Lifeboat Foundation

Astronomers analyzing 13 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have found an unexpected and as yet unexplained feature outside of our galaxy.

“It is a completely serendipitous discovery,” said Alexander Kashlinsky, a cosmologist at the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, who presented the research at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans. “We found a much stronger signal, and in a different part of the sky, than the one we were looking for.”

Intriguingly, the gamma-ray signal is found in a similar direction and with a nearly identical magnitude as another unexplained feature, one produced by some of the most energetic cosmic particles ever detected.

Summary: Researchers made a significant discovery using an artificial neural network model, suggesting that musical instinct may emerge naturally from the human brain. By analyzing various natural sounds through Google’s AudioSet, the team found that certain neurons in the network selectively responded to music, mimicking the behavior of the auditory cortex in real brains.

This spontaneous generation of music-selective neurons indicates that our ability to process music may be an innate cognitive function, formed as an evolutionary adaptation to better process sounds from nature.

The US wants to build a long-term human outpost on the moon by around 2030. Here is all the tech that will be needed, from a space station in lunar orbit to a way to avoid ‘space hay fever’

The free energy principle a unified brain theory.

Shared with Dropbox.

AI is still far from achieving human-level intelligence — but some researchers are suggesting that the technology may understand the world.

Light can behave in strange ways when it interacts with materials. For example, in a photonic material that consists of periodic arrangements of nanoscale optical cavities, light can slow to a crawl or even stop altogether. Theorists have explained this phenomenon for some of these photonic “metacrystals” using the simplifying assumption that the light in each cavity interacts only with the light in its nearest neighbor cavities. But recent observations of photonic metacrystals with larger unit cells suggest that longer-range interactions should also be considered. Now Thanh Xuan Hoang at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore and collaborators have theoretically confirmed the importance of long-range interactions for slowing or stopping light in a one-dimensional photonic metacrystal [1]. The team says that the finding could be used to help researchers design nanoparticle arrays for analog image processing and optical computing.

For their study, Hoang and his collaborators modeled the light–matter interactions within a row of identical dielectric nanoparticles whose diameters were similar to the wavelength of the light. Such a system is relatively tractable with precise solutions, making it a useful tool for investigating the long-range effects hinted at by recent experiments.

When the researchers extended their one-dimensional system to hundreds of nanoparticles, they found that they could collectively excite the particles by oscillating a nearby electric dipole. The resulting system displayed a resonant state that slowed a specific wavelength of light. This outcome occurred only when long-range interactions between particles were permitted. Hoang likens the dipolar emitter to the conductor of an orchestra and the particles to musicians. The nanoparticles harmonize under the conductor’s direction to create a cohesive piece, he says.

A team of engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has recently shown that nearly any material can be turned into a device that continuously harvests electricity from humidity in the air.

Researchers describe the “generic Air-gen effect”—nearly any material can be engineered with nanopores to harvest, cost effective, scalable, interruption-free electricity.

In a recent study published in JAMA Neurology a group of researchers determined the utility of a novel and commercially available immunoassay for plasma phosphorylated tau 217 (p-tau217) to detect Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) pathology and evaluate reference ranges for abnormal amyloid β (Aβ) and longitudinal change across three selected cohorts.

Blood biomarkers have become key in AD diagnosis, offering a more scalable option than cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) or positron emission tomography (PET) scans. They are particularly beneficial in settings with limited access to advanced testing, paving the way for early and precise diagnosis and better patient management. p-tau, especially p-tau at threonine 217 (p-tau217), stands out as a leading blood biomarker. It excels in differentiating AD from other conditions and detecting AD in mild cognitive impairment cases, often outperforming other tau biomarkers.

As the medical community moves towards anti-Aβ therapies for dementia, validated blood biomarkers like p-tau217 are crucial for guiding treatment. Further research is necessary to validate plasma p-tau217 across diverse memory clinic populations, addressing comorbidities to enhance its clinical utility for AD.

VexTrio, the shadowy entity controlling a massive network of 70,000+ domains, is finally in the spotlight. This “traffic broker” fuels countless scams & malware campaigns, including ClearFake, SocGholish, & more. Read:

The threat actors behind ClearFake, SocGholish, and dozens of other actors have established partnerships with another entity known as VexTrio as part of a massive “criminal affiliate program,” new findings from Infoblox reveal.

The latest development demonstrates the “breadth of their activities and depth of their connections within the cybercrime industry,” the company said, describing VexTrio as the “single largest malicious traffic broker described in security literature.”

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