Viruses usually have to be rendered inert to work in humanity's favor, as anyone who has received a flu shot can attest. Auburn University has bucked that trend by discovering a way to put active viruses to work in not only diagnosing sickness, but in preventing it in the first place. It's using bacteria-hating (and thankfully harmless) viruses as biosensors to quickly identify superbugs, or antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can sometimes prove fatal. As the viruses change color once they've reached impervious bacterial strains, in this case variants on Staphylococcus, they can reveal superbugs within 10 to 12 minutes -- a potentially lifesaving interval when current purification-driven methods can take hours. Auburn would like to eventually use what it has learned to develop more effective antibacterial glass and similar surfaces. If successfully put into practice, either breakthrough could mitigate what's already a major medical crisis. [Image credit: Bob Blaylo...
Just as we were settling down to another calm and banterful Engadget Mobile Podcast, our special guest had to go and throw us some hard news. Yup, and rather than making you sit through the entire two-hour recording (pleasant as that would be), we're just going to come right out with it: Nicole Scott from netbooknews.com has it on good authority that the Asus Padfone will be coming out at MWC 2012 in February. What's more, it won't be powered by a Qualcomm Krait S4 as suggested by that strange GLBenchmark we saw earlier -- it will in fact sport a Tegra 3, just like its highly capable big bro the Transformer Prime . See? That's the kind of juicy reward our podcast listeners get for tuning in each week. Asus Padfone with Tegra 3 coming in early 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds .
This Sunday is Mother’s Day, which means it’s time to think about which techie products are suited for your own mother, the moms in the office, extended family, or your wife. Fortunately, there are quite a few new gadgets for 2015 suited for the big day. There’s a digital picture frame that lets you load through a website. There’s even a clock radio that has a trendy flower-print design. 1. LivingPlug INLET ($25) These colorful wall outlet covers serve multiple purposes. They are safer for kids, since the plugs are located below the faceplate. You can design your own (think: pictures of the kids). One outlet turns into three plugs and you can charge a phone or tablet using USB. 2. Nixplay Cloud Frame ($100) This low-cost digital frame connects to the cloud so the kids (or grandkids) can stream photos from anywhere in the world. It connects to Facebook so you can add photos that way using a Web app or you can load pictures onto a local camera card. The frame powers...