Google Files Lawsuit Against Apple- and Microsoft-backed Patent Group
Google has decided that enough is enough. The company has filed a lawsuit against Rockstar Consortium—a patent group backed by many of Google’s biggest competitors—claiming that the group’s patent campaign is unfairly targeting Google and its Android partners.
Google’s been at odds with Rockstar since 2011 when Google narrowly lost the auction to buy the Nortel Network’s 6,000 patent portfolio. Rockstar picked up the patents for $4.5 billion and has since used them to sue Google and many of its hardware partners. It’s a battle with clearly drawn sides. Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson, and Sony—the backers of the Rockstar Consortium—face off against Google, Samsung, Huawei, HTC, and other mobile phone companies.
The thousands of patents and patent applications involve core phone technologies like wireless connectivity, networking, and even semiconductors. Google’s fighting back with its own lawsuit, and it seems that Rockstar’s confidence is wavering. Bloomberg recently reported that some of the Nortel patents are already being sold off.
Gigaom has found a copy of Google’s complaint with some of the particularly relevant bits underlined. Check out the entire document below—it’s not exactly fun reading, but it has all of the specific details.
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Sony Expected To Release New Smartwatch In Early 2014
Gadgets Sony released its second generation smartwatch earlier this year, and despite the fact that wearable devices were significantly “in” this year, it didn’t exactly turn out to be a hit. It appears that the company isn’t giving on its wearable efforts any time soon. Recent FCC filing hints towards the possibility of Sony releasing another smartwatch early next year.
The device mentioned in the filing is called a “BT Wrist Notifier” bearing model number SWR10, no images are included so its not known right now exactly what this gadget looks like. The FCC has already approved Sony’s mystery SWR10 device, documents reveal that it has NFC and Bluetooth built-in, which will play a vital part in hooking up the smartwatch with a compatible device.
Sony’s existing wearable gadget, the SmartWatch 2, was released earlier this year. It touts a waterproof design had a 1.6 inch 220×176 pixel resolution display. It is powered by Sony’s custom Android firmware.
The next generation smartwatch from Sony is likely to build on these characteristics, but its obviously too soon to say right now if it will have better success in the market than its predecessor. Rumors suggest that the new smartwatch might be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show 2014 next month, but Sony itself is yet to confirm the existence of this wearable
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The first 3D printed organ, a liver, is expected in 2014
Advances in the 3D printing of human tissue have moved fast enough that San Diego-based bio-printing company Organovo now expects to unveil the world’s first printed organ—a human liver—next year.
Like other forms of 3D printing, bio-printing lays down layer after layer of material—in this case, live cells—to form a solid physical entity—in this case, human tissue. The major stumbling block in creating tissue continues to be manufacturing the vascular system needed to provide it with life-sustaining oxygen and nutrients.
Living cells may literally die before the tissue gets off the printer table.
ORGANOVO
An animation on Organovo's website shows how human tissue can be printed.
Organovo, however, said it has overcome that vascular issue to a degree. “We have achieved thicknesses of greater than 500 microns, and have maintained liver tissue in a fully functional state with native phenotypic behavior for at least 40 days,” said Mike Renard, Organovo’s executive vice president of commercial operations.
A micron is one-millionth of a meter. To better understand the scale Renard is describing, think of it this way: A sheet of printer paper is 100 microns thick. So the tissue Organovo has printed is the thickness of five sheets of paper stacked on top of each other.
Printing hepatocytes—the cells that make up most liver tissue—isn’t enough, however. There are multiple types of cells with different functions in tissue that must be combined to create a living human organ.
Organovo’s researchers were able to bring together fibroblasts and endothelial cells, which perform the function of developing tiny vascular networks, allowing the company to achieve thick tissue with good cell viability, Renard said.
The liver tissue model that Organovo plans to release next year is for research use only and will be used in the laboratory for medical studies and drug research. That’s important in its own right: Developing a new drug costs, on average, $1.2 billion and takes 12 years.
Organovo has as yet not released any information on possible future implantable organs. Any such initiative would have to undergo rigorous government review before being approved for clinical purposes.
Still, the creation of a viable liver is a watershed moment for the bio-printing industry and medicine because it proves 3D printed tissue can be kept alive long enough to test the effects of drugs on it or implant it in a human body where it can further develop.
”It is too early to speculate on the breadth of applications that tissue engineering will ultimately deliver or on the efficacy that will be achieved,” Renard said.
That question, Renard said, can only be answered through continued successful tissue development and the completion of clinical trials, followed by a review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—a process that can take three to 10 years.
To spur on the development of bio-printed organs, the Methuselah Foundation, a Springfield, Va.-based not-for-profit that supports regenerative medicine research, this month announced a $1 million prize for the first organization to print a fully functioning liver.
Currently, there are about 120,000 people on the organ waiting list in the U.S., and even those who receive a donated organ face the prospect of ongoing medical challenges because of organ rejection issues. However, if a patient’s own stem cells could be used to regenerate a living organ, rejection would become moot.
Research into whole organ regeneration currently receives less than $500 million in funding a year in the U.S., compared to $5 billion for cancer research and $2.8 billion for HIV and AIDS, the Methuselah Foundation said in its contest announcement. “Regenerative medicine is the future of healthcare, but right now the field is falling through the cracks,” said Methuselah CEO David Gobel.
Organs on a chip
While it may be a decade or more before human trials for organ transplants are approved by the FDA, the creation of organ tissue still holds the prospect of revolutionizing medicine.
Printing out sustainable organ tissue could allow pharmaceutical companies to develop and test drugs on human and not animal organs. Using human tissue yields more accurate results.
Researchers are now experimenting with laying down a thin layer of human tissue from any number of organs for pharmaceutical development. The process is known as creating an “organ on a chip” or a “human on a chip.”
ORGANOVO
These are human liver cells "printed" onto a petri dish.
Scientists have for years been able manually grow thin skin tissue for temporary skin grafts that act as a type of bandage while the body heals itself. However, 3D printing has advanced that process.
Instead of the arduous task of manually laying down cells, 3D printing automates the process in an exact and repeatable way using a syringe on the end of a robotic mechanism guided by computer-aided design (CAD) software.
”Using 3D printing has given us the reproducibility and the automation needed to scale up,” said Jordan Miller, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University. Miller recently helped open a microfabrication lab at Rice University after spending years in a similar lab at the University of Pennsylvania’s department of bioengineering.
The key to creating viable, living tissue is first understanding how it works.
As much as scientists know about the human body, the way tissue is formed at the cellular and sub-cellular level is still in large part a mystery. There are about 40 different cell types that make up a human liver, including Kupffer cells for removing debris from the blood, stellate cells for regenerating tissue that has died or been injured, and sinusoidal endothelial cells, which make up the interior surface of blood vessels and lymphatic vessels.
”It’s a complicated challenge,” Miller said. “We don’t know all the structures in the body. We’re still learning. So we don’t know to what extent we need to reconstitute all those features. We have some evidence that we may not need to re-create all those functions.”
Miller and others believe that if they reconstitute a portion of tissue, even if it’s not complete, there’s a good chance it will continue to grow into a fully functioning organ once implanted in the body.
”We’ve had some success in thin tissues, skin, corneas and bladder,” Miller said. “It gets more complicated when you’re talking about biochemical functions in the liver or kidney. Those are fragile cells that don’t do well in labs. Some of the most interesting cells we want to print are hardest to keep alive.”
Instead of printing cells 10 layers deep, as might be needed for a skin graft, researchers are attempting to print cells 5,000 or 10,000 layers deep, Miller said.
Just add sugar and water, and voila—blood vessels
In order to print thick tissues, scientists must also be able to create the vascular system needed for sustainability.
One approach with 3D printing has been to print out a temporary “scaffolding” made of sugar glass (a sugar-and-water combination) that can act as a mold to support cells that eventually form blood vessels. It’s similar to the way a bronze statue is created: First the mold is formed, then filled with metal. In this case, living cells are used instead of metal.
Miller and others have had some success re-creating those vascular structures through the use of sugar glass—the same substance that’s used to make easily breakable bottles and windows for stunts in movies.
”You start with a template, cast it and then melt [the sugar glass] out, leaving the vascular structure behind,” Miller said. “Sugar is great because it’s very rigid.”
Using sugar glass as the scaffolding, Miller and his team of researchers have had some success in re-creating liver tissue. To date, the researchers have been able to create a piece of tissue the size of a thumbnail and keep it alive for two weeks.
Replacing ears and breasts
Earlier this year, researchers at Princeton University created a functional ear using a modified $1,000 ink-jet printer. They said the ear they created has the potential to hear radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability because the tissue was combined with electronics as it grew in a petri dish.
Princeton University’s “bionic ear” was initially printed into a petri dish using a modified ink-jet printer. (Image: Princeton University)
The researchers laid down 3D printed cells and structural nanoparticles to build the ear. A cell culture was used to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what the scientists called a “bionic ear.”
Scott Collins, CTO and vice president of research and development at bio-printing company TeVido BioDevices, said his firm is in the early-stages of using 3D bio-printing of live cells to build custom implants and grafts for breast cancer survivors.
This year alone, about 300,000 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer and up to 60% of them will choose a lumpectomy. According to TeVido BioDevices, at least 25% of women who undergo lumpectomies are dissatisfied with their physical appearance after the operation.
TeVido is developing an implant from fat and skin cells as well as working to print nipples and the surrounding areola using the patient’s own cells. That way, the tissue won’t be rejected and will have natural shape and pigmentation.
”Today, we have ways of implanting the breast mound, but as far as rebuilding nipple and areola, it doesn’t work well,” Collins said. “The pigment is just tattooed on and fades over time.”Topic Center.
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A Russian cargo plane crashed into a military warehouse complex in Siberia on Thursday, killing all nine people on board, the emergencies ministry said.
The Antonov An-12 military transport plane, carrying cargo from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, crashed into storage warehouses at a military unit near Irkutsk, also in Siberia.
The emergencies ministry said there were nine people on board: six crew and three people accompanying the cargo.
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UMBRELLA body of Christians in the country, the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, has declared today a day of fasting and prayers for the security of Nigeria as citizens prepare for the new year. Making the declaration yesterday, National President of CAN, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor said the prayer had become necessary because it was obvious certain forces were determined to truncate the destiny of the nation.
The cleric explained that in the life of the nation, there are evil forces raging and threatening the corporate existence of Nigeria.
He urged Nigerians, irrespective of their religious or ethnic differences to fast and pray for God to destroy all those who are bent on truncating the destiny of Nigeria.
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BRUTAL: Woman loses 7-month pregnancy after Lebanese boss kicks her stomach in Lagos
A 34-year-old woman, Mrs. Alexandra Ossai, has accused her Lebanese boss, Kaveh Noine, of causing her to lose her seven-month-pregnancy after he kicked her in the stomach.
Currently at a private hospital in the Fagba area of Lagos State, Ossai had to have an emergency surgery four days after the kick to save her life as the kick damaged her placenta.
According to Punch, Ossai, who until December 13, 2013, was a supervisor with a Lebanese owned firm, Toppan Printing Company, alleged that Noine assaulted her many times during her eight months stay at the company.
She said “I started working at Toppan in April. I earn N17,000 salary and work from Monday to Saturday. Anytime Noine was annoyed, he would beat the person he was angry with. Sometimes, he would throw whatever he can lay his hands on at the person. Prior to that incident, Noine had slapped me many times. Noine had said he would hold me responsible for the shortcomings of the people I supervised. As a result, I often assisted my subordinates in their duties to make sure that Noine had nothing to complain about.”
However, Ossai said on December 12 2013, Noine had flown into a rage when he noticed something on the floor in her section. “It was a container for a drug. That is what we do; we produce packets for drugs and perfumes. So when Noine saw one of such packets on the floor, he was so angry that he gave me a blow to the chest,” she recalled. She said Noine subsequently went into his office and typed a termination letter for Ossai, which she refused to sign. Her refusal allegedly enraged him further and after verbally abusing her, he was said to have told her that it was her last warning.
The following day, Ossai ran into Noine while coming from his secretary’s office. Noine allegedly dragged Ossai back to the office and called her a wicked woman.
Ossai said “He said I looked like a mad person. After abusing me, he hit me on my neck twice. Then, without warning, he kicked my stomach with his knee. Some co-workers were there but they did not intervene. I felt a sharp pain in my stomach.” The mother of one, whose younger brother and sister also worked in the same company, said she prevailed on her siblings not to attack Noine when they heard the news.
I never for once told my husband what I was going through at work. I didn’t want him to come and fight Noine. I pleaded with my siblings not to fight,” Ossai said. Although the pains eventually subsided after two days, it was learnt that in the early hours of Monday, Decemeber 16, 2013, Ossai began to bleed. She was rushed to a private clinic at Fagba.
She was told that her placenta had been damaged as a result of the kick and that she had to undergo emergency surgery to save her life.
She said “I didn’t know that my baby had died until two days after the surgery. I was told my baby lost his face too due to the kick.”
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How Jesus Christ made me Governor after 10 months of prayer and fasting – Amaechi
source: dailystar
While addressing mass at Saint Vincent De Paul Catholic Church in Port Hacourt on Christmas Day, Rivers State Governor and Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, Rotimi Amaechi, urged people to ignore claims that some politicians installed him as the governor of the state.
He stated clearly, that he was installed by Jesus Christ, because he fasted and prayed for 10 months before he became the governor.
Amaechi said: “As a government led by me, a government installed by Christ, if anybody tells you he installed me, tell him it is a lie. Tell him that I said I prayed for 10 months and I fasted from 6am to 6pm, calling on Christ to come down and Christ came down mightily and installed me as governor.
“That is why you can see that in the face of human effontery, I have been able to stand face to face with them and I say I have Christ in me. “You must rise in that same spirit of having Christ in you and confront those who are confronting you. You must stand up for Christ because the Bible says ‘faith without work is dead.’ “We must not die. We must live and the way to live is to celebrate Christ and the way to celebrate Christ is to confront Satan and Satan is in different forms and shapes. “If the police shoot at you, they are satanic. If government denies you your right to live, that government is satanic.”
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THE HEADIES 2013 COMES TO A CLOSE: ALL AWARDS WON BY VARIOUS ARTISTE SUMS UP 20
LIST OF ARTISTE AND AWARDS WON
*Hip Hop World Revelation:- davido
*Best Rap Album:- olamide 'YBNL'
*Best Collabo:- phyno ft Olamide 'Ghostmode'
*Best Recording Of The Year:-JAYWON 'This Year'
*best Street Hop:- olamide 'Durosoke'
*Best Rap Single:- phyno 'man of the year'
*Best RnB Single:-BankyW 'Good Good loving'
*Best rap artiste(best lyrical) :- mode9 'let it go'
*Best alternaive song :-blackmagic 'repete'
*Best Pop song:- 2Face 'Ihe neme'
*Producer of the year :- D'tunes 'sho lee'
*best vocal performance:- Nikki Laoye 'only you'
*Best alternative reggae:- waje 'i wish'
*next rated artist of the year:- sean tizzle
*best vocal performance male:- praiz 'rich and famouz'
*Best video director :- Clarence Peters/jude okoye 'Alingo'
*best Pop album:- davido 'omo baba olowo'
*Guinness song of the year :- kcee 'limpopo'
*Album of the year :- Olamide 'YBNL'
*Artiste of the year :- iyanya #HEADIES 2013 #iyanya #olamide #ybnl #jaywon #clearance #waje #kceeFOR RED CARPET PICS AND MORE VISIT http://goo.gl/GVDHqe
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ORGANOVO
ORGANOVO
