10-14



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Discovery, TLC apps for iPad add 'Plus' second screen experience



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Facebook Messenger for Android: now with free stickers



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FreedomPop announces $40 hotspot with access to Sprint's 3G network



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PivotDesk's New Office-Sharing Marketplace Helps Startups Find Affordable Office Space

Screen shot 2013-04-24 at 5.35.54 AM

Ask any entrepreneur about what it’s like finding the right office space for their company, and they’ll probably respond with a grimace and some grumbling. Few light up at the thought of it. Founders have enough to worry about in trying to build an awesome product, please their customers, find quality talent and raise money without adding the struggle to find office space to the list. Part of the reason why it’s such a pain in the butt to find great office space is that, traditionally, the process has lived offline, confined to a world of brokers and their proprietary data, little to no transparency, and long-term leases.


PivotDesk, a TechStars Boulder alum, launched last week to bring a new solution for those office space blues. Rather than take the broker-disrupting approach of commercial real estate startup, 42Floors, or rehashing the now-defunct “workplace marketplace” model adopted by Loosecubes, PivotDesk wants to help businesses find a long-term fix by connecting them with companies that have office space to spare.


Backed by over $3 million in Series A funding from Foundry Group, the startup is launching its service in New York, San Francisco and Denver, with plans to arrive in new cities over the next year. PivotDesk wants to address the current reality of the commercial real estate market, in which long-term leases prevail. Of course, in the early-stages of building a company, when practically nothing is certain, long-term, expensive leases make little to no sense.


So, starting in NYC, SF and Denver, PivotDesk wants to connect young businesses and startups with later-stage companies that have already signed long-term leases, may not yet have grown into every corner of the space, and thus have room to spare. The model requires those looking for space to be flexible and to be willing to share space with another business.


Yet, at its core, the model is one that attempts to both bring a process that has largely taken place in private transactions behind closed doors, online, and to bring some transparency to the search for office space. Co-working is becoming increasingly popular in the tech industry, especially in Silicon Valley, where rental rates for office space are high.


Furthermore, for those with office space, there’s the benefit of being able to share some of that cost with another company and, on the flip side, young businesses are able to take advantage of a month-by-month (more flexible) lease, in turn, potentially adding value by exposing its employees to a more mature, business. In turn, both get to benefit from the added energy of having multiple businesses and smart people in a shared office space.


PivotDesk provides a management platform that allows host companies to more easily market, manage and monetize their extra office space, giving them the opportunity to reach a larger audience of potential cohabiters and a better way to manage those relationships over time. Of course, to provide more value than the next startup, PivotDesk puts significant emphasis on finding the right match. In a way, it’s approaching the problem like Match.com and others approach dating.


When creating a listing and profile (for both sides of the transactin), PivotDesk encourages companies to go into detail in describing the nature of their own business, its culture, as well as the office space and environment they’re looking to sell. Because co-working means that two potentially very different businesses will be working in close confines with each other day in and day out, finding the right match is essential. It is, truly, an intimate relationship — or it can be if both parties are on the same wavelength.



So, to better match co-working mates, PivotDesk takes into account the nuances of culture and company dynamics, essentially building a unique taste profile for businesses based on their industry, number of employees, work habits and environment and noise level preferences, for example. This attention to detail has resonated with startups thus far, and, since its beta launch last fall, PivotDesk has matched 100 companies with office space, including startups like Ben Huh’s Cheezburger Network, and now has over 200 listings in SF, NYC and Denver.


The other appealing feature is that companies can use PivotDesk with relative anonymity, at least in the search and discovery phase of the process, as listings don’t include the size (or square footage) of the space and most leave out the host company’s name. Instead, listings are based first on location, along with providing details on the culture and style (and the stuff mentioned above), the size of the company the space can fit and amenities.


A la dating apps like Tinder, PivotDesk requires interest from both parties to move forward with the transaction. Once both companies approve the match, PivotDesk offers some basic communication tools to make it easier to hash out the details, along with providing billing info and the necessary documentation — putting it all in one place to remove the headache.


Seeing that security is also an issue, and that like, dating, there are plenty of opportunities for the process to go wrong, become creepy or subject hosts to fraud, PivotDesk knows that it has to go out of its way to ensure that all transactions are safe — and legal. Once a match is approved, the company verifies insurance coverage for both parties and reviews sublease terms to make sure both parties are within the rights of a sublease, for example.


To monetize, PivotDesk takes a 10 percent commission each time the cohabiter renews its monthly lease. Of course, as is true of the sharing economy writ large — or as we’ve seen from Airbnb — the whole process can be incredible, until it’s not. One destroyed apartment, bad fit, fraudulent squatter can have lasting consequences, and jeopardize the user’s perception of the service.


By allowing companies to easily list their extra office space, manage the process and their leases and by producing matches based on cultural fit and paying attention to the details, PivotDesk has developed an appealing option for both sides of the transaction. However, while it likely won’t have to deal with brokers paying much attention to these kind of deals, the barriers to entry in this space aren’t exactly high. Any startup could potentially become a competitor fairly quickly.


So, for PivotDesk, it’s all about providing the best user experience, maintaining security, providing quality selection and maintaining equality (and quality) of supply and demand. This is true of any P2P marketplace, and it’s not always easy. The space is relatively open at this point, and startups are hungry for better, online options, but as with marketplaces, there are likely to be only a few winners, or one.


In that sense, it puts pressure on startups to scale quickly, and maintain quality while doing so. Again, easier said than done. The other potential hangup is that, once startups connect and begin paying their lease, they may be more likely to work directly with each other, rather than incur PivotDesk’s 10 percent commission over the long-term. So, that could present a potential leak in the startup’s business model over time, although there will be plenty of opportunities to adjust accordingly.


On the bright side, however, while it’s currently laser-focused on serving startups, over the long haul, PivotDesk’s model (if it continues to succeed) could easily be applied to a wider set of use cases and verticals within the commercial real estate market.


Ultimately, at the risk of being repetitive, for startups, finding office space is a pain in the ass. Any business that removes the friction from the equation, provides favorable terms for both sides and makes the office hunt more transparent (and effective) is likely going to find it easy to curry favor. As such, PivotDesk is off to a good start with its matchmaking service.


Because it’s only live in three cities and is eager not to leave potential customers out, the company now allows entrepreneurs in any city to weigh in and help determine where PivotDesk will launch next. Essentially, the city that receives the most votes will become the next destination. Crowdsourcing!


For more, find PivotDesk at home here.








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Apple confirms WWDC 2013 will take place June 10th to 14th, tickets go on sale tomorrow



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Selfridges to get Blackberry Q10 ahead of official UK launch, available this Friday for £580



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The CW app brings full episodes streaming to Xbox 360 a day after they air



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Sorry, Killer Robots: Campaign Aims to Stop You



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Thinx upgrades the video monitor with embedded LTE and SMS alerts; ships in Q3 for around $500



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AI Gaming Startup Storybricks Collaborating With Sony Online For EverQuest Next

medium-logo

We’d been hearing for a while that Storybricks, the AI gaming startup co-founded by serial entrepreneur Rodolfo Rosini, had picked up a major client win since pivoting to license its technology to games studios. We just didn’t say who, in case it hadn’t closed, except to describe the potential partnership as of “jaw-dropping magnitude”.


Today, the cat is out of the bag. In its latest newsletter, Storybricks confirms that it is collaborating with Sony Online for EverQuest Next, the latest sequel to the highly successful EverQuest franchise. Jaw-dropping indeed for a six-person company.


Late last year we reported that, after a failed Kickstarter campaign, Storybricks was pivoting. Gone was the company’s super-ambitious mission to create a new browser-based MMO that would let users turn stories into games. Instead, harnessing much of its core tech, the startup was aiming to build the best artificial intelligence (AI) engine for online games by giving characters emotions — and licensing this engine to third-parties. And now it seems that Sony Online — specifically EverQuest Next — will be the first title to benefit from Storybricks’ AI boosting technology.


The announcement, via the company’s newsletter, is very short on details. Instead it teases: “After several months of working together with Sony Online, we can finally reveal that we are collaborating on EverQuest Next. EQN is ‘the biggest sandbox ever designed’ and we are extremely happy to be working on the most innovative MMORPG under development.”


It goes on to state that the company “can’t give any specifics about what we are doing on EQN yet”, except to say that it is “doing remarkable things”.


Curiosity never killed this cat, so I tracked down Rosini over email to push for more information about the startup’s partnership with Sony Online. “Sorry we can’t talk about it yet,” he wrote with uncharacteristic reserve. When pressed, however, he did reveal that the collaboration is generating significant revenue for Storybricks and isn’t royalty-based.


It wasn’t the only deal on the table, either. Rosini says that lots of games studios were interested in working with the startup, but they could only embark on one project of this size. “EQN could be the most important game of the next 10 years,” he said. “We could not let this opportunity pass.”


Finally, returning to form, Rosini signed off with the following: “Also there are [a] few VCs who are hardcore Warcraft players and certainly I enjoy being able to have access to the new new MMO before them.”


Well, they do say that money can’t buy you everything.








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Bebés, memoria y consciencia

Según ScienceNow, unos científicos franceses han realizado unos interesantes estudios sobre la consciencia y memoria en el cerebro de los bebés .


Gracias a esto han determinado mediante comparación con los patrones de señales cerebrales de adultos que los primeros signos de memoria y consciencia aparecen hacia los 5 meses, quizá incluso antes (a partir de los 2 meses). Ese sería el momento en el que ¡clic! algo cambia en la forma en que el cerebro de los bebés percibe el mundo y procesa la información que reciben del exterior.


A partir de los 12 meses las señales de los llamados potenciales evocados (ERP) son ya casi iguales que las de los adultos, aunque algo más lentas.


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La historia de la insulina

Una paciente inyectándose insulina

Una paciente inyectándose insulina


Probablemente todos conocemos a alguien que padece diabetes, e incluso a alguien que por ello tiene que inyectarse insulina, algo a lo que hoy en día no le damos mayor importancia porque su disponibilidad es algo que damos por hecho, al menos en la mayoría de los lugares del mundo.


Pero lo que no sabía es que no fue hasta 1982 cuando se consiguió poner en el mercado una insulina sintética que permitió abaratar considerablemente el precio del tratamiento, facilitando así su llegada a todo el mundo, o la cantidad de cerdos que había que sacrificar antes para extraerla de sus páncreas.


Todo esto y mucho más, como suele decirse, en La historia de la insulina, 90 años salvando vidas .


Foto: Inyección de insulina de sari dennise, con licencia CC.





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