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If you’re looking for a USB microscope that works with Mac OS X on the cheap, look no further.

The Brando 8 USB Digital Microscope (PN: ULIFE022500) features a 1.3MP image sensor, 10 to 200x magnification and a maximum video resolution 1280×1024.

Compact USB microscopes are excellent for looking at coins, stamps and other exonumia. I’ve seen them selling for upwards of $200 at coin shows, but you can get one from Brando for only $75.

It is ideal for various applications such as science and engineering work and study, dematology (skin/scalp) exam, detailed repair, assembly and quality control (i.e. eletronics, mechanical, etc.), hobbies and collecting (coin, stamp, watch, jewelry, etc.), law enforcement (counterfeit ID, crime lab, etc.), entertainment or simply as a reading aid.

The Brando scope only comes with Windows software but I found a Mac driver from BigC (DinoScope v4.0, released 4/10/2008) that works well with 10.5.6. The Mac driver allows you to capture video (and sound) and has a funny option to “Regord Without Hogging Machine.” The DinoScope 4 driver doesn’t provide a way to capture stills but you can always use the Mac’s built-in screenshot utility (Cmd-Shift-4).

A decent flexible stand for the microscope can be can be found for around $39 but I prefer the GorillaPod original ($20, pictured) from Joby.
Lots of sample pictures are on the Brando Web site and I’ve posted a shot of the new 2009 Lincoln Log Cabin cent after the jump.

by Jason D. O'Grady

A new tool allows entire networks to be scanned efficiently for infection.

On April 1, a computer worm called Conficker, which has already infected millions of machines worldwide, is expected to do something bad, though no one knows exactly what. Some experts fear that an army of infected machines could be ordered to launch a coordinated attack or send out a barrage of spam. But a tool released today could help lessen the impact by allowing big companies and institutions to quickly weed out infected machines by scanning entire networks for signs of infection.
Analysis of the Conficker worm has previously revealed that infected computers will "phone home" on April 1 to receive a new set of instructions. It is already possible to detect the worm by scanning machines individually, but this is a relatively time-consuming process. It's also possible to detect the bug by watching for outgoing communications sent across a network, but the latest version of Conficker is designed to stay silent until April 1.
Dan Kaminsky, director of penetration testing for the Seattle-based security company IOActive, helped create the new scanning tool and says that it can identify an infected machine by recognizing the way it presents itself to the wider network. This makes it quick and easy to scan for the worm remotely and does not require any special access to machines. "It's like driving through a neighborhood looking for houses with big signs on their doors," Kaminsky says.
The tool was created after Tillmann Werner and Felix Leder, members of an independent research organization called the Honeynet Project, asked Kaminsky to review their research on Conficker. The pair had figured out that the worm changes the way a machine appears on a network. Kaminsky seized on this, suggesting that the researchers create a tool that uses this information to find infected machines. The researchers built such a tool and worked through the weekend to get it ready for broad distribution to suppliers of other security software. "Whatever vulnerability scanner a company is using, it should have support for this by the end of the day," Kaminsky says.
Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer at BT Counterpane, says the new tool's ability to seek out the virus remotely should be useful, since it will let people scan a huge number of machines very quickly. This is important, Schneier says, because the worm is such a nasty pest. "Conficker is an extremely well-written, extremely well-designed, extremely well-executed worm," says Schneier. "It really is an impressive piece of work, and there's someone really smart behind it." But Schneier adds that it's important for computer users and administrators to protect their machines against a variety of malware, not just a single threat.
"If you've been running a good environment, you shouldn't be worried about this," says Rich Mogull, founder of the security-consulting company Securosis, who helped connect the Honeynet researchers and Kaminsky with network-security vendors over the weekend. Mogull notes that Microsoft has already released several patches that block the vulnerability that Conficker uses to infect a machine. However, he says that companies worried about Conficker should start scanning for it right away, after checking to see if their network-security tools have been updated.
Kurt Rohloff, a scientist who studies Internet worms at the research and development company BBN Technologies, says that the tool could prove useful, though he doubts that there's time to find and neutralize every computer infected with the worm. Rohloff says that the new scanner could be used to take preventive action by identifying infected hosts and removing them from the network, though he admits that this approach is "drastic, because you're removing connectivity."
Kaminsky notes that the tool is intended for organizations with large networks. For individuals, he says, the best approach is to make sure that the latest security updates are installed and up-to-date antivirus software is running. Since Conficker blocks a computer from accessing certain security websites, users could test for the worm by trying to visit those sites, Kaminsky says. Werner and Leder plan to release a paper within the next day, describing the technical details of their discovery.

By Erica Naone

A chip developed by European scientists simulates the learning capabilities of the human brain.

An international team of scientists in Europe has created a silicon chip designed to function like a human brain. With 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections, the chip is able to mimic the brain's ability to learn more closely than any other machine.
Although the chip has a fraction of the number of neurons or connections found in a brain, its design allows it to be scaled up, says Karlheinz Meier, a physicist at Heidelberg University, in Germany, who has coordinated the Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States project, or FACETS.
The hope is that recreating the structure of the brain in computer form may help to further our understanding of how to develop massively parallel, powerful new computers, says Meier.
This is not the first time someone has tried to recreate the workings of the brain. One effort called the Blue Brain project, run by Henry Markram at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, has been using vast databases of biological data recorded by neurologists to create a hugely complex and realistic simulation of the brain on an IBM supercomputer.
FACETS has been tapping into the same databases. "But rather than simulating neurons," says Karlheinz, "we are building them." Using a standard eight-inch silicon wafer, the researchers recreate the neurons and synapses as circuits of transistors and capacitors, designed to produce the same sort of electrical activity as their biological counterparts.
A neuron circuit typically consists of about 100 components, while a synapse requires only about 20. However, because there are so much more of them, the synapses take up most of the space on the wafer, says Karlheinz.
The advantage of this hardwired approach, as opposed to a simulation, Karlheinz continues, is that it allows researchers to recreate the brain-like structure in a way that is truly parallel. Getting simulations to run in real time requires huge amounts of computing power. Plus, physical models are able to run much faster and are more scalable. In fact, the current prototype can operate about 100,000 times faster than a real human brain. "We can simulate a day in a second," says Karlheinz.
While it may sound implausible, neurons are actually very slow, at least compared to computers, says Thomas Serre, a computational neuroscience researcher at MIT. "The reason why computers seem much slower is that they are serial machines, while our brains run in parallel," he says.
FACETS is not the only group taking this approach. Researchers at Stanford University have also been creating neuronal circuits and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently started funding a similar project.
"Where FACETS is ahead of anybody else is that they use these complex synapses," says Markram. While the neurons are quite simple, he says, the synapses are designed to use a very powerful distributed algorithm--developed by Markram--called spike-timing dependent plasticity, that allows the device to learn and adapt to new situations.
Building such complex circuits has required close collaboration with neurobiologists, says Markram. In fact, the project, whose current budget is €10.5 million (US$14.1 million), relies upon the contributions of 15 scientific groups from seven different countries. Among the challenges they face is recreating the three-dimensional structure of the brain in a 2-D piece of silicon, he says.
Despite efforts to make the chips as biologically plausible as possible, Markram admits they are still crude compared to what can be achieved in simulation. "It's not a brain. It's a more of a computer processor that has some of the accelerated parallel computing that the brain has," he says.
Because of this, Markram doubts that the hardware approach will offer much insight into how the brain works. For example, unlike Blue Brain, researchers won't be able to perform "in silico" drug testing, simulating the effects of drugs on the brain. "It's more a platform for artificial intelligence than understanding biology," he says.
The FACETS group now plans to further scale up their chips, connecting a number of wafers to create a superchip with a total of a billion neurons and 1013 synapses.

By Duncan Graham-Rowe

The X320 and X340 are the latest netbooks from MSI. For your info, the MSI X340 is priced at sub-$1000 and boasts an Intel’s SU3500 CULV processor running at 1.3Ghz with 4GB of RAM and a 1080p-capable GMA4500MHD graphics. Meanwhile, the MSI X320 retails for around $700 and has a 1.6Ghz Atom CPU, GMA500 graphics, 2GB RAM, and an optional 3G/WiMAX. Both netbooks offer a 1366 x 768 13.4-inch display, 250GB of HDD, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, three USB 2.0 ports, VGA outputs and a 4-Cell battery. You can also choose an optional 6-Cell battery for longer battery life. The new MSI X320 and X340 netbooks will be available in May 2009.

By Johan

HTC has announced their latest Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone ‘ HTC Snap’ at the 2009 CTIA Wireless. This new smartphone offers full QWERTY keyboard, 2.4-inch display, 2MP camera, 528MHz Qualcomm CPU, 256MB of ROM, 128MB of RAM, a microSDHC card slot, GPS/AGPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, quadband GSM and dualband HSDPA/WCDMA and the new Inner Circle feature, which according to HTC, “makes it easy for users to prioritize messages from the most important people in their lives at the press of a button.” The HTC Snap will be available starting the second quarter of 2009, however in US the HTC Snap will be made available under the name HTC S522 (unlocked and with HSDPA 850/1900MHZ connectivity).

by Isaiah

The XL 340 is the latest 4.3-inch portable navigation system from TomTom, which comes loaded with full maps of North America (including Mexico) with seven million points of interest pre-loaded so you can find information about restaurants, gas stations and attractions in a particular area you might be driving through. The GPS also features both IQ Routes Technology and Advanced Line Guidance. The IQ Routes suggest routes typically only know by locals to a particular area, meanwhile the Line Guidance feature provides you with more detailed information at complex road junctions so you can stay safe while driving in difficult space. The TomTom XL 340 is priced at $230.

by Isaiah