See what you've been missing with this 60x microscope lens for the Galaxy S4
The best part about having a really popular phone is all the crazy third-party accessories that get built for it. I did a little shopping at Amazon last week, and one of the things I picked up was this Vktech 60x microscope attachment for the Galaxy S4.
It's a simple concept. You have a plastic case back, and over the camera cut-out there's a threaded ring. A tubular lens body and LED light attachment screws into it, giving you 60x optical zoom and illumination so you can take some wild close-up shots of anything that fits under the lens. The lens tube and LED assembly comes with a tiny pleather carrying pouch to keep it from getting grungy in your pocket or bag.
The lens tube is easy to screw on and off, the case is easy to snap on and off, but neither will fly apart during normal use. It's a little tricky to get focused, but I've found a solution that seems to work. Zoom your camera app the whole way in to 4x, and extend the focusing tube the whole way. Place the end of the tube on whatever it is you're taking a picture of, and slowly slide the tube back into the body until you get a clear picture. The area of crisp focus is small, but there's enough detail you can crop out the center and still have an interesting picture.
Needless to say, I've been having a ball with it taking all sorts of pictures of everything I can get my hands on. Hit the break to see some of the shots. You can pick up your own Vktech 60x microscope kit from Amazon for $16.79.
Additional DLC also included, all for a simple donation to charity
Building on the seventh iteration of its Humble Bundle with Android, three more games have just been added to the list for those who donate over the average. Adding to the four games offered for any donation — Ticket to Ride, Greed Corp, Incredipede and Anodyne — and two games that were available for an above-average donation — Worms Reloaded and The Bard's Tale — you now have access to three more:
Anomaly Korea
Broken Sword: Director’s Cut
Organ Trail: Director’s Cut
Humble Bundle is also including a Europe DLC for Ticket to Ride as an added bonus. You'll now lock up a total of nine games for your above-average donation to charity, which currently stands at $6.20. Humble Bundle has raised nearly $900,000 so far, and you could be a contributor as well by following the source link below.
If you think of the Brother MFC-J650DW as a cut-down version of the Editors' Choice Brother MFC-J870DW, you won't be far off. It has all the same core multifunction printer (MFP) features, including scanning from and faxing to a PC and working as a standalone copier and fax machine. It leaves out more than you might expect from such a small price difference. But if you don't need any of the extras, there's no point in paying for them.
The flashiest feature the MFC-J650DW leaves out is near-field communication (NFC) support. NFC makes printing from a mobile device impressively easy. However, if you don't have a phone or tablet that supports NFC, you won't be able to use it in any case.
Also under the category of connection choices that the Brother MFC-J870DW has but the MFC-J650DW doesn't are Ethernet and Wi-Fi Direct. The MFC-J650DW offers Wi-Fi, so you can connect it to a network, but wirelessly only. It also offers some mobile printing features (more on those later), so you can print to it from mobile devices. However, it doesn't have Wi-Fi Direct, which means that if you connect it to your computer by USB cable, rather than connect it to your network by Wi-Fi, you can't use any of the mobile print options.
The last key feature that the Brother MFC-J870DW has and the MFC-J650DW doesn't is the ability to print on printable optical discs. As with all of these extras, this may or may not be something you need. What's certain is that if you don't need the extras, not having them won't matter.
Basics The MFC-J650DW's core MFP features include printing and faxing from, along with scanning to, a PC and also working as a standalone copier and fax machine. The 2.7-inch touch-screen based front panel menu helps make it easy to give commands for copying and faxing; for scanning and sending a file as an email attachment, using the email program on your PC; and more.
If the printer is connected to your network and your network is connected to the Web, the menus also let you connect to an assortment of Web sites. Some, including Picasa Web Albums, are primarily of interest for home use. Others, including Google Drive, Evernote, Box, Dropbox, and, to a lesser extent, Flickr and Facebook, are more office-oriented.
Photo-centric features include the ability to print directly from PictBridge cameras, memory cards, and USB memory keys, as well as view photos before printing on the front-panel LCD. You can also scan directly to memory cards and USB keys.
Paper handling is best described as limited but capable. The key limitation is that the paper tray holds only 100 sheets, with no upgrade options. That should be sufficient for most personal use, but if you share the printer on a network, you're likely to find that refilling the tray turns into an annoying chore.
Partly making up for the low capacity is a 20-sheet photo-paper tray for 4-by-6 photo paper, so you can switch between plain paper and photos easily. Another nice touch is automatic duplexing (for printing on both sides of a page). Paper handling choices for scanning include a letter-size flatbed and a 20-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that can handle up to legal-size paper.
Setup, Speed, and Output Quality Setup for the MFC-J650DW is absolutely standard. For my tests, I connected it by USB cable to a system running Windows Vista. Not too surprisingly, on our business applications suite (timed using QualityLogic's hardware and software), it came in essentially tied with the MFC-J870DW, at 4.9 pages per minute (ppm) compared with 4.7 ppm. (A 0.2 ppm difference isn't statistically significant at these speeds.) More important, this counts as fast for the price range. As another point of reference, the Editors' Choice Epson WorkForce WF-3520 managed only 4.4 ppm.
Output quality for the MFC-J650DW is pretty much par across the board. Text is a match for most inkjet MFPs, which makes it good enough for most business needs. Graphics output is at the low end of a very tight range where the vast majority of inkjet MFPs score, which makes it easily good enough for most business use. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you may or may not consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts. Photos were dead on par for an inkjet MFP, which translates to being a match for what you would expect from drug store prints.
The Brother MFC-J650DW is basically the Brother MFC-J870DW with some cut corners. If you need any of the features it leaves out—NFC support, Ethernet, Wi-Fi Direct, or printing on optical discs—there's no good reason not to pay a little more and get the Brother MFC-J870DW instead. If you don't need any of those extras, however, the Brother MFC-J650DW can save you a little money. And if you need an office-oriented inkjet MFP for light-duty printing, it can be a good fit
A woman displays Cuban pesos, or CUP (right) and the more valuable convertible pesos, or CUC (left), in Havana Tuesday. Raul Castro's government announced that it will begin unifying the two currencies.
AFP/AFP/Getty Images
A woman displays Cuban pesos, or CUP (right) and the more valuable convertible pesos, or CUC (left), in Havana Tuesday. Raul Castro's government announced that it will begin unifying the two currencies.
AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Cuba will end the two-currency system it has used for nearly 20 years. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba has used either American currency or a peso that's pegged to the dollar alongside its national peso.
The monetary unification will phase out a system that has become a symbol of exclusivity and foreign wealth. Many products that are imported into the country can be bought only with the dollar-based convertible peso. But most Cubans are paid in the standard peso, which is worth just a fraction of the other currency.
"The policy exacerbated the creation of a two-tier class system in Cuba which divided privileged Cubans with access to the lucrative tourist and foreign-trade sectors from those working in the local economy," the BBC reports, "all-too-visibly contradicting Cuba's supposedly egalitarian society."
Cuba's Central Bank says it will continue to back both the convertible peso, or CUC, and the Cuban peso, or CUP, when it begins the process of unifying the two currencies. The bank says the change will make it easier to calculate labor costs and other statistics, along with making Cuba's economic system more efficient.
No dates have been released for the plan, which has the backing of President Raul Castro. The change was announced in an official guideline published in the Communist state's Granma newspaper.
Study of decline of malaria in the US could affect approach to malaria epidemic abroad, UT Arlington researcher says
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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Contact: Bridget Lewis blewis@uta.edu 817-272-3317 University of Texas at Arlington
Rethinking the 1930s attack on malaria
A new University of Texas at Arlington study about the elimination of malaria in the 1930s American South may have significant implications for solving modern day malaria outbreaks in parts of Africa, Central and Latin America, and Asia.
Researchers challenged a leading argument that movement of Southern tenant farmers away from mosquito breeding grounds was the dominant factor in the decline of malaria in U.S. during the 1930s.
Instead, targeted public health interventions and the development of local-level public health infrastructure helped eradicate the disease, according to Daniel Sledge, assistant professor of political science at UT Arlington and lead author of Eliminating Malaria in the American South: An Analysis of the Decline of Malaria in 1930s Alabama, a paper recently published by the American Journal of Public Health.
We found that targeted public health interventions, supported by the federally backed development of state and local public health infrastructure, led to the decline of malaria despite widespread and deep-seated poverty, Sledge said.
Beth Wright, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UT Arlington, said Sledges research benefits the public, health professionals and policy makers globally.
Dr. Sledges work has far-reaching implications for those who work to eradicate malaria and similar diseases, Wright said. Huge challenges remain, but such research brings about better understanding of potential solutions and could ultimately help save lives.
Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a parasite called plasmodium and transmitted through the bites of infected mosquitoes. The disease causes fever, headache, and vomiting. Untreated, it can become life threatening.
Malaria killed an estimated 1.24 million worldwide in 2010 and decimated economies in the heavily populated, warm climate regions of the Global South, according to recent studies.
Malaria played a similarly devastating role in the American South until the 1930s, researchers detailed, by lowering the productivity of workers, deterring migration into the region and severely limiting economic growth.
Historian Margaret Humphreys argued in her landmark 2001 book, Malaria: Race, Poverty, and Public Health in the United States, that it was the removal of the malaria carrier and victim from the vicinity of the anopheles mosquito that likely had the largest effect on the decline of the disease.
But Sledge and co-author George Mohler, assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Santa Clara University in California, found otherwise.
We assessed this argument using Census data on the number of farms operated by tenants during the 1930s. We found that highly malarial areas actually gained population during the period that malaria declined, Sledge said. Changes in the type of farms, meanwhile, didnt lead to a decline in malaria.
He added: Put another way, population movement didnt lead to the end of malaria in the United States public health work did.
During the 1930s, the federal Works Progress Administration put unemployed Southerners to work draining millions of acres of wetlands. Along with the federally sponsored creation of local health departments, these drainage projects led to the decline of malaria, the authors said.
The federal government further ramped up its efforts during World War II, creating the agency that became the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specifically to fight southern malaria. After the war, the CDC used the insecticide DDT to eradicate the few remaining pockets of the disease.
For their study, Sledge and Mohler used a mathematical model to analyze the decline of malaria in each of the 67 counties in Alabama, an archetypical Deep South cotton state that experienced high levels of malaria incidence well into the 1930s.
In the model, we categorized counties into three risk levels and then estimated the dependence of mortality rates on variables related to weather, WPA projects, and population movement, Mohler said. After drought, the most important variable for predicting a decline in mortality rates was the amount of drainage in a county, rather than movement out of high risk counties or a reduction in tenant farms.
In addition to drainage work, researchers point to the importance of measures such as screening and public health infrastructure as well as the training of public health workers in the elimination of the disease.
While the team concedes that there are considerable distinctions between the current Global South and the American South of the 1930s, they argue that malaria can be controlled in the face of poverty and economic dislocation and without major social change.
Today, disease surveillance, drainage measures and screening work to ensure that, on those occasions when malaria is reintroduced from outside of the U.S., the chain of transmission does not begin again, Sledge said.
###
Sledges work is representative of the world-class research under way at The University of Texas at Arlington, a comprehensive research institution of more than 33,000 students and more than 2,200 faculty members in the heart of North Texas. Visit www.uta.edu to learn more.
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Study of decline of malaria in the US could affect approach to malaria epidemic abroad, UT Arlington researcher says
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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]
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Contact: Bridget Lewis blewis@uta.edu 817-272-3317 University of Texas at Arlington
Rethinking the 1930s attack on malaria
A new University of Texas at Arlington study about the elimination of malaria in the 1930s American South may have significant implications for solving modern day malaria outbreaks in parts of Africa, Central and Latin America, and Asia.
Researchers challenged a leading argument that movement of Southern tenant farmers away from mosquito breeding grounds was the dominant factor in the decline of malaria in U.S. during the 1930s.
Instead, targeted public health interventions and the development of local-level public health infrastructure helped eradicate the disease, according to Daniel Sledge, assistant professor of political science at UT Arlington and lead author of Eliminating Malaria in the American South: An Analysis of the Decline of Malaria in 1930s Alabama, a paper recently published by the American Journal of Public Health.
We found that targeted public health interventions, supported by the federally backed development of state and local public health infrastructure, led to the decline of malaria despite widespread and deep-seated poverty, Sledge said.
Beth Wright, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UT Arlington, said Sledges research benefits the public, health professionals and policy makers globally.
Dr. Sledges work has far-reaching implications for those who work to eradicate malaria and similar diseases, Wright said. Huge challenges remain, but such research brings about better understanding of potential solutions and could ultimately help save lives.
Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a parasite called plasmodium and transmitted through the bites of infected mosquitoes. The disease causes fever, headache, and vomiting. Untreated, it can become life threatening.
Malaria killed an estimated 1.24 million worldwide in 2010 and decimated economies in the heavily populated, warm climate regions of the Global South, according to recent studies.
Malaria played a similarly devastating role in the American South until the 1930s, researchers detailed, by lowering the productivity of workers, deterring migration into the region and severely limiting economic growth.
Historian Margaret Humphreys argued in her landmark 2001 book, Malaria: Race, Poverty, and Public Health in the United States, that it was the removal of the malaria carrier and victim from the vicinity of the anopheles mosquito that likely had the largest effect on the decline of the disease.
But Sledge and co-author George Mohler, assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Santa Clara University in California, found otherwise.
We assessed this argument using Census data on the number of farms operated by tenants during the 1930s. We found that highly malarial areas actually gained population during the period that malaria declined, Sledge said. Changes in the type of farms, meanwhile, didnt lead to a decline in malaria.
He added: Put another way, population movement didnt lead to the end of malaria in the United States public health work did.
During the 1930s, the federal Works Progress Administration put unemployed Southerners to work draining millions of acres of wetlands. Along with the federally sponsored creation of local health departments, these drainage projects led to the decline of malaria, the authors said.
The federal government further ramped up its efforts during World War II, creating the agency that became the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specifically to fight southern malaria. After the war, the CDC used the insecticide DDT to eradicate the few remaining pockets of the disease.
For their study, Sledge and Mohler used a mathematical model to analyze the decline of malaria in each of the 67 counties in Alabama, an archetypical Deep South cotton state that experienced high levels of malaria incidence well into the 1930s.
In the model, we categorized counties into three risk levels and then estimated the dependence of mortality rates on variables related to weather, WPA projects, and population movement, Mohler said. After drought, the most important variable for predicting a decline in mortality rates was the amount of drainage in a county, rather than movement out of high risk counties or a reduction in tenant farms.
In addition to drainage work, researchers point to the importance of measures such as screening and public health infrastructure as well as the training of public health workers in the elimination of the disease.
While the team concedes that there are considerable distinctions between the current Global South and the American South of the 1930s, they argue that malaria can be controlled in the face of poverty and economic dislocation and without major social change.
Today, disease surveillance, drainage measures and screening work to ensure that, on those occasions when malaria is reintroduced from outside of the U.S., the chain of transmission does not begin again, Sledge said.
###
Sledges work is representative of the world-class research under way at The University of Texas at Arlington, a comprehensive research institution of more than 33,000 students and more than 2,200 faculty members in the heart of North Texas. Visit www.uta.edu to learn more.
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
SwiftKey celebrates five years of Android phones with 50 percent off deal
Popular third-party keyboard SwiftKey can be had for half the usual price today, in celebration of five years since the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, launched in the U.S. That means depending on your location, you can pick up one of the best aftermarket keyboards out there for $1.99, £1.49 or €1.99.
SwiftKey's also pushing ahead with the next major version of the app, which adds more keyboard layouts for easier operation on tablets and larger smartphones. Check out our hands-on preview at the link below.
ATF is held annually at Singapore's Marina Bay Sands casino, hotel and convention complex
This year’s edition of the Asia TV Forum & Market (ATF) in Singapore will debut a new three-day event dubbed Animation Lab, the event's organizers announced Monday.
Intended to help promote the region’s burgeoning animation industry, the program will seek to bring together Asian animation producers, who are seeking investment and funding opportunities, with international broadcasters and financiers, who are interested in both the growing animation talent and market opportunity of the region.
ATF organizers say the program will be open to all individuals or companies that have new animation projects in the planning or production stage, and will give them a platform to engage in closed-door pitches to various participating international commissioners.
International TV pros signed on to take part include Henrietta Hurford-Jones, director of children’s programming at the BBC Worldwide.
"The aim is always to try and grow the international CBeebies brand as well as our children’s portfolio worldwide,” Hurford-Jones said in a statement. “I would be delighted to find creative partners in Asia to potentially develop exciting new children’s content with.”
Also on hand to take pitches and meetings will be, Barbara Uecker, head of programming and acquisitions for children's TV at Australia’s ABC TV, and Nicole Keeb, head of international co-productions and acquisitions for children and youth programming at Germany’s ZDF Enterprises GmbH, along with her colleague Arne Lohmann, vice president of ZDFE.junior.
AFT says additional network execs will be added to the Animation Lab roster in the coming weeks.
AFT is Asia’s most established TV and cross-platform content market for buyers and sellers from the region and afar. This year’s event, ATF’s 12th edition, will take place Dec. 3-6 at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands casino, hotel and convention complex.
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