Researchers at the Tufts University have developed a prototype called smart stitches that can close wounds and also send data to doctors indicating health status of tissue during the healing process. The prototype is described in a paper published in the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering.

The sutures are made from a variety of different materials including cotton and synthetics and are dipped in physical and chemical sensing compounds that connect to a wireless electronic circuit. These unique nanosensors create a flexible platform that has currently been successfully sutured into tissue in rats as well as in vitro.

When in operation, the tiny sensors transmit several pieces of biometric data including the temperature around the wound, its pH balance and glucose levels to name but a few. It can also track how well the stitches are holding and whether there is too much pressure or strain on the wound. 

“The ability to suture a thread-based diagnostic device intimately in a tissue or organ environment in three dimensions adds a unique feature that is not available with other flexible diagnostic platforms,” said Sameer Sonkusale, Ph.D., Director of the interdisciplinary Nano Lab at Tufts. 

“We think thread-based devices could potentially be used as smart sutures for surgical implants, smart bandages to monitor wound healing, or integrated with textile or fabric as personalized health monitors and point-of-care diagnostics,” he said. 
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The smart sutures are still in the research stage, but the promising data collected so far indicates a positive future for biometric tracking in humans.

Sense is both the company name and the product name. As CEO, Mike Phillips, puts it, “Sense Labs was born from the simple idea that people should know what’s happening in their homes. We track calories, footsteps, miles per gallon, budgets, and rewards points — yet it’s astonishing that we know so little about the place where we spend so much time. Energy efficiency and home automation begin with information. We built the Sense home energy monitor to provide people with information about their homes in the simplest, most useful way possible.”

The three co-founders brought advanced speech recognition technology to mobile phones including voice search, voice text messaging and dictation. They were also the original team that developed Siri before it was sold to Apple. As their tagline states, “We are putting our energy into helping you better understand yours.”

To use Sense, you don’t have to have a smart phone. Sense is quick to install. It's a small box that connects to your electric panel and a smartphone app. It requires no connected devices. Sense listens to everything in your home — smart or... not-so-smart. 

The home energy monitor listens to each appliance’s unique electrical signature through current sensors on the main breakers in your electric panel. It records them millions of times per second. It then applies multi-domain device signature detection algorithms to distinguish one appliance from another.

Here is a sample of the kinds of “reports” Sense can provide.
               • You watched 16 hours of TV this week
               • Weeknights from 5-7 pm you use the most energy
               • Replace that old fridge, it will pay for itself in 3 years
               • You had your air conditioning on twice as many hours as last year

With Sense you can be more efficient than your neighbors. See which appliances use the most energy and how they stack up to other homes. Track watts like footsteps. The monitor will also give you an early warning when an appliance needs maintenance.

Sense is able to identify many electrical devices in typical homes based on their unique electrical signatures and the company is continuing to expand Sense’s device detection abilities. As they get data from more and more homes, the performance and coverage of their device detection will improve.

You don’t have to train Sense. The device is able to identify common appliances (refrigerators, washing machines, etc.) on its own. It recognizes other devices, but may not be able to identify all of them — you can name these once they are detected. The company is also developing a "Teach Me" feature that allows you to give an example of devices you'd like Sense to recognize.

There are no subscription fees, just a one-time purchase of the monitor for $249 (a $50 discount for preordering). You can preorder the device from the company’s website with delivery scheduled for September, 2016.

The Sense energy monitor needs Wi-Fi to connect to the app. The app is currently available on iPhone. The company will be supporting Android by August 2016.

You will need to have access to your electric panel in order to install the Sense monitor. Sense works best in condos, townhouses, and single-family homes that have their own power meter. It does not yet work in apartment buildings unless the electrical panel is accessible from the apartment.

 ​An iPhone app authorized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection allows users to submit entry information over the internet after landing, allowing them to skip the line at the airport and potentially re-enter the country much faster than usual. 

Using the Mobile Passport app from Airside Mobile, U.S. and Canadian citizens with B1 or B2 passports can pre-enter the majority of the data for the standard U.S. Customs screening, including answering the same questions traditionally asked via a paper form at the airport. Completing the screening details on the mobile app grants users access to an expedited line at Customs intended solely for Mobile Passport users. 

A U.S. Customs official at Orlando International Airport estimated that the conventional line for U.S. entry usually has an estimated 84-minute wait time. While the line for Mobile Passport users has little to no wait whatsoever. The official also said the longest queue he had seen for Mobile Passport users was about five people, at peak arrival times. 

With the app, profiles can be configured in-app to streamline an entire family's entry. Initial data entry does not require an Internet connection, though all information entered into the app must be identical to the passport for the traveler. 

Following data entry, the same questions asked on the paper form at the airport are asked by the app. After the plane lands, users connect to either a cellular network or Wi-Fi, and submit the entered data. In a few minutes, a barcode is returned to the app that is valid at the Mobile Passport Control desk for up to four hours. All information is encrypted, and shared only with Customs and Border Protection. 

There are a few caveats to the process. The Mobile Passport app is not a substitute for the physical passport — it only automates the arrival form completion and submission. Additionally, the Mobile Passport Control express line hasn't been deployed everywhere. Currently, the app can be used at these airports: 
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•    Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson (ATL)

•    Chicago O'Hare (ORD)

•    Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW)

•    Denver (DEN)

•    Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood (FLL)

•    Miami (MIA)

•    Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP)

•    Newark (EWR)

•    New York John F. Kennedy (JFK)

•    Orlando (MCO)

•    San Francisco (SFO)

•    San Jose (SJC)

•    Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA)
Airports advertised as coming soon are: 
•    Raleigh Durham (RDU)

•    Tampa (TPA)

•    Washington Dulles (IAD)

If you're in the tech industry, there's plenty of money to be earned — but only if you've mastered the hottest, most in-demand skills.

And there are three in particular that are worth some bank, according to a new survey on job skills by Payscale.  

Payscale tapped into data on more than 2 million US workers to determine which skills increase a tech professional's salary the most.

They looked at how much more people with these skills earn than average.

When it comes to people in computer and mathematical occupations the top three pay-boosting skills increase salaries by 22%. Those skills are:

Scala, worth a 21.8% pay boost. Scala is a programming language that stands for "scalable language" that has been experiencing a surge in popularity recently.
It is considered to be an alternative to the very popular Java language, a language that fixes the things that programmers dislike about Java. And it's being used by all sorts of tech companies these days from Apple to startups. 

On the downside, it's got a reputation for being hard to learn.

Cisco's UCCE/IPCC, worth a 22.1% pay boost. This is call center technology that allows phone calls to be handled by a Cisco network. IT pros that know how to put together networks for your data, and for your phone calls, are commanding a better wage.
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Go, worth a 22.4% pay boost. Google created a programming language called Golang or Go also as an alternative to Java. Its claim to fame is that it was designed to work with cloud computing, something that didn't really exist when Java was invented. In the past couple of years, Go's popularity has skyrocketed, between its use at Google, and by all sorts of startups.

Six years ago, Laurence Kemball-Cook had a brainchild. A graduate of Loughborough University, he was doing a placement year at the energy company Eon, where he was given the job of finding a way to power street lighting with solar energy and wind. It didn’t work, he says, in part because there’s a lot of shade in cities. This got him thinking about other potential sources of power in busy urban spaces. The answer, he realized, was underneath his feet.

“My idea was a floor tile that would convert the kinetic energy from a footstep into electricity,” he says. “Every time someone steps on the tile, they generate seven watts of power. The energy is stored within batteries, and then used to power lighting when it’s needed. It’s an off-grid power source for cities.” He set up a company in 2009, Pavegen, in King’s Cross, London to exploit his new idea, but it took several years to develop the technology and convince people to take it on.

His first installation was unorthodox, to say the least. “Investors wouldn’t invest without tiles in the ground, so I broke into a building site on the south bank of the Thames at 2am, installed the product illegally, took photos and put them on our website saying: ‘Celebrating our latest installation.’ I closed a deal with Westfield pretty soon after that.”

Since then, Pavegen has worked with brands such as Coca-Cola and Siemens. The company has tiles at Heathrow terminal three and are planning an installation outside the White House. During last year’s World Cup, it went into a favela in Rio and laid a whole football pitch with tiles, hooking them up to spotlights so that play could continue after dark.

Light isn’t the only thing it generates. “When you stand on a tile, it sends out wireless data. This is useful for crowd flow modelling – seeing how people move through cities. You can use it to control lighting more efficiently. It’s also a key way for retailers to know how many people are visiting their shops. We imagine Google will cover streets with this in the future and use the data in interesting ways.”

Pavegen’s product looks like a regular floor tile until you lift the rubber (or Astroturf) surface and see the hub of circuitry underneath. The tiles are manufactured in eastern Europe.
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The company now has 30 employees and a second office in Los Angeles. But Kemball-Cook acknowledges there’s still a long way to go. One major obstacle is price – it costs almost $1,700 to cover 11 square feet of ground with Pavegen tiles. “The holy grail for us is to make our product the same cost as normal flooring,” he says.