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...
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...
This guest post was co-authored by Ken McGaffin and Susan Payton There are many ways to get other sites to link to yours, which helps in boosting your ranking on search engines. Here are 25 link-building methods you can use for your website. 1. Pay for a Listing There are sites that will pay to host a link to your website, so if you’ve got the budget, this is your easiest method. This can be a great way of attracting traffic, but be careful that the site you’re advertising with follows Google’s webmaster guidelines . Paid links fall within Google’s guidelines as long as they are designated as advertising. You should do this by: Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag Redirecting the links to a page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file Fail to follow Google’s advice and you may adversely affect your site’s position in their search results. 2. Join a Trade Association Oftentimes, trade organizations link to their members’ websites, so this is a great...