Cecile G. Tamura
October 26 at 6:33am
Coding the Message : How data files become synthetic DNA
The worldwide total of stored digital data will hit 16 trillion gigabytes next year, most of it housed in huge data centers. A shoebox worth of DNA could hold the equivalent of roughly 100 giant data centers.
DNA can be remarkably durable, particularly when kept cool and dry. In March, researchers announced that they had partially reconstructed the genomes of ancient humans whose bones had been in a Spanish cave for more than 400,000 years. In contrast, the magnetic tape that is the best long-term data storage option today lasts only a few decades before starting to degrade.
Storing data in DNA requires translating the 1s and 0s of binary digital files into long strings of the four different nucleotides, or bases, that make up DNA strands and write out the genetic code. In 2012, Harvard molecular biologist George Church wrote a 50,000-word book totaling less than a megabyte of data into DNA and printed it onto a glass chip smaller than a pollen grain. This year he reported having encoded 22 megabytes of digital data.
Microsoft says it has now written almost 10 times as much digital data into a collection of millions of pieces of DNA, each 150 bases long.
Is DNA the Future of Data Storage?
How a synthetic version of our genetic code could become the world’s most efficient hard drive
WSJ.COM|BY JAY GREENE
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Apple Pay is the future of mobile payments for one of the larger, wealthier mobile audiences — those on iOS. Now discover how you and your customers can benefit.
Apple Pay will be here before the holidays. Is your business ready? Have you even thought through the potential impact?
Apple Pay is a next generation checkout solution aimed at solving one of the biggest mobile commerce pain points: checkout frustration.
Inserting payment information on small screens is difficult, cumbersome, and time consuming. Neither the customer nor merchant win in that scenario.
This is why most mobile commerce transactions today occur on tablet –– not smartphone.
But Apple Pay is very likely to change that. AirBnB, Fancy and Target have all already seen success with Apple Pay for mobile conversions. Soon, Apple will release the technology to the rest of the industry, likely forever altering mobile commerce as we know it.
This could be the tipping point of the mobile commerce boom –– and this time, smartphones will be leading the way.
Thanks to seamless transactions, speedy, one-click payments and TouchID technology that decreases fraud, increases consumer trust and removes the need to manually enter detailed payment info, Apple Pay will bring about a new era of retail and finally close the lid on mobile checkout conversion issues.
With its seamlessness and security, Apple is raising the bar on mobile payments for the entire retail industry. Below, you’ll find 21 experts offering their insights and best tips to businesses on why and how to use Apple Pay.
Note: Currently, all iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S and 6S Plus, iPhone SE, iPad Air 2, iPad Pro and Apple Watch customers can take advantage of this technology today. BigCommerce customers can now activate Apple Pay for their stores.
Allen Burt, Founder & CEO, Blue Stout
Allen Burt
It’s going to be game-changing. One of the major hindrances to mobile buying has always been the checkout. It’s easy to browse, it’s easy to add-to-cart, but the checkout process has always been cumbersome on mobile. Apple Pay will streamline the checkout and make it easier.
My advice for ecommerce companies wanting to explore Apple Pay is first take a peek into your mobile traffic, especially your mobile abandonment rate. Once you get some data around this, you can be informed about making a decision to integrate your ecommerce website with Apple Pay (currently only the Safari browser supports Apple Pay for desktop).
If you do decide to move forward with offering this payment method to your customers and integrating it into your website, you’ll need to make it obvious!
Offering Apply Pay could even be an incentive for customers to purchase if they know they don’t have to waste time entering their payment information. So, visually display the fact your website supports Apple Pay and include it in your marketing strategy to educate and incentivize users to use it as their payment method.
Jennifer Pollock, Content Marketing Editorial Lead, Square
Jennifer Pollock
NFC payments like Apple Pay are the the most secure payment method out there. Apple Pay contains multiple layers of dynamic encryption and is also protected by TouchID, Apple’s fingerprint technology.
Apple Pay is also the fastest and most convenient way to pay — which is why it’s important to accept it this holiday season. Apple Pay transactions happen near instantaneously (as opposed to chip cards, which can take several seconds to process). So to provide the best (and most secure) customer experience throughout the holidays, it’s a smart strategy to implement a POS in your brick and mortar that can accept Apple Pay ASAP.
Kevin Richards, CEO & Founder, Ventura Web Design & Marketing
Kevin Richards
Apple Pay is an absolute game changer for small business and, dare I say, one of Amazon.com’s biggest threats.
When a customer can checkout on any website with Apple Pay simply by using TouchID, that creates a frictionless checkout and evens the playing field for all merchants.
The biggest questions that customers face when shopping online is wondering if the merchant they’re shopping with is trustworthy: “Will I get my order on time and in good condition?” “How hard will it be to complete the checkout (especially on a mobile device)?”
Apple Pay resolves both issues by conveying trust and making checkout incredibly easy.
Michael Ugino, Co-founder, Sellbrite
Michael Ugino
Sorry, I’m an Android Fanboy –– just kidding!
The benefit is that there is a massive audience of iPhone-owning mobile shoppers who are the earliest adopters of Apple Pay, and not using it will create an additional layer of friction for those mobile conversions. Mobile commerce is still in its infancy (in terms of $$$$) but already accounts for more than 50% of traffic to ecommerce sites. It’s easy to connect the dots.
Catalin Zorzini, Founder, Ecommerce-Platforms.com
Catalin Zorzini
Apple Pay will help you compete, considering Apple is one of the best companies at generating buzz for its new products.
Some people won’t even consider buying online if an ecommerce store doesn’t have a PayPal button. Apple Pay could easily end up in the same situation.
Apple has done a wonderful job of making partnerships with major credit card companies and retail stores, so it’s not that crazy to think that NFC-based payment methods will end up being the norm.
It’s also worth mentioning that Apple Pay should help shrink the divide between online and offline sales, since customers can use it for both types of purchases. Therefore, you may end up getting better sale management options along with more sales in general.
Jan Lastuvka, CEO & Co-Founder, MonkeyData
Jan Lastuvka
Apple Pay reduces friction with the payment process and is more secure than other payment
methods. Apple Pay uses biometrics and does not require a credit card to be present, thus reducing the risk of stolen card numbers.
Although Apple Pay requires an iPhone 6 or later and the adoption rate has been a bit slow so far, it has been increasing. You can be sure that Apple will continue pushing this payment solution and that more users will adopt as they upgrade their phones.
Richard Lazazzera, Founder, A Better Lemonade Stand
Richard Lazazzera
Apply Pay is a solution to those low mobile conversions. Typing in address and credit card info is an awful experience on desktop, never mind mobile devices. Add to that the fact that most people are on the go while using their mobile device and it’s not hard to understand why mobile conversions remain so low. Adding Apple Pay gives your customers a frictionless way to instantly make a purchase without thinking twice about it.
Kunle Campbell, Founder, 2X Ecommerce
Kunle Campbell
Apple Pay is truly frictionless commerce geared to increasing mobile transactions.
My advice to retailers would be to run a thorough mobile UX audit and deliver a truly mobile first user experience to shoppers and customers.
Now that the mobile checkout has been more or less ‘fixed’ with Apple Pay (with Android Pay to follow), mobile devices will becoming the primary de facto online shopping device.
Drew Sanocki, Private Equity Operating Partner, Empire Growth Group
Drew Sanocki
Every time you add a payment solution, you make it easier for a related customer segment to buy and improve their conversion rates. If you offer an impulse buy product, have a lot of mobile shoppers, or have items with lower AOVs, the Apple Pay user segment is probably not insignificant. Go get them!
Brett Curry, CEO, OMG Commerce
Brett Curry
Right now, the greatest reason for the disparity between mobile and desktop conversion rates lies in the checkout friction on mobile. Mobile checkout is often super painful.
Once Apple Pay is supported on the Safari mobile browser, this could be huge for iPhone users. This is a coveted segment for merchants since iPhone users consistently spend more online than owners of other devices by a huge margin.
Chris Van Dusen, CEO, Parcon Media
Chris Van Dusen
Speed and trust: the less info you need a consumer to enter on your site, the more likely it is that they will complete the transaction with you. Services like Apple Pay help take that mental roadblock of manually giving you their credit card info out of the equation. Really, it is all about convenience.
Jason Dea, Director of Product Marketing, Intelex
Jason Dea
The hardest part of any retail business is optimizing your customer journey. What that means is improving the satisfaction and happiness a customer feels when they interact with your store (online or brick-and-mortar).
The logistics of payment can often be an overlooked bit of friction in that journey. Electronic wallets and payment platforms like Apple Pay, which streamline payment into one-click, can be a great ally in removing those final bits of friction in your customer journey.
Danna Crawford, Owner, PowerSellingMom.com
apple-pay-danna-crawford
There are a ton of “tech-ie” shoppers out there that love to be a part of paying with Apple Pay. Even many fast food chains are using it at the drive-thru and I myself, as an Apple watch owner, find it cool to be a part of the trend. This is just be another way to increase the odds for more sales as a business owner.
William Harris, Ecommerce Consultant, Elumynt
William Harris
Apple Pay can be very beneficial, but you have to know your audience. As a starter, you probably don’t want to have seven different payment buttons (like Amazon, Visa, PayPal, etc), so A/B test which combination of payment buttons works best for your audience.
You could also get a good idea if this would be beneficial to try out on your site by looking into your Google Analytics reports to find out the number of iOS devices visiting and purchasing on your website.
Ryan Stemkoski, Interactive Director, Zipline Interactive
Ryan Stemkoski
With mobile ecommerce rates rising sharply, Apple Pay will give consumers using Safari an easy route to complete a transaction. This will offer a huge time saving to those customers that have set up Apple Pay, increasing the likelihood of conversion this holiday season as the program rolls out for those users.
Since Apple Pay is currently limited to Safari, it is possible to use browser recognition to display advertisements and special promotions only to users on Safari regarding your store’s ability to accept Apple Pay that are not shown to users of other browsers.
This provides an opportunity to capitalize on this new audience and convenience feature without forfeiting critical holiday advertising real estate for users that are ineligible for Apple Pay.
Adii Pienaar, Founder, Receiptful
Adii Pienaar
Customers worldwide are using their mobile devices for online shopping more often. Depending on who you want to believe, it’s estimated that since late-2014 more than 50% of all online purchases are made from mobile devices. Apple / iOS has about a 15% market share of mobile devices, which is a huge potential user base for Apple Pay.
The attraction (to the customer) of Apple Pay is the convenience of already having their credit card details on their Apple devices. They’re also already familiar with spending money on their Apple devices (even if it’s just via iTunes or the App Store).
We are also seeing a trend where customers are spending more dollars when they can act impulsively and with a low-level of friction. Think about how easy Amazon makes this with their 1-Click Purchases.
For this very reason, I’d recommend that all online retailers offer Apple Pay as a payment option at checkout, because it makes it easier for customers to spend money with you.
Jacob Firuta, Content Manager, LiveChat
Jacob Firuta
Removing friction from the checkout process is always a good idea. It decreases cart abandonment and stimulates more impulse sales. However, it’s best to offer it as an alternative and not the only way to make a payment since most users –– at least for now –– will go for the good old credit card.
Aaron Agius, Managing Director, Louder Online
Aaron Agius
I’m on the fence about it. If it’s important to your business to be seen as a tech early adopter, or if it’s expected from your audience, then yeah, you should have it. But for most small businesses, the POS device and transaction costs just don’t make sense. I’d hold off in most cases until the demand grows.
Ned Nadima, Growth Manager, Rare.io
Ned Nadima
The main benefit of Apple Pay is to ease the checkout process. Many customers love innovative companies. So, using the latest technology during the shopping experience improves customer perception of your brand.
Jim Cook, Business Development Manager, Avid Brio
Jim Cook
With the increase of iOS users, Apple Pay becomes one of the best methods to accept. After all, it becomes that much easier for iOS users to pay.
Rieva Lesonsky, CEO, SmallBizDaily.com
Rieva Lesonsky
Obviously, consumers are nervous about credit card security so offering the many payment choices is a good idea. Apple Pay means they don’t even have to pull out their credit card at a register.
What do you think about Apple Pay and how it will influence the industry? Let us know in the comments below.
Photo: Flickr, Don DeBold
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Tracey Wallace
Tracey Wallace
Tracey Wallace is the Editor-in-Chief at BigCommerce, where she covers all things ecommerce: marketing, design, development, strategy, plus emerging trends, including omnichannel and cloud replatforming. She is often featured in publications, such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Mashable, and ELLE, along with leading BigCommerce partners like HubSpot and Square. She launched her career in ecommerce with Y-Combinator backed Shoptiques.
View all posts by Tracey Wallace LEAVE A COMMENT
By Norman Rusin
@normanrusin
Chaining Proteins May Free Brain Cells from Disease
How did the king of Corinth, Sisyphus, outwit the god of death, Thanatos? By using the god’s own chains. When it was Sisyphus’s time to die, Zeus ordered Thanatos to chain Sisyphus up in Tartarus, the kingdom of the dead. King Sisyphus slyly asked Thanatos to demonstrate how the chains worked. As Thanatos was granting him his wish, Sisyphus seized the opportunity and trapped Thanatos in the chains instead. Once the god of death was bound by the strong chains, no one died. Nowadays, another chain of events leads our brain cells to death: it is called parthanatos—keeping in its name the Greek myth’s memory—and it is responsible for injuries such as stroke and illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s. However, Johns Hopkins University researchers have found the protein at the end of that chain of events that delivers the fatal strike by carving up a cell’s DNA. Their discovery may lead to new drugs that would prevent, stop, or weaken the process. A Programmed Death
Conducted on laboratory-grown cells, these new experiments build on earlier work by research partners Ted Dawson, MD, PhD, now director of the Institute for Cell Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Valina Dawson, PhD, professor of neurology. Their research groups found that—despite very different causes and symptoms—injury, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and the rare, fatal genetic disorder Huntington’s disease have a shared form of “programmed” brain cell death. The team looked closely at a protein called mitochondrial Apoptosis-Inducing Factor (AIF), a specialized part of a cell outside its nucleus that causes the cell’s programmed death. They knew that when AIF leaves its usual place in the energy-producing mitochondria of the cell and moves to the nucleus, it sparks the carving up of the DNA housed in the nucleus and leads to cell death.
How and Why Do Brain Cells Die?
Nucleus of a cell undergoing parthanatos. Credit: Yingfei Wang and I-Hsun Wu / Johns Hopkins Medicine.
“I can’t overemphasize what an important form of cell death it is; it plays a role in almost all forms of cellular injury,” Ted Dawson says. The research groups have spent years delineating each of the links in the parthanatos chain of events and the roles of the proteins involved. The current study, they say, has completed the chain. It Takes Two to Kill a Cell
Since AIF itself cannot cut DNA, it was necessary to look for proteins that interact with DNA. Yingfei Wang, assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, used a protein chip to screen thousands of human proteins to find such a protein. First, she dug out 160 proteins qualified for this task. Then, she used custom molecules, called small interfering RNAs, to stop each of those proteins’ manufacture, one by one, in lab-grown human cells to see if doing so would prevent cell death. One of the 160 proteins, known as macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor (MIF), was a winner. “We found that AIF binds to MIF and carries it into the nucleus, where MIF chops up DNA,” Ted Dawson reports. “We think that’s the final execution step in parthanatos.” Where Does MIF Strike?
Dawson cautions that while parthanatos is known to cause cell death in many brain conditions, MIF’s ability to chop up DNA has so far been definitively linked only with stroke—when the MIF gene was disabled in mice, the damage caused by a stroke was dramatically reduced. “We’re interested in finding out whether MIF is also involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases,” he says, and that if so, and if an inhibitor of MIF proves successful in testing, it could have implications for treating many conditions.
The research group reports that in work to be published they have also identified a few chemical compounds that block MIF’s action in the lab-grown cells, protecting them from parthanatos. Ted Dawson says the group plans to test these compounds in animals and modify them to maximize their safety and effectiveness.
—Norman is a freelance copy editor and journalist who assists writers to produce sound and telling communications. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a PhD in Italian Studies. In his research, he looks at how science, literature, and art complement each other in our understanding of the world. Connect with him at normanrusin77@gmail.com. References
http://www.newswise.com/articles/brain-cell-executioner-identified
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/brain_basics/ninds_neuron.htm
Featured image: Artist’s representation of neurons. Published on Flickr by Ardy Rahman under an Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.
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