An open source bionic leg, Python data pipeline, data breach detection, and more news

Catch up on the biggest open source headlines from the past two weeks.
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In this edition of our open source news roundup, we take a look at an open source bionic leg, a new open source medical imaging organization, McKinsey's first open source release, and more!

Using open source to advance bionics

A generation of people learned the term bionics from the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. What was science fiction (although based on fact) is closer to becoming a reality thanks to prosthetic leg designed by the University of Michigan and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.

The leg, which incorporates a simple, low-cost modular design, is "intended to improve the quality of life of patients and accelerate scientific advances by offering a unified platform to fragmented research efforts across the field of bionics." It will, according to lead designer Elliot Rouse, "enable investigators to efficiently solve challenges associated with controlling bionic legs across a range of activities in the lab and out in the community."

You can learn more about the leg, and download designs, from the Open Source Leg website.

McKinsey releases a Python library for building production-ready data pipelines

Consulting giant McKinsey and Co. recently released its first open source tool. Called Kedro, it's a Python library for creating machine learning and data pipelines.

Kedro makes "it easier to manage large workflows and ensuring a consistent quality of code throughout a project," said product manager Yetunde Dada. While it started as a proprietary tool, McKinsey open sourced Kedro so "clients can use it after we leave a project — it is our way of giving back," said engineer Nikolaos Tsaousis.

If you're interested in taking a peek, you can grab Kedro's source code off GitHub.

New consortium to advance open source medical imaging

A group of experts and patient advocates have come together to form the Open Source Imaging Consortium. The consortium aims to "advance the diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and other interstitial lung diseases with the help of digital imaging and machine learning."

According to the consortium's executive director, Elizabeth Estes, the project aims to "collectively speed diagnosis, aid prognosis, and ultimately allow doctors to treat patients more efficiently and effectively." To do that, they're assembling and sharing "15,000 anonymous image scans and clinical data from patients, which will serve as input data for machine learning programs to develop algorithms."

Mozilla releases a simple-to-use way to see if you've been part of a data breach

Explaining security to the less software-savvy has always been a challenge, and monitoring your exposure to risk is difficult regardless of your skill level. Mozilla released Firefox Monitor, with data provided by Have I Been Pwned, as a straightforward way to see if any of your emails have been part of a major data breach. You can enter emails to search one by one, or sign up for their service to notify you in the future.

The site is also full of helpful tutorials on understanding how hackers work, what to do after a data breach, and how to create strong passwords. Be sure to bookmark this one for around the holidays when family members are asking for advice.

In other news

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That idiot Scott Nesbitt ...
I'm a long-time user of free/open source software, and write various things for both fun and profit. I don't take myself all that seriously and I do all of my own stunts.

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