Lifeboat Foundation

The ability to learn and form memories allows animals to adapt their behavior based on previous experiences. Associative learning, the process through which organisms learn about the relationship between two distinct events, has been extensively studied in various animal taxa. However, the existence of associative learning, prior to the emergence of centralized nervous systems in bilaterian animals, remains unclear. Cnidarians such as sea anemones or jellyfish possess a nerve net, which lacks centralization. As the sister group to bilaterians, they are particularly well suited for studying the evolution of nervous system functions. Here, we probe the capacity of the starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis to form associative memories by using a classical conditioning approach. We developed a protocol combining light as the conditioned stimulus with an electric shock as the aversive unconditioned stimulus. After repetitive training, animals exhibited a conditioned response to light alone—indicating that they learned the association. In contrast, all control conditions did not form associative memories. Besides shedding light on an aspect of cnidarian behavior, these results root associative learning before the emergence of NS centralization in the metazoan lineage and raise fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of cognition in brainless animals.

The Near–Ultrasound Invisible Trojan, or NUIT, was developed by a team of researchers from the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs as a technique to secretly convey harmful orders to voice assistants on smartphones and smart speakers.

If you watch videos on YouTube on your smart TV, then that television must have a speaker, right? According to Guinevere Chen, associate professor and co-author of the NUIT article, “the sound of NUIT harmful orders will [be] inaudible, and it may attack your mobile phone as well as connect with your Google Assistant or Alexa devices.” “That may also happen in Zooms during meetings. During the meeting, if someone were to unmute themself, they would be able to implant the attack signal that would allow them to hack your phone, which was placed next to your computer.

Continue reading “Hacking phones remotely without touching via new inaudible ultrasound attack” »

The social media behemoth Twitter was recently dealt a significant setback when significant portions of its source code were published online and made public. The corporation proceeded promptly to notify GitHub, an online collaboration platform for software engineers, of a copyright violation in order to get the stolen code removed from the site. It is not known how long the code had been available online, although it seems to have been accessible to the public for a number of months.

Twitter has filed a petition with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California requesting that the court require GitHub to disclose the identity of the individual who is responsible for spreading the code as well as any other users that downloaded it.

Continue reading “Twitter’s source code leaked on GitHub, revealing proprietary information and security flaws” »

A serious flaw has been found in WooCommerce, a popular plug-in for managing online businesses that are built on the WordPress platform. This flaw might enable cybercriminals to take control of websites. Nevertheless, the WooCommerce team has provided fixes, and attackers are able to reverse-engineer the patch. Technical specifics concerning the vulnerability have not yet been disclosed. There are presently approximately 500,000 active installations of the WooCommerce Payments plug-in, which is the component that includes the vulnerability. The creators of WooCommerce have stated that managed WordPress hosting providers such as WordPress.com, Pressable, and WPVIP have automatically updated websites that are hosted on their platforms. But, if the other websites don’t already have automatic updates turned on, the administrators of those websites should immediately apply the update that is specific to their version.

Any versions of WooCommerce Payments that were created after 4.8.0, which was published at the end of September, are susceptible to the vulnerability. The following updated versions were made available by Automattic: 4.8.2, 4.9.1, 5.0.4, 5.1.3, 5.2.2, 5.3.1, 5.4.1, 5.5.2 and 5.6.2.

Continue reading “WooCommerce’s serious vulnerability allows unauthorized wordpress website takeover” »

On the third day of the Pwn2Own hacking contest, security researchers were awarded $185,000 after demonstrating 5 zero-day exploits targeting Windows 11, Ubuntu Desktop, and the VMware Workstation virtualization software.

The highlight of the day was the Ubuntu Desktop operating system getting hacked three times by three different teams, although one of them was a collision with the exploit being previously known.

The three working Ubuntu zero-day were demoed by Kyle Zeng of ASU SEFCOM (a double free bug), Mingi Cho of Theori (a Use-After-Free vulnerability), and Bien Pham (@bienpnn) of Qrious Security.

Continue reading “Windows, Ubuntu, and VMWare Workstation hacked on last day of Pwn2Own” »

Year 2022 😗

A sparsified SYK model is constructed using learning techniques and the corresponding traversable wormhole dynamics are observed, representing a step towards a program for studying quantum gravity in the laboratory.

Year 2022 😗

WASHINGTON, Nov 30 (Reuters) — In science fiction — think films and TV like “Interstellar” and “Star Trek” — wormholes in the cosmos serve as portals through space and time for spacecraft to traverse unimaginable distances with ease. If only it were that simple.

Scientists have long pursued a deeper understanding of wormholes and now appear to be making progress. Researchers announced on Wednesday that they forged two miniscule simulated black holes — those extraordinarily dense celestial objects with gravity so powerful that not even light can escape — in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them through what amounted to a tunnel in space-time.

Continue reading “Scientists build ‘baby’ wormhole as sci-fi moves closer to fact” »

In the current edition of The Lancet Neurology, researchers of the Human Brain Project (HBP) present the novel clinical uses of advanced brain modeling methods. Computational brain modeling techniques that integrate the measured data of a patient have been developed by researchers at AMU Marseille as part of the HBP. The models can be used as predictive tools to virtually test clinical hypotheses and strategies.

To create personalized brain models, the researchers use a simulation technology called The Virtual Brain (TVB), which HBP scientist Viktor Jirsa has developed together with collaborators. For each patient, the computational models are created from data of the individually measured anatomy, structural connectivity and brain dynamics.

The approach has been first applied in epilepsy, and a major clinical trial is currently ongoing. The TVB technology enables clinicians to simulate the spread of abnormal activity during epileptic seizures in a patient’s brain, helping them to better identify the target areas. In January, the team had presented the detailed methodology of the epilepsy work on the cover of Science Translational Medicine.

In the intensive care unit (ICU), critically ill patients are cared for by a multidisciplinary care team. Compassionate and caring behaviors on the part of the care team result in better outcomes for patients and their families, and care providers entering the demanding field of medicine because they wish to help people and relieve suffering. However, studies have demonstrated deficiencies in delivering compassionate health care. Evidence suggests that physicians may miss up to 90% of opportunities to respond to patients with compassion.

To determine what factors drive and enhance compassionate care behaviors in the ICU setting and which factors drain and negate caring attitudes and behaviors, Shahla Siddiqui, MD, MSc, FCCM, and a colleague conducted an observational, qualitative study of an international panel of intensive and critical care providers. The researcher-clinicians report in PLOS ONE that while ICU physicians and nurses feel a deep moral imperative to deliver the highest level of compassionate care, pressures of capacity strain, lack of staff, lack of compassionate skills training and a heavy emphasis on electronic health record maintenance present significant hurdles to achieving that goal.

“Studies done on physician compassion from a patient perspective emphasize listening and awareness of the patient’s emotional state, which not only builds trust within the patient-physician relationship but also enhances resilience amongst the care team and prevents burnout,” said Siddiqui, an anesthesiologist at BIDMC. “Our aim was to describe compassionate behaviors in the ICU, study the factors that enhance and those that drain such behaviors with an aim to enable recommendations for practice and training.”