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taylorvich writes:

Longevity gene from naked mole rats extends lifespan of mice

In a groundbreaking endeavor, researchers at the University of Rochester have successfully transferred a longevity gene from naked mole rats to mice, resulting in improved health and an extension of the mouse's lifespan.

Naked mole rats, known for their long lifespans and exceptional resistance to age-related diseases, have long captured the attention of the scientific community. By introducing a specific gene responsible for enhanced cellular repair and protection into mice, the Rochester researchers have opened exciting possibilities for unlocking the secrets of aging and extending human lifespan.

"Our study provides a proof of principle that unique longevity mechanisms that evolved in long-lived mammalian species can be exported to improve the lifespans of other mammals," says Vera Gorbunova, the Doris Johns Cherry Professor of biology and medicine at Rochester.

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hubie writes:

Night-time pollinators such as moths need protecting as effectively as bees:

Night-time pollinators such as moths may visit just as many plants as bees, and should also be the focus of conservation and protection efforts, a new study from the University of Sheffield suggests.

The study found that moths under pressure from urbanisation may also be less resilient than bees, due to their more complex life cycle and more specific plant requirements.

It also revealed that despite this threat, moths play a crucial role in supporting urban plant communities, accounting for a third of all pollination in flowering plants, crops and trees.

[...] "As moths and bees both rely on plants for survival, plant populations also rely on insects for pollination. Protecting urban green spaces and ensuring they are developed in such a way that moves beyond bee-only conservation but also supports a diverse array of wildlife, will ensure both bee and moth populations remain resilient and our towns and cities remain healthier, greener places."

[...] [Study author Dr. E.E.] Ellis says the research demonstrates just how crucial moths are at pollinating plants, including crops, and that the study has implications for wildlife-friendly gardening initiatives, urban planners and policy makers responsible for developing urban green spaces for parks or urban horticulture.

She said: "People don't generally appreciate moths so they can often be overlooked compared to bees when talking about protection and conservation, but it's becoming apparent that there needs to be a much more focused effort to raise awareness of the important role moths play in establishing healthy environments, especially as we know moth populations have drastically declined over the past 50 years.

"When planning green spaces, consideration needs to be given to ensure planting is diverse and moth-friendly as well as bee-friendly, to ensure both our plants and insects remain resilient in the face of the climate crisis and further losses."

Journal Reference:
Ellis, E.E., Edmondson, J.L., Maher, K.H., Hipperson, H. & Campbell, S.A. (2023) Negative effects of urbanisation on diurnal and nocturnal pollen-transport networks [open]. Ecology Letters, 26, 1382–1393. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.14261

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Fukushima's Water Release: What We Know

Japan has announced plans to release wastewater from the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean starting [this past] Thursday. Here is what we know about the release, how the water has been treated and concerns around the safety of the exercise.

Around 100,000 liters (26,500 gallons) of contaminated water—from cooling the crippled plant's reactors as well as groundwater and rain seeping in—is collected at the site in northeast Japan every day. Some 1.34 million tons—equivalent to almost 540 Olympic pools—are now stored in around a thousand steel containers at the seaside site, and now there is no more space, authorities say.

Japan decided in 2021, after years of discussion, that it would release at most around 500,000 liters per day into the sea via a pipe one kilometer (0.6 miles) long. Plant operator TEPCO says that a special filtering system called ALPS has removed all radioactive elements—including caesium and strontium—except tritium.

TEPCO has said it has diluted the water to reduce radioactivity levels to 1,500 becquerels per liter (Bq/L), far below the national safety standard of 60,000 Bq/L.

Tony Hooker, nuclear expert from the University of Adelaide, said that the level of tritium is well below the World Health Organization drinking water limit of 10,000 Bq/L. "Tritium is regularly released from nuclear power facilities into waterways worldwide," Hooker told AFP. "For decades (there have been) no evidential detrimental environmental or health effects," he said.

upstart writes:

The ClearSpace-1 mission was going to chuck a defunct payload adapter to its fiery death, but another piece of space debris got to it first:

In a sad case of debris-on-debris crime, a defunct payload adapter that was chosen as the subject of a space debris cleanup mission was itself hit by a piece of space junk.

The VESPA payload adapter has been floating in Earth's orbit following the launch of a Vega rocket in 2013, adding to the thousands of pieces of space junk that currently surround our planet. On August 10, the European Space Agency (ESA) was informed by the United States 18th Space Defense Squadron that new pieces of debris were spotted within the vicinity of the VESPA adapter, suggesting that the object broke up into smaller pieces due to a collision with another piece of space debris.

After a decade in orbit as a useless piece of space junk, VESPA was on the verge of serving a final purpose as the target of ClearSpace-1—a claw-like spacecraft designed to grab space junk and fling it into Earth's atmosphere to burn up. The European mission is slated for launch in 2026, and was meant to rendezvous with VESPA in order to test the new junk removal technology in space.

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upstart writes:

The variant has grabbed attention, but with such limited data, the risk is unclear:

A remarkably mutated coronavirus variant classified as BA.2.86 seized scientists' attention last week as it popped up in four countries, including the US.

So far, the overall risk posed by the new subvariant is unclear. It's possible it could lead to a new wave of infection; it's also possible (perhaps most likely) it could fizzle out completely. Scientists simply don't have enough information to know. But, what is very clear is that the current precipitous decline in coronavirus variant monitoring is extremely risky.

[...] What grabbed quick attention is BA.2.86's large number of mutations, particularly in the genetic code for its critical spike protein—the protein the virus uses to latch onto and enter human cells. BA.2.86 has 34 mutations in its spike gene relative to BA.2, the omicron sublineage from which it descended. This number of spike mutations between BA.2.86 and BA.2 is chillingly similar to the number of mutations seen between the original omicron (BA.1) and the ancestral Wuhan strain. The evolutionary jump from Wuhan to BA.1 caused a towering peak of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in early 2022. But, experts are skeptical that BA.2.86 could produce a rivaling wave, given the extensive levels of immunity in the population from both repeat vaccinations and infections.

[...] Perhaps the biggest question left unanswered about BA.2.86 is how well it will spread relative to other variants in circulation, namely XBB.1.5, EG.5, FL.1.5.1, and others. For BA.2.86 to cause its own wave, it must couple its antibody-escaping abilities with changes that make it more easily transmissible than other variants. So far, there's simply not enough data to know if this is the case or not.

Still, experts like Bloom are not alarmed. "The most likely scenario is this variant is less transmissible than current dominant variants, and so never spreads widely. This is the fate of most new SARS-CoV-2 variants," he wrote in his analysis.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/08/ai-powered-brain-implants-help-paralyzed-patients-communicate-faster-than-ever/

Paralysis had robbed the two women of their ability to speak. For one, the cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a disease that affects the motor neurons. The other had suffered a stroke in her brain stem. Though they can't enunciate clearly, they remember how to formulate words.

Now, after volunteering to receive brain implants, both are able to communicate through a computer at a speed approaching the tempo of normal conversation. By parsing the neural activity associated with the facial movements involved in talking, the devices decode their intended speech at a rate of 62 and 78 words per minute, respectively—several times faster than the previous record. Their cases are detailed in two papers published Wednesday by separate teams in the journal Nature.

"It is now possible to imagine a future where we can restore fluid conversation to someone with paralysis, enabling them to freely say whatever they want to say with an accuracy high enough to be understood reliably," said Frank Willett, a research scientist at Stanford University's Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory, during a media briefing on Tuesday. Willett is an author on a paper produced by Stanford researchers; the other was published by a team at UC San Francisco.

While slower than the roughly 160-word-per-minute rate of natural conversation among English speakers, scientists say it's an exciting step toward restoring real-time speech using a brain-computer interface, or BCI.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2023/08/the-strange-secretive-world-of-north-korean-science-fiction/

A plane is flying to the Philippines, gliding above "the infinite surface" of the Pacific Ocean. Suddenly, a few passengers start to scream. Soon, the captain announces there's a bomb on board, and it's set to detonate if the aircraft drops below 10,000 feet.

"The inside of the plane turned into a battlefield," the story reads. "The captain was visibly startled and vainly tried to calm down the screaming and utterly terrorized passengers."

Only one person keeps his cool: a young North Korean diplomat who has faith that his country will find a solution and save everyone. And he's right. North Korea's esteemed scientists and engineers create a mysterious anti-gravitational field and stop the plane in mid-air. The bomb is defused, and everyone gets off the aircraft and is brought back safely to Earth.

This story, Change Course (Hangno rǔl pakkura) by Yi Kŭmchǒl, speaks about solidarity, peace, and love for the motherland, displaying an intricate relationship between literature and politics. It was first published in 2004 in the Chosǒn munhak magazine, only to be reprinted 13 years later, around the time North Korea claimed it was capable of launching attacks on US soil.

"Political messages in every North Korean sci-fi can be hardly missed," historian of science Dong-Won Kim, who taught at Harvard University and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, told me.
[...]
Change Course and other North Korean sci-fi works can seem perplexing to people who have spent all their lives in the West. Protagonists of these stories are often caught between two versions of themselves: They question everything regarding technology, disputing every preconception for the pursuit of scientific truth. At the same time, they follow the party's guidelines blindly, without questioning its decisions or authority.

hubie writes:

Do intelligent people think faster?

There are 100 billion or so neurons in the human brain. Each one of them is connected to an estimated 1,000 neighboring or distant neurons. This unfathomable network is the key to the brain's amazing capabilities, but it is also what makes it so difficult to understand how the brain works.

[...] To simulate the mechanisms of the human brain, Ritter and her team use digital data from brain scans like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as well as mathematical models based on theoretical knowledge about biological processes. This initially results in a "general" human brain model. The scientists then refine this model using data from individual people, thus creating "personalized brain models."

[...] "We can reproduce the activity of individual brains very efficiently," says Ritter. "We found out in the process that these in silico brains behave differently from one another – and in the same way as their biological counterparts. Our virtual avatars match the intellectual performance and reaction times of their biological analogues."

Interestingly, the "slower" brains in both the humans and the models were more synchronized, i.e., in time with one other. This greater synchrony allowed neural circuits in the frontal lobe to hold off on decisions longer than brains that were less well coordinated. The models revealed how reduced temporal coordination results in the information required for decision-making neither being available when needed nor stored in working memory.

upstart writes:

Gizmodo's tests found the higher-ed gatekeeper shares GPAs, SAT scores, and other data with big tech:

Many students have no choice about working with the College Board, the company that administers the SAT test and Advanced Placement exams. Part of that relationship involves a long history of privacy issues. Tests by Gizmodo found if you use some of the handy tools promoted by College Board's website, the organization sends details about your SAT scores, GPA, and other data to Facebook, TikTok, and a variety of companies.

[...] The College Board shares this data via "pixels," invisible tracking technology used to facilitate targeted advertising on platforms such as Facebook and TikTok. The data is shared along with unique user IDs to identify the students, along with other information about how you use the College Board's site.

Organizations use pixels and other tools to share data so they can send targeted ads to people who use their apps and websites on other platforms, such as Google, Facebook, and TikTok.

"We do not share SAT scores or GPAs with Facebook or TikTok, and any other third parties using pixel or cookies," said a College Board spokesperson. "In fact, we do not send any personally identifiable information (PII) through our pixels on the site. In addition, we do not use SAT scores or GPAs for any targeting."

After receiving this comment, Gizmodo shared a screenshot of the College Board sending GPAs and SAT scores to TikTok using a pixel. The spokesperson then acknowledged that the College Board's website actually does share this data.

upstart writes:

A leaked audio recording provides more detail on why the teleconferencing company is cracking down on remote work.:

In the wake of the onslaught of the covid-19, employees across the world grew chummy with a perfectly appropriate remote work schedule that allows them to work from home. However, one of the companies that carried pandemic digital infrastructure on its back, Zoom, isn't too keen on keeping remote workers away from the office since the video calling platform is making them too friendly, according to leaked audio of CEO Eric Yuan at an all-hands meeting at the company.

Insider first reported on the recording in which Yuan told employees within 50 miles of an office that they must report to the office a minimum of two days a week. The announcement came at a companywide meeting on August 3, during which Yuan said that it's difficult for Zoomies—the pet name the company gives to employees—to build trust with each other on a computer screen. Yuan also reportedly added that it's difficult to have innovative conversations and debates on the company's own platform because it makes people too friendly.

"Over the past several years, we've hired so many new 'Zoomies' that it's really hard to build trust," Yuan said in the audio. "We cannot have a great conversation. We cannot debate each other well because everyone tends to be very friendly when you join a Zoom call."

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-oil-microbes-reshape-droplets-optimize.html

A team of French and Japanese environmental scientists has found that one kind of oil-eating microbe reshapes droplets to optimize biodegradation. In their study, reported in the journal Science, the group isolated Alcanivorax borkumensis bacteria specimens in a lab setting, fed them crude oil, and then watched how they worked together to eat the oil as quickly and efficiently as possible.
...
In one experiment, A. borkumensis samples that had not been exposed to crude oil before were introduced to simple crude oil droplets. Groups of the bacteria converged on a droplet, forming a sphere. The sphere shape persisted until the entire oil droplet had been consumed.

But when the team exposed samples with experience consuming crude oil, their behavior was much more advanced. Initially, upon converging on a droplet, a sphere formed—but then finger-like protrusions formed, radiating out from the sphere, each completely covered with bacteria. The result was much faster, more efficient consumption of the droplet.

Journal Reference:
M. Prasad et al, Alcanivorax borkumensis biofilms enhance oil degradation by interfacial tubulation, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.adf3345

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Vulnerability allows hackers to execute malicious code when targets open malicious ZIP files:

A newly discovered zero-day in the widely used WinRAR file-compression program has been exploited for four months by unknown attackers who are using it to install malware when targets open booby-trapped JPGs and other innocuous inside file archives.

The vulnerability, residing in the way WinRAR processes the ZIP file format, has been under active exploit since April in securities trading forums, researchers from security firm Group IB reported Wednesday. The attackers have been using the vulnerability to remotely execute code that installs malware from families, including DarkMe, GuLoader, and Remcos RAT.

From there, the criminals withdraw money from broker accounts. The total amount of financial losses and total number of victims infected is unknown, although Group-IB said it has tracked at least 130 individuals known to have been compromised. WinRAR developers fixed the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-38831, earlier this month.

[...] WinRAR has more than 500 million users who rely on the program to compress large files to make them more manageable and quicker to upload and download. It's not uncommon for people to immediately decompress the resulting ZIP files without inspecting them first. Even when people attempt to examine them for malice, antivirus software often has trouble peering into the compressed data to identify malicious code.

The malicious ZIP archives Group-IB found were posted on public forums used by traders to swap information and discuss topics related to cryptocurrencies and other securities. In most cases, the malicious ZIPs were attached to forum posts. In other cases, they were distributed on the file storage site catbox[.]moe. Group-IB identified eight popular trading forums used to spread the files.

Additional details can be found at: ZDI-23-1152

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

US government regulators reportedly tried to come to an agreement with TikTok to prevent banning the app that would have granted the federal government vast powers over the app. That’s according to a draft of a deal between TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) obtained by Forbes, a contract that would have given multiple US agencies unprecedented access into the app’s records and operations. Many of the concessions the government asked of TikTok look eerily similar to the surveillance tactics critics have accused Chinese officials of abusing. To allay fears the short-form video app could be used as a Chinese surveillance tool, the federal government nearly transformed it into an American one instead.

Forbes reports that the draft agreement, dated Summer 2022, would have given the US government agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense far more access to TikTok’s operations than that of any other social media company. The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok’s US facilities, records, and servers with minimal prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization. It would also let US agencies block changes to the app’s terms of service in the US and order the company to subject itself to various audits, all on TikTok’s dime, per Forbes. In extreme cases, the agreement would allow government organizations to demand TikTok temporarily shut off functioning in the US.

CFIUS did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment. TikTok would not confirm or deny the draft agreement but instead sent us this statement.

“As has been widely reported, we’ve been working with CFIUS for well over a year to implement a national security agreement and have invested significant resources in implementing a firewall to isolate U.S. user data,” a TikTok spokesperson said. “Today, all new protected U.S. user data is stored in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in the U.S. with tightly controlled and monitored gateways. We are doing more than any peer company to safeguard U.S. national security interests.”

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.errno.fr/BypassingBitlocker.html

Have you ever been told that the company's data on laptops is protected thanks to BitLocker? Well it turns out that this depends on BitLocker's configuration...

The BitLocker partition is encrypted using the Full Volume Encryption Key (FVEK). The FVEK itself is encrypted using the Volume Master Key (VMK) and stored on the disk, next to the encrypted data. This permits key rotations without re-encrypting the whole disk.

The VMK is stored in the TPM. Thus the disk can only be decrypted when booted from this computer (there is a recovery mechanism in Active Directory though).

In order to decrypt the disk, the CPU will ask that the TPM sends the VMK over the SPI bus.

The vulnerability should be obvious: at some point in the boot process, the VMK transits unencrypted between the TPM and the CPU. This means that it can be captured and used to decrypt the disk.

Original Submission

acid andy writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Since the 17th century, when Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens first debated the nature of light, scientists have been puzzling over whether light is best viewed as a wave or a particle—or perhaps, at the quantum level, even both at once. Now, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have revealed a new connection between the two perspectives, using a 350-year-old mechanical theorem—ordinarily used to describe the movement of large, physical objects like pendulums and planets—to explain some of the most complex behaviors of light waves.

The work, led by Xiaofeng Qian, assistant professor of physics at Stevens and reported in the August 17 online issue of Physical Review Research, also proves for the first time that a light wave's degree of non-quantum entanglement exists in a direct and complementary relationship with its degree of polarization. As one rises, the other falls, enabling the level of entanglement to be inferred directly from the level of polarization, and vice versa. This means that hard-to-measure optical properties such as amplitudes, phases and correlations—perhaps even these of quantum wave systems—can be deduced from something a lot easier to measure: light intensity.

"We've known for over a century that light sometimes behaves like a wave, and sometimes like a particle, but reconciling those two frameworks has proven extremely difficult," said Qian "Our work doesn't solve that problem—but it does show that there are profound connections between wave and particle concepts not just at the quantum level, but at the level of classical light-waves and point-mass systems."

Qian's team used a mechanical theorem, originally developed by Huygens in a 1673 book on pendulums, that explains how the energy required to rotate an object varies depending on the object's mass and the axis around which it turns. "This is a well-established mechanical theorem that explains the workings of physical systems like clocks or prosthetic limbs," Qian explained. "But we were able to show that it can offer new insights into how light works, too."

[...] "Essentially, we found a way to translate an optical system so we could visualize it as a mechanical system, then describe it using well-established physical equations," explained Qian.

Journal information:
More information: Xiao-Feng Qian et al, Bridging coherence optics and classical mechanics: A generic light polarization-entanglement complementary relation, Physical Review Research (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.033110

Journal information: Physical Review Research

PDF available at https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.033110. [Added by JR 29/08/23 at 08:39 UTC]

Original Submission