Five private companies are fighting to come up with the perfect space communication network for the needs of future NASA missions.
Category: futurism – Page 5
Zoom Stealer browser extensions harvest corporate meeting intelligence
A newly discovered campaign, which researchers call Zoom Stealer, is affecting 2.2 million Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge users through 18 extensions that collect online meeting-related data like URLs, IDs, topics, descriptions, and embedded passwords.
Zoom Stealer is one of three browser extension campaigns that reached more than 7.8 million users over seven years and are attributed to a single threat actor tracked as DarkSpectre.
Based on the used infrastructure, DarkSpectre is believed to be the same China-linked threat actor behind the previously documented GhostPoster, which targeted Firefox users, and ShadyPanda, which delivered spyware payloads to Chrome and Edge users.
Multi-omics analyses reveal DjTcf4 critical for proper timing of differentiation in planarian regeneration
Wang et al. integrated ST-seq, scRNA-seq, and scATAC-seq data to profile transcriptional and chromatin dynamics in D. japonica head blastema at 5 dpa. They pinpointed the DjTcf4 gene network acting as a master transcription regulator to ensure cells rebuild complex structures like eyes in the right place and time.
The Earth Observer: Offering Perspectives from Space through Time
An intertwined history: the earth observer and EOS
The origami wheel that could explore lunar caves
Beneath the moon’s cratered surface lie networks of lava tubes and deep pits, natural caves that could shelter future lunar bases from cosmic radiation and wild temperature swings. These underground structures represent some of the most scientifically valuable areas in the solar system, but they come with the very real challenge of simply getting there.
The entrances to these caves feature steep, rugged terrain with rocks and loose regolith. Small rovers, preferred for lunar exploration because you can deploy many of them to reduce mission risk, face an inherent limitation. Their compact wheels simply can’t climb over obstacles much larger than the wheel diameter itself. Send a swarm of small rovers and even if some fail, others continue the mission. Send one large rover and a single failure ends everything.
Variable diameter wheels are a new thing in lunar exploration and could solve this, expanding when needed to overcome obstacles, then contracting for efficient transport. But building such a wheel for the moon has proven nearly impossible. The lunar environment is uniquely hostile to mechanical systems. Fine, abrasive dust infiltrates everything, and in the airless vacuum, exposed metal surfaces stick together through a process called cold welding. Traditional hinges and joints don’t last long under these conditions.