The scientists stated that they have successfully used microbial ink produced by genetically modified Escherichia coli bacteria to produce programmable 3D printed objects.

A proof-of-concept study led by associate professor Neel Joshi at Northeastern University in Boston shows that the technology can be used to isolate toxic chemicals in the environment or help distribute anti-cancer drugs in the human body.

Joshi worked with Avinash Manjula-Basavanna of Harvard University and Anna Duraj-Thatte of Virginia Tech to prove that E. coli can be genetically engineered to produce nanofibers that form a "microbial ink".

The author stated in a paper published today in Nature Communications that the resulting fibers can be condensed and printed into 3D structures. These fibers can then be combined with other genetically engineered microorganisms (also known as Escherichia coli) to perform specific tasks through certain programmable functions.

In the paper: i) a single-layer grid, j) 10 layers of squares, k) 10 layers of circles, and l) 21 layers of solid cones. The illustration is the corresponding top view. Scale bar 1 mm

Researchers used this hydrogel to create 3D printed objects that can secrete the anti-cancer drug azurin in response to chemical stimuli. They are also able to design a material that can isolate the toxic chemical BPA when it exists in the environment.

"We embed the programmed E. coli cells and nanofibers in microbial ink to demonstrate the 3D printing of functional living materials. The microbial ink can isolate toxic parts, release biological agents, and regulate itself through the chemical induction of rationally designed genetic circuits. Cell growth. In this work, we demonstrated the advanced capabilities of nano-biotechnology and living material technology for 3D printing functional living buildings,” the research said.

The author also stated that the technology may one day be useful for space construction.

"The ever-growing biological component toolkit being developed by synthetic biologists can be used to further customize microbial ink designs for various biotechnological and biomedical applications.

"Especially if it is combined with other material technologies, such as those that have integrated living cells into structural building materials, our microbial bio-ink may also be particularly suitable for structural buildings in space or alien habitats where the transportation of raw materials is difficult. It is essential to use very limited resources to produce building materials on demand," the study said.

But maybe they will have to be careful how they-ahem-*debug* their programming. ®

Google's Cyber ​​Security Action Group released the first "threat range" report on the terrible things it found on the Internet.

The advertising giant established the team in October 2021, when executives stated that their ambition was to become "the world's premier security consulting team" and provide suggestions that can improve everyone's cyber resilience.

The team’s first report provided six pieces of information, and The Register believes that none of them will surprise readers.

A group composed of more than 70 Japanese organizations decided to create their own blockchain-backed digital currency.

The Digital Currency Forum is the entity behind the currency, which is temporarily called DCJPY. The members of the forum include four private banks, telecommunications companies, railway operators and industrial giants such as Mitsubishi. The Bank of Japan, the Financial Services Agency and the three related departments all have observer status.

The organization has released a white paper [PDF] explaining how users can “mint” DCJPY by transferring funds from bank accounts to digital currency accounts stored on platforms built and operated by forum members. DCJPY holders can transfer the digital yen to other participants on the platform, or "destroy" the currency by transferring it to a bank account. Initially it was not possible to convert DCJPY directly into cash. The minimum value of DCJPY is 1 yen.

Cybersecurity researchers from the anti-virus software company Dr Web found a large number of Android games with malware on Huawei’s AppGallery.

The Trojan Android.Cynos.7.origin is a variant of Cynos that collects user information. To date, it has been installed more than 9.3 million times.

The infected application requires permission to make and manage calls. Once permission is obtained, data collection and information transmission to the remote server begins.

The Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Department of Commerce has added 27 companies to its list of entities prohibited from doing business with the U.S. on grounds of threatening national security. One company is associated with HPE's joint venture H3C in China.

The preliminary announcement of the ban [PDF] listed a company called Xin Hwasan Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. on the grounds that it "supports the military modernization of the People's Liberation Army."

The address provided by Uncle Sam for this semiconductor business matches the address listed on the website of New H3C, which is a Chinese company established by HPE and Tsinghua Unigroup to build network products. H3C is still the exclusive supplier of HPE servers, storage and related technical services in China.

The Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor told 13 foreign companies, mainly American technology companies, that if they want to continue their business in Russia, they must set up and/or maintain offices in Russia.

According to Reuters' first report, the list includes Google, Meta/Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Telegram. Zoom, Viber, Spotify, Likee, Discord, Pinterest and Twitch are also included.

Now, everyone must set up an office in Russia by 2022 at the latest, if they haven't set up an office yet. If they refuse, regulators can take "coercive measures", such as removing foreign companies from Russian Internet search results, prohibiting them from advertising or collecting data in the country, and imposing other restrictions.

Theranos boss, Elizabeth Holmes, admitted in court this week that she personally added the Pfizer and Schering-Plough logos to her startup's presentation while trying to reach an agreement with Walgreens.

When testifying during her fraud trial on Tuesday, the former CEO of the company cursively revealed that the executive who placed the logos of the large pharmaceutical company on Theranos report and then sent them to Walgreens was her Idea.

Holmes is fighting her allegations of defrauding and conspiring to defraud investors for hundreds of millions of dollars by grossly exaggerating the technological capabilities of her company.

System approach Intel’s recent announcement on the Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU) prompted us to revisit the topic of how to divide functions in computing systems.

As we pointed out in a previous article The Accidental SmartNIC, there is at least 30 years of history trying to decide how much should be offloaded from a general-purpose CPU to a more professional NIC, and there has been an equally long process between more highly professional offloads. The fight engine vs. a more general engine.

IPU is just the latest product in a series of general offload engines. We now see a very diverse set of choices, not only from Intel, but also from other companies, such as Nvidia and Pensando. These latter companies use the term DPU (Data Processing Unit), but the consensus seems to be that these devices solve the same type of problem.

Microsoft hopes to increase the resilience of its cloud services by extending the "disruption mode" of Azure Active Directory to cover web and desktop applications.

Azure Active Directory (AAD) is Microsoft's cloud directory that handles authentication for Office 365 and can be linked to on-premises Active Directory. In addition, developers can write applications that use the service. However, if something goes wrong, customers will experience multiple failures, including the inability to access the Azure portal to manage other cloud services.

In December of last year, Microsoft updated its AAD SLA (Service Level Agreement) to 99.99% uptime, an increase from 99.9%, despite using some tricks because it also removed "management functions" from its definition of availability.

AWS customers can now create virtual private cloud (VPC) networks that only support IPv6, which the company claims is a "milestone step" towards enabling IPv6 on its cloud.

Systems running dual network stacks (supporting both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses) are common, but only IPv6 is less common. The new feature allows administrators to create IPv6-only subnets within a dual-stack VPC.

One limitation is that EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud) instances launched to the IP-v6 subnet must be built on Nitro, which is a custom hypervisor and network card with performance and security advantages.

Despite previous concerns about shortages and price increases, this humble PC continued to bring Bacon to Dell, and shipments to corporate customers surged. But HP's situation is not so optimistic. The recent crash of Chromebook orders put HP into trouble.

Dell reported that in the third quarter ended October 29, group revenue increased 21% year-on-year to 28.394 billion U.S. dollars. Among them, customer solutions group sales were 16.5 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 35%, of which 12.3 billion U.S. dollars came from commercial PC sales (40% increase) and 4.3 billion U.S. dollars came from consumers (21% increase).

"Approximately 80% of the industry's revenue and almost all of the industry's revenue growth comes from commercial PCs and high-end consumer PCs, and this is what we are focusing on," said Jeff Clark, co-chief operating officer.

Nutanix, a hyper-converged infrastructure software company, has almost (but not completely) stopped burning money because its cash flow is close to positive in the latest set of performance.

As early as September, CEO Rajiv Ramaswami told The Register that cash flow is just achievable. Last night, a set of data for the first quarter of the company's 2022 fiscal year indicated that he might be right.

Its cash flow for the first quarter ended October 31 was still negative, but it was US$1.9 million, a sharp drop from US$16.3 million in the same period last year. Revenue increased by 21% from US$312.8 million to US$378.5 million. The company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) was slightly less than US$1 billion to US$952.6 million, higher than the US$569.5 million in the same period last year.

The Register-Independent news and opinions from the technical community. Partial situation release

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