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Feb 7, 2024

Innovation in stone tool technology involved multiple stages at the time of modern human dispersals, study finds

Posted by in categories: education, evolution

A study led by researchers at the Nagoya University Museum in Japan may change how we understand the cultural evolution of Homo sapiens at the time of their dispersal across Eurasia about 50,000 to 40,000 years ago. These findings challenge traditional beliefs about the timing and nature of cultural transitions during this critical period in human history.

Feb 7, 2024

The most important boring idea in the universe

Posted by in category: futurism

We live in a world dominated by science, but most people don’t understand its most essential characteristic: establishing standards of evidence to keep us from getting fooled by our own biases and opinions.

Feb 7, 2024

The Mysterious Prehistoric Underwater Structure Beneath Lake Michigan

Posted by in category: futurism

A prehistoric structure reminiscent of England’s iconic Stonehenge has been uncovered in Grand Traverse Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan on the western shore of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

The findings were found by Dr. Mark Holley, a distinguished professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University.

The picturesque waters of Grand Traverse Bay have long-held maritime history, with dozens of known shipwrecks attesting to the area’s bustling 19th and 20th-century maritime trade routes. Under its serene surface, secrets of a different kind have emerged, capturing the attention of archaeologists and historians.

Feb 7, 2024

Cardiac Arrests Linked to Drug ODs Are Killing the Healthy Young

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

THURSDAY, Feb. 1, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Drug overdoses resulting in cardiac arrest occur most often among young adults, a new study finds.

People tend to have OD-related cardiac arrests at an average age of 39, compared to an average age of 64 for those suffering cardiac arrests not related to opioids, results show.

“Many communities face ongoing challenges with increases in drug overdoses, which tend to affect a younger, healthier population,” said lead researcher Aditya Shekhar, a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

Feb 7, 2024

Alterations in the blood immune system found to increase cancer risk

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

An international team of researchers has identified the genetic basis and biological processes that influence cancer risk related to alterations in the number of immune cells present in the blood. This is a significant advance in understanding how the immune system can prevent the appearance of tumors.

The study, led by researchers from the Institut Català d’Oncologia (ICO), the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), and the Translational Genomics Research Institute in the United States, has been published in the journal Genome Medicine and represents a significant step towards a better understanding of how alterations in the facilitate the onset of cancer.

The immune system is responsible for maintaining the integrity and function of the body by continuously protecting us from exogenous attacks, such as viruses and endogenous attacks, in this case, cancer. This gives it a central role in inhibiting carcinogenesis, and its disruption may increase the risk of cancer by allowing malignant cells to proliferate.

Feb 7, 2024

Korean researchers develop heat-resistant material that withstands 1000°C

Posted by in categories: energy, materials

A research team at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has developed a thermally refractory material that maintains its optical properties even at temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius and in strong ultraviolet illumination. The material can be used in various applications ranging from space and aerospace to thermal photovoltaic (TPV) systems.

Thermal radiation is the term used to define the electromagnetic radiation emitted from all matter whose temperature is above absolute zero. The radiation results from the heat generated when charges in the material move and are released in the form of electromagnetic radiation.

Scientists have been working on tapping this radiation as a form of energy source. The heat from facilities such as thermal power generation plants and industrial sites can be repurposed for heating, cooling, and even energy production when suitable thermal refractory materials are available.

Feb 7, 2024

Deep learning-aided decision support for diagnosis of skin disease across skin tones

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

Deep learning #AI for skin lesions assessed for assistance to 800 dermatologists and primary care physicians from 39 countries Marked improvement in accuracy but widened bias gap.


In a large-scale study involving 389 board-certified dermatologists and 459 primary-care physicians from 39 countries, the impact of a deep learning-aided decision support system on physicians’ diagnostic accuracy was tested across 46 skin diseases and for both light and dark skin tones.

Feb 7, 2024

Apple Fans Horrified to Discover Vision Pro Can’t Play VR Porn

Posted by in category: virtual reality

Apple’s new Vision Pro headset VR doesn’t support “immersive” adult content — and the people who bought it for that are not happy.

Feb 7, 2024

Critical vulnerability affecting most Linux distros allows for bootkits

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, internet

Linux developers are in the process of patching a high-severity vulnerability that, in certain cases, allows the installation of malware that runs at the firmware level, giving infections access to the deepest parts of a device where they’re hard to detect or remove.

The vulnerability resides in shim, which in the context of Linux is a small component that runs in the firmware early in the boot process before the operating system has started. More specifically, the shim accompanying virtually all Linux distributions plays a crucial role in secure boot, a protection built into most modern computing devices to ensure every link in the boot process comes from a verified, trusted supplier. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability allows attackers to neutralize this mechanism by executing malicious firmware at the earliest stages of the boot process before the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface firmware has loaded and handed off control to the operating system.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023–40547, is what’s known as a buffer overflow, a coding bug that allows attackers to execute code of their choice. It resides in a part of the shim that processes booting up from a central server on a network using the same HTTP that the Internet is based on. Attackers can exploit the code-execution vulnerability in various scenarios, virtually all following some form of successful compromise of either the targeted device or the server or network the device boots from.

Feb 7, 2024

Nanomedicine advancement shows potential for personalized point-of-care therapeutics

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering

Stefan Wilhelm, an associate professor in the Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, and several students in his Biomedical Nano-Engineering Lab have recently published an article in the journal Nano Letters (“Toward the Scalable, Rapid, Reproducible, and Cost-Effective Synthesis of Personalized Nanomedicines at the Point of Care”) that outlines their recent important nanomedicine advancement.

The group examined how to create tools that produce nanomedicines, such as vaccine formulations, directly at the point of care. In doing so, the large centralized facilities, shipping challenges, and extreme cold storage challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic would no longer limit vaccine distribution.

Wilhelm, with student researchers such as Hamilton Young, a senior biomedical engineering student, and Yuxin He, a biomedical engineering graduate research assistant, used 3D printer parts to mix fluid streams together containing the building blocks of nanomedicines and their payloads in a T-mixer format.