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Abundant 'secret doors' on human proteins could reshape drug discovery:
The number of potential therapeutic targets on the surfaces of human proteins is much greater than previously thought, according to the findings of a new study in the journal Nature.
A ground-breaking new technique developed by researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona has revealed the existence of a multitude of previously secret doors that control protein function and which could, in theory, be targeted to dramatically change the course of conditions as varied as dementia, cancer and infectious diseases.
The method, in which tens of thousands of experiments are performed at the same time, has been used to chart the first ever map of these elusive targets, also known as allosteric sites, in two of the most common human proteins, revealing they are abundant and identifiable.
The approach could be a game changer for drug discovery, leading to safer, smarter and more effective medicines. It enables research labs around the world to find and exploit vulnerabilities in any protein—including those previously thought "undruggable."
"Not only are these potential therapeutic sites abundant, there is evidence they can be manipulated in many different ways. Rather than simply switching them on or off, we could modulate their activity like a thermostat. From an engineering perspective, that's striking gold because it gives us plenty of space to design 'smart drugs' that target the bad and spare the good," explains André Faure, postdoctoral researcher at the CRG and co-first author of the paper.
Journal Reference:
Faure, Andre J., Domingo, Júlia, Schmiedel, Jörn M., et al. Mapping the energetic and allosteric landscapes of protein binding domains, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04586-4)
Shock result in particle experiment could spark physics revolution
Scientists just outside Chicago have found that the mass of a sub-atomic particle is not what it should be.
The measurement is the first conclusive experimental result that is at odds with one of the most important and successful theories of modern physics.
The team has found that the particle, known as a W boson, is more massive than the theories predicted.
[...] The scientists at the Fermilab Collider Detector (CDF) in Illinois have found only a tiny difference in the mass of the W Boson compared with what the theory says it should be - just 0.1%. But if confirmed by other experiments, the implications are enormous. The so-called Standard Model of particle physics has predicted the behaviour and properties of sub-atomic particles with no discrepancies whatsoever for fifty years. Until now.
CDF's other co-spokesperson, Prof Georgio Chiarelli, from INFN Sezione di Pisa, told BBC News that the research team could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw the results.
"No-one was expecting this. We thought maybe we got something wrong." But the researchers have painstakingly gone through their results and tried to look for errors. They found none.
The result, published in the journal Science, could be related to hints from other experiments at Fermilab and the Large Hadron Collider at the Swiss-French border. These, as yet unconfirmed results, also suggest deviations from the Standard Model, possibly as a result of an as yet undiscovered fifth force of nature at play.
Also at Nature and Ars Technica.
Journal Reference:
T. Aaltonen. S. Amerio. D. Amedei, et. al.,High-precision measurement of the W boson mass with the CDF II detector, Science, (DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781)
The spider that looks like bird poo:
Animals do all sorts of disgusting things. While these gross behaviours might turn our stomachs, they're often crucial to an animal's survival.
I and my colleague Nic Gill have done the dirty work, and collected a bunch of unexpected facts about how these behaviours help animals live their best lives: making a home, finding mates and food, and surviving predators.
Our new book, titled Poo, Spew and other Gross Things Animals Do, is aimed at kids, but much of it will be news to adults, too.
So what does it take to survive and thrive in the wild? It's not always about being the biggest and fiercest. Many animals have evolved much more entertaining—if not impolite—strategies for evolutionary success.
Astronomers detect 'galactic space laser':
A powerful radio-wave laser, called a 'megamaser', has been observed by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa. The record-breaking find is the most distant megamaser of its kind ever detected, at about five billion light years from Earth. The light from the megamaser has traveled 58 thousand billion billion (58 followed by 21 zeros) kilometers to Earth.
[...] The discovery was made by an international team of astronomers led by Dr Marcin Glowacki, who previously worked at the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy and the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.
[...] "This is the first hydroxyl megamaser of its kind to be observed by MeerKAT and the most distant seen by any telescope to date.
[...] The record-breaking object was named 'Nkalakatha' [pronounced ng-kuh-la-kuh-tah] -- an isiZulu word meaning "big boss."
The MeerKAT telescope is a radio telescope comprised of 64 antennas that will make up part of the Square Kilometre Array. Nkalakatha was detected on the first night of an observing run known as LADUMA or "Looking at the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array." Megamasers are created during galactic collisions where dense gas regions create hydroxyl (OH) molecules that can coherently radiate energy under the right conditions, just as lasers do, but these emissions are at radiofrequency wavelengths.
Also at SARAO and Rutgers Today.
Journal Reference:
Marcin Glowacki, Jordan D. Collier, Amir Kazemi-Moridani, et al., LADUMA: Discovery of a luminous OH megamaser at z>0.5. The Astrophysical Journal Letters (accepted), 2022. [abstract]
Next Rocket Lab Launch Will Catch Returning Booster in Midair With a Helicopter:
The New Zealand- and US-based company plans to attempt recovering one of its Electron rocket boosters with the help of a chopper to conclude its next mission.
"Trying to catch a rocket as it falls back to Earth is no easy feat, we're absolutely threading the needle here," said Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck in a statement.
Rocket Lab has snatched rocket replicas using a helicopter, but has yet to grab an actual Electron as it falls back to Earth from a trip to space.
As they detail in their news release, the attempt will happen as part of their upcoming "There and Back Again" mission slated to deliver 34 small commercial satellites to orbit. A 14-day launch window opens April 19. They will use their Sikorsky S-92 helicopter to catch the Electron rocket's first stage as it returns to Earth on parachute and return it for refurbishment and reuse.
Zoom awarded $1.8 million in bug bounty rewards over 2021:
Zoom has awarded $1.8 million to researchers who submitted bug bounty reports over 2021.
Bug bounty programs, whether private and available to invitees-only or public, where anyone can submit a vulnerability report, have become a critical method for organizations to improve their security posture.
The industry is beset with talent shortages. Estimates suggest that there will be approximately 3.5 million unfilled job openings by 2025 in the US alone, and until there are more specialists available, companies often can't just rely on in-house security teams, who have more than enough of a workload.
This is where bug bounties come in: external researchers and bug hunters can perform tests on software and services, report any severe security issues, and receive credit and/or financial rewards in return.
The popularity of Zoom's teleconferencing video software exploded overnight due to COVID-19 and lockdowns, with many of us forced to work from home. However, the rapid increase in users also highlighted security problems that had to be addressed quickly. Hence, a bug bounty program was one of the firm's initiatives for improving the situation.
Even at low concentrations, uranium in particular represents an important risk factor for the development of chronic diseases. Until now little epidemiological research had been done on chronic water uranium exposures despite the potential health effects of uranium exposure from CWSs. Uranium in particular, has been underappreciated in the literature as a public drinking water contaminant of concern. The study results are published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health.
"Previous studies have found associations between chronic uranium exposure and increased risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, kidney damage, and lung cancer at high levels of exposure," said Anne Nigra, PhD, assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. "Our objectives were to estimate CWS metal concentrations across the U.S, and identify socio-demographic subgroups served by these systems that either reported high metal concentration estimates or were more likely to report averages exceeding the US EPA's maximum contaminant level (MCL)."
Approximately 90 percent of U.S. residents rely on public drinking water systems, with most residents relying specifically on community water systems that serve the same population year-round. The researchers evaluated six-year EPA review records for antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, mercury, selenium, thallium, and uranium to determine if average concentrations exceeded the maximum contaminant levels set by the EPA which regulates levels for six classes of contaminants. This included approximately 13 million records from 139,000 public water systems serving 290 million people annually. The researchers developed average metal concentrations for 37,915 CWSs across the country, and created an online interactive map of estimated metal concentrations at the CWS and county levels to use in future analyses.
According to findings 2·1 percent of community water systems reported average uranium concentrations from 2000 to 2011 in exceedance of the EPA maximum contamination levels, and uranium was frequently detected during compliance monitoring (63% of the time). Arsenic, barium, chromium, selenium, and uranium concentrations were also disproportionately elevated in CWSs serving semi-urban, Hispanic populations, raising concerns for these communities and the possibility of influencing inequalities in public drinking water.
Journal Reference:
Filippo Ravalli, et. al.,Sociodemographic inequalities in uranium and other metals in community water systems across the USA, 2006–11: a cross-sectional study, THE LANCET,(DOI: 10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00043-2)
AMD's GPU drivers are overclocking some Ryzen processors without asking:
In September, AMD added support for simple CPU overclocking to its graphics drivers. If you had a Ryzen 5000-series CPU and wanted to benefit from the extra performance, this auto-overclocking function could save you from needing to download the more complex Ryzen Master utility. The overclock would also be conservative enough that it probably wouldn't cause system instability or other issues.
The problem for some users is that this auto-overclocking feature has become too automated—that is, it's changing systems' overclocking settings whether users want it to or not.
An AMD representative told Tom's Hardware that "an issue in the AMD software suite" caused the feature to begin "adjusting certain AMD processor settings for some users." Because the CPU overclocking feature is actually changing settings in your system's BIOS, that means it can change overclocking settings that users have changed themselves and apply an overclock where there was no overclock before. That second bit could be especially problematic since overclocking processors generally voids AMD's CPU warranty, even when you're using AMD-provided tools like Ryzen Master or using AMD-advertised features like Precision Boost Overdrive (though, anecdotally, this policy isn't consistently enforced).
The study from IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering at the University of Iowa is the first to detail the flood risk to farmland statewide. The researchers used flood maps developed at the Iowa Flood Center, and incorporated data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create the crop flood-risk analysis.
Among the main findings:
- Nearly 450,000 acres of Iowa farmland are located in a two-year flood return period, meaning there's a 50% chance the land will flood in a given year. That's less than 2% of the total farmable land analyzed in the study.
- Iowa agriculture sees crop losses, on average, of $230 million a year due to farming that takes place in flood-prone areas.
The researchers also identified four watersheds as most vulnerable to flooding and crop losses: Middle Cedar in east-central Iowa, North Raccoon and South Skunk in central Iowa, and West Nishnabotna in southwest Iowa.
[...] The researchers analyzed nearly 25 million acres of agricultural land in Iowa and farming operations from 2016 to 2020 to classify the flood risk according to eight scenarios: 2-year, 5-year, 10-year, 25-year, 50-year, 100-year, 200-year, and 500-year return periods. Cropland located in a 2-year return period has a 50% chance of flooding in a given year; farmland in a 5-year return period has a 20% of flooding in a given year; while farmland in a 100-year return period has a 1% chance of flooding in a given year.
[...] Iowa has seen its fair share of flooding. Since 1953, 29 flood-related disaster declarations have been issued for the state, according to FEMA. Major, if not historic, flooding has occurred four times over the past decade and a half alone -- in 2008, 2014, 2016, and 2019.
[...] "We highlight the $230 million in average annualized losses to show that there is farmland that is frequently exposed to floods and has a low corn suitability rating -- why not consider changing its use?" Yildirim says. "That, of course, would require further conversations, but you have to look at the costs and benefits of continuing to farm that land."
Journal Reference:
Redirecting, (DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154165)
UC Berkeley ML pioneer wins top computing gong:
[...] This year's ACM Prize in Computing is going toward a machine learning specialist whose work, even if you haven't heard of him, is likely to be familiar.
Pieter Abbeel, UC Berkeley professor and co-founder of AI robotics company Covariant, was awarded the prize and its $250,000 bounty, which is given to those in the machine learning field "whose research contributions have fundamental impact and broad implications."
Abbeel is a professor of computer science and electrical engineering whose work has already received some recognition. Along with this new award, he was named a top young innovator under 25 by the MIT Technology Review and won a prize given out to the best US PhD thesis in robotics and automation.
[...] ACM said that one of Abbeel's most important contributions to the machine learning world was his work with deep reinforcement learning, which combines reinforcement learning with deep neural networks. "While early reinforcement learning programs were effective, they could only perform simple tasks... deep reinforcement learning can solve far more complex problems than computer programs developed with reinforcement learning alone," ACM said.
Deep reinforcement learning enables AI to learn more quickly with less prior knowledge because it's able to learn from abstract, unstructured data more effectively. The approach was used in high-profile applications like learning to beat humans at Go, Chess, and Poker, and others involve improving social media notifications and training self-driving cars.
Phishing uses Azure Static Web Pages to impersonate Microsoft:
Phishing attacks are abusing Microsoft Azure's Static Web Apps service to steal Microsoft, Office 365, Outlook, and OneDrive credentials.
Azure Static Web Apps is a Microsoft service that helps build and deploy full-stack web apps to Azure from GitHub or Azure DevOps code repositories.
It allows developers to use custom domains for branding web apps, and it provides web hosting for static content such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images.
As security researcher MalwareHunterTeam discovered, threat actors have also noticed that the custom branding and the web hosting features can easily be used to host static landing phishing pages.
Attackers are now actively using Microsoft's service against its customers, actively targeting users with Microsoft, Office 365, Outlook, and OneDrive accounts.
As shown below, some of the landing pages and login forms used in these phishing campaigns look almost exactly like official Microsoft pages.
Where you grew up may shape your navigational skills:
People who grow up outside of cities are better at finding their way around than urbanites, a large study on navigation suggests. The results, described online March 30 in Nature, hint that learning to handle environmental complexity as a child strengthens mental muscles for spatial skills.
Nearly 400,000 people from 38 countries around the world played a video game called Sea Hero Quest, designed by neuroscientists and game developers as a fun way to glean data about people's brains. Players piloted a boat in search of various targets.
On average, people who said they had grown up outside of cities, where they would have presumably encountered lots of meandering paths, were better at finding the targets than people who were raised in cities.
What's more, the difference between city dwellers and outsiders was most prominent in countries where cities tend to have simple, gridlike layouts, such as Chicago with its streets laid out at 90-degree angles. The simpler the cities, the bigger the advantage for people from more rural areas, cognitive scientist Antoine Coutrot of CNRS who is based in Lyon, France, and his colleagues report.
Journal Reference:
Coutrot, A., Manley, E., Goodroe, S., et al. Entropy of city street networks linked to future spatial navigation ability, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04486-7)
These sneaky hackers hid inside their victims' networks for nine months:
Detailed by cybersecurity researchers at Symantec, the campaign is the work of a group they call Cicada – also known as APT10 - a state-sponsored offensive hacking group which western intelligence agencies have linked to Chinese Ministry of State Security. In some cases, the attackers spent as long as nine months inside the networks of victims.
[...] In several of the detected campaigns, evidence of initial activity on compromised networks has been seen on Microsoft Exchange Servers, suggesting the possibility that the intrusions started with attackers exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange which came to light in early 2021.
Once the attackers gain initial access, they use a variety of tools including Sodamaster, fileless malware which provides a backdoor onto machines, as well as a custom loader for dropping additional payloads. Both forms of malware have been used in previous campaigns by APT10.
The malware is capable of evading detection and it also obfuscates and encrypts any information which is sent back to command and control servers operated by the attackers. In addition to custom tools, the campaigns also use publicly available tools, to scan systems and execute commands.
The victims being targeted, along with the tools being deployed and the earlier history of the suspected culprit behind the attacks has led researchers to conclude that the most likely goal of the campaign is information theft and intelligence gathering.
Digital Data Could Be Altering Earth's Mass Just a Tiny Bit, Claims Physicist
According to calculations made a few years ago by University of Portsmouth physicist Melvin Vopson, the literal mass of visual imagery created daily – along with half a billion tweets, countless texts, billions of WhatsApp messages, and every other bit and byte of information we've created – could be making our planet a touch heavier. An experiment recently proposed by Vopson based on antimatter explosions might go some way in convincing the scientific community that information might not only have mass but that it could also be a strange new state of matter, or (of course) the elusive dark matter needed to balance most cosmological observations today.
Scientist says that dark matter may be information itself
"If we assume that information is physical and has mass, and that elementary particles have a DNA of information about themselves, how can we prove it?" Vopson asked in the release. "My latest paper is about putting these theories to the test so they can be taken seriously by the scientific community."
Vospon suggests an experiment that could test the hypothesis that information is a distinct state of matter — alongside solids, liquids, gases and plasmas — by using a particle-antiparticle collision to, in theory, "erase" information from the universe.
"It doesn't contradict quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, thermodynamics or classical mechanics," he said in the release. "All it does is complement physics with something new and incredibly exciting."
Reference:
Melvin M. Vopson, Experimental protocol for testing the mass–energy–information equivalence principle [open], AIP Adv., 12, 3, 2022.
DOI: 10.1063/5.0087175
----
Had enough of trying to formulate the grand unification theory? Have a try at lumping another theory on the pile to see if that makes it better! Is Maxwell's Demon creating mass with every action?
Researchers discover new cell type in human lung with regenerative properties:
A new type of cell that resides deep within human lungs and may play a key role in human lung diseases has been discovered by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
The researchers [...] analyzed human lung tissue to identify the new cells, which they call respiratory airway secretory cells (RASCs). The cells line tiny airway branches, deep in the lungs, near the alveoli structures where oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide. The scientists showed that RASCs have stem-cell-like properties enabling them to regenerate other cells that are essential for the normal functioning of alveoli. They also found evidence that cigarette smoking and the common smoking-related ailment called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can disrupt the regenerative functions of RASCs—hinting that correcting this disruption could be a good way to treat COPD.
"COPD is a devastating and common disease, yet we really don't understand the cellular biology of why or how some patients develop it. Identifying new cell types, in particular new progenitor cells, that are injured in COPD could really accelerate the development of new treatments," said study first author Maria Basil, MD, Ph.D., an instructor of Pulmonary Medicine.
COPD typically features progressive damage to and loss of alveoli, exacerbated by chronic inflammation. It is estimated to affect approximately 10 percent of people in some parts of the United States and causes about 3 million deaths every year around the world. Patients often are prescribed steroid anti-inflammatory drugs and/or oxygen therapy, but these treatments can only slow the disease process rather than stop or reverse it. Progress in understanding COPD has been gradual in part because mice—the standard lab animal—have lungs that lack key features of human lungs.
In the new study, Morrisey and his team uncovered evidence of RASCs while examining gene-activity signatures of lung cells sampled from healthy human donors. They soon recognized that RASCs, which don't exist in mouse lungs, are "secretory" cells that reside near alveoli and produce proteins needed for the fluid lining of the airway.
Journal Reference:
Basil, Maria C., Cardenas-Diaz, Fabian L., Kathiriya, Jaymin J., et al. Human distal airways contain a multipotent secretory cell that can regenerate alveoli, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04552-0)