Technology

At least 2 million people in the U.S. become infected with so-called &super bugs& and at least 23,000 people die as a direct result of these infections each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Now, HPBiohacker technology is working with the CDC on a pilot program to &print& and test antibiotics in an effort to catch these antimicrobial resistant strains from spreading faster.

The HP D300e Digital Dispenser BioPrinter technology works by using the same set up as a regular ink printer, but instead dispenses any combination of drugs in volumes from picoliters to microliters to be used for research purposes.

Part of the reason these bugs spread so rapidly often comes down to mis-use of antibiotics, leading the bacteria to develop a resistance to the drugs available. The CDC hopes to give hospital providers access to the technology nationwide to cut down on the problem.

&Once a drug is approved for use, the countdown begins until resistance emerges,&Jean Patel, PhD, D (ABMM), Science Team Lead, Antibiotic Resistance Coordination and Strategy Unit at CDC said in a statement. &To save lives and protect people, it is vital to make technology accessible to hospital labs nationwide. We hope this pilot will help ensure our newest drugs last longer and put gold-standard lab results in healthcare providers& hands faster.&

The 3D bioprinting sector has been experiencing rapid growth over the last few years and will continue on pace through the next decade, mainly due to R-D, according to market researchers. Innovation in the space includes printing of organs and human tissue and drug research and development.

Further, this potentially valuable antibiotic resistance research could help patient care teams stem a grim future where we experience a regression in health and life spans due to no longer having the ability to treat currently curable diseases.

The HP BioPrinter is currently used by labs and pharmaceutical companies such as Gilead, which tests for drugs used against the Ebola virus. It is also being used in various CRISPR applications.The CDC will use these printers in four regional areas spread throughout the U.S. within the Antibiotic Resistance (AR) Lab Network to develop antimicrobial susceptibility test methods for new drugs, according to HP.

Ipsy, the beauty box subscription serviceand e-commerce site founded in 2011 by YouTube creator Michelle Phan, is expanding its business beyond sample-sized products. The company today is debuting a more expensive &Glam Bag Plus& subscription, which will ship customers five full-sized products for $25 per month.

The move aims to capitalize on Ipsyestablished customer base who now trust Ipsybeauty products recommendations to the point they&re willing to pay upfront for full-sized products, instead of only samples with the option to later shop online for the products they liked.

It may also help attract a new customer who doesn&t find value in samples & which are sometimes one-use products, or packaged poorly compared with their full-size counterparts, making them difficult to travel with or throw in a purse.

So far, Ipsycuration has been succeeding & it touts over 3 million subscribers, compared with rival Birchboxover 2.5 million.

Ipsy, for what itworth, tends to offer better samples than Birchbox, now majority owned by hedge fund Viking Global Investors, after some financial struggles.

Birchbox shipments are often too reliant on less valuable items, likesingle-use makeup wipes, tiny eyeshadows without a reliable protective case, or totally hit-or-missperfume samples, for example. Ipsy, meanwhile, sends out full-sized makeup brushes and other full-sized items along with samples on a regular basis. It also prioritizes makeup products over hair and skin care items in its curation.

Plus, it ships products in a reusable makeup travel bag (which, frankly, is great for when you need to unload some of your less-loved samples on friends).

With the new Glam Bag Plus, customers will have the option of paying a little more & $25 per month instead of $10 & for a selection of full-sized products, which would normally retail for $120.

The company says it will work with brands like Sunday Riley, Ciaté London, Purlisse, Morphe, Tarte Cosmetics, Buxom, and others.

As before, the exact mix of products shipped will be based on subscribers& beauty profile. Today, Ipsy creates over 10,000 different makeup combinations in its monthly Glam Bag memberships, it says, because of this personalization.

The Plus service will also ship out a deluxe (read: larger) makeup bag on the first delivery, then every third delivery afterwards, as part of its subscription.

The new service will better cater to skin and hair care companies, and especially to newer brands that may not offer a wide ranges of samples at this time, but still want to be able to reach Ipsymillennial subscriber base.

Initially, existing Glam Bag subscribers will be able to switch over to the Plus tier of service, which will ship its first bag in October.

However, the company is advising customers that it has limited quantities of Glam Bag Plus products, so if they choose to later downgrade back to the sample Glam Bag, they may end up on a waitlist if they decide later they want to re-join Plus.

Ipsy also says itnot set up right now to handle customers who want both memberships, so those who do should create a second account as a workaround.

Ipsyco-founder Michelle Phan left the startup last fall to run online makeup site EM Cosmetics, but Ipsy itself remains profitable & and it has been for several years. The companyreal value is not the money to be made on the subscription business itself, but rather in helping beauty brands reach social media influencers and YouTube stars, whose makeup tutorials and recommendations help them to gain exposure.

While Ipsy, like many in the subscription business, won&t talk about its critical business metrics like churn or margins, the company believes the Plus subscription will do well because itsomething members have been requesting for some time. It also surveyed the user community and ran focus groups ahead of this productlaunch, it told Glossy.

The subscription will become available to more customers in the future, says Ipsy.

Hangouts Chat, Googlebusiness-focused Slack competitor, is getting emoji reactions. Thata feature that Slack has long had, so if anything, todaymove makes Hangouts Chat even more Slack-like than before.

Hangouts Chat, you may remember, is very different from Hangouts, Google chat app for regular users which at one point was supposed to be superseded by Allo. But then Allo failed, so the future of Hangouts remains uncertain. Hangouts isn&t getting emoji reactions today, though, thatHangouts Chat.

Therereally not much more to be said about this new feature. It works just like you&d expect and just like in Slack; this update allows you to now quickly add a thumbs-up emoji to all those comments in Hangouts Slack Chat that you couldn&t care less about but where internal politics dictate that you should say something (or, in Google-speak: &communication styles at work are evolving, and expressive communication modes are oftentimes preferred over simple text&). You could also use them for a quick internal poll or to acknowledge a request where typing &yes& would&ve felt like too much work.

Either way, these new emoji reactions are now rolling out to all G Suite users. Google expects that everybody will have access to them within the next three days.