Tech Scrape

An Android phone’s approach to security is radically different from an iPhone’s–but is it better? Today’s smart phones have all the speed, storage, and network connectivity of desktop computers from a few years ago. Because of this, they’re a treasure trove of personal information–and likely the next battleground for computer security.

The move is part of an effort to let browsers and plug-ins interact more easily. Adobe’s Flash Player has come under fire from developers and companies who question its necessity, but the plug-in has just received a big vote of confidence from Google.

A new microfluidics device gives results in 15 minutes. In an office park in Woburn, MA, a volunteer presents his fingertip for a quick finger stick. A phlebotomist wicks up the small drop of blood with a specially made square of plastic, then snaps the plastic into a credit-card sized microfluidics cartridge and feeds it into a special reader. Fifteen minutes later, the device spits out the volunteer’s prostate specific antigen (PSA) level, a protein used to monitor the return of prostate cancer after treatment.

Specialized transistors track hardware bugs as they happen. As microprocessors get smaller and more intricate, finding the hardware bugs that can cause a computer to crash requires more time, money, and engineering effort. But now engineers at Stanford University have proposed a shortcut that could help locate bugs in a fraction of the time.

Security technologies make compromising computers hard, but not hard enough. Over the past decade, Microsoft, the target of choice for many online attackers, has hardened its operating system, adopting technologies designed to make it harder for attackers to find and exploit vulnerabilities. Apple and many other software makers have followed suit, introducing similar additional security measures to their operating systems.

They get results by exploiting a social network’s trusting environment. As users have flocked to social networks, so, inevitably, have spammers. And according to a recent experiment, users are much more receptive to spam sent via a social network than over e-mail.

Changes in connectivity could help doctors choose the best therapies. After a stroke, the brain suffers more broadly than just at the spot that was starved of blood. New research, which uses brain imaging to examine connections between different parts of the brain, shows that communication between the left and right hemispheres is often disrupted; the greater the disruption, the more profound the patient’s impairment in movement or vision. Researchers hope to use the approach to predict which patients are mostly likely to recover on their own and which will need the most intensive therapy.

A startup’s catalytic process converts biomass directly into components of gasoline. An early-stage company spun out of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, plans to commercialize a catalytic process for converting cellulosic biomass into five of the chemicals found in gasoline. These chemicals are also used to make industrial polymers and solvents. Anellotech , which is seeking venture funding, plans to build a pilot plant next year.

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv this week

China isn’t the only place where Google faces tough choices. All eyes have been on Google’s battle with the Chinese government since the company announced on Monday that it would no longer maintain its censored Chinese-language search site. Instead, the company began redirecting users of Google.cn to its Hong Kong-based search service, Google.com.hk , where it maintains unaltered Chinese-language search results.