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Nov 3, 2023

Giant Pyramid Buried in Indonesia Could Be The Oldest in The World

Posted by in category: futurism

A giant underground pyramid hidden beneath a hillside in Indonesia far outdates Stonehenge or the Giza Pyramids and may come to rival the oldest megalithic structures ever built by human hands.

Remember the name Gunung Padang.

The exceptional hillside of ancient stone structures on the island of West Java is sacred to locals, who call this kind of structure a ‘punden berundak’, meaning stepped pyramid, for the terraces that lead to its peak.

Nov 3, 2023

Researcher Claims to Crack RSA-2048 With Quantum Computer

Posted by in categories: information science, quantum physics, robotics/AI, security

A scientist claims to have developed an inexpensive system for using quantum computing to crack RSA, which is the world’s most commonly used public key algorithm.

See Also: Live Webinar | Generative AI: Myths, Realities and Practical Use Cases

The response from multiple cryptographers and security experts is: Sounds great if true, but can you prove it? “I would be very surprised if RSA-2048 had been broken,” Alan Woodward, a professor of computer science at England’s University of Surrey, told me.

Nov 3, 2023

Hackers Are Taking Over Starlink Accounts, Ordering Thousands In Equipment

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, mobile phones

Imagine this scenario: It’s early Saturday morning, you just woke up, and are trying to check the news on your phone while enjoying a cup of coffee. You notice your phone isn’t connected to the internet for some reason. You check the Starlink app for a system status, and it’s offline. Attempts to create a support ticket are unsuccessful, your Starlink account credentials aren’t being accepted. The bank calls a few moments later. They’ve frozen your credit card due to fraud. You listen, stunned, as they explain that someone has ordered over $6,000 worth of Starlink equipment in the last 24 hours.

No internet service, thousands of dollars stolen, and no help from Starlink. This is an increasingly common situation faced by Starlink customers. Hackers are gaining access to unsuspecting Starlink accounts, and using the payment information on file to order thousands in equipment. Later, they will resell the equipment on 3rd party marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace. In this article, I’ll explain what’s going on, how to protect yourself, and what Starlink needs to do to prevent more accounts from being hacked.

Table of Contents.

Nov 3, 2023

Bartering light for light: Scientists discover new system to control the chaotic behavior of light

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Harnessing and controlling light is vital for the development of technology, including energy harvesting, computation, communications, and biomedical sensing. Yet, in real-world scenarios, complexity in light’s behavior poses challenges for its efficient control. Physicist Andrea Alù likens the behavior of light in chaotic systems to the initial break shot in a game of billiards.

“In billiards, tiny variations in the way you launch the cue ball will lead to different patterns of the balls bouncing around the table,” said Alù, Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, founding director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center and distinguished professor at CUNY.

“Light rays operate in a similar way in a chaotic cavity. It becomes difficult to model to predict what will happen because you could run an experiment many times with similar settings, and you’ll get a different response every time.”

Nov 3, 2023

UMBC Team Makes First-ever Observation Of A Virus Attaching To Another Virus: University Of Maryland, Baltimore County

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, mathematics

In a paper published in the Journal of the International Society of Microbial Ecology, a UMBC team and colleagues from Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) describe the first observation of a satellite bacteriophage (a virus that infects bacterial cells) consistently attaching to a helper bacteriophage at its “neck”—where the capsid joins the tail of the virus.

In detailed electron microscopy images taken by Tagide deCarvalho, assistant director of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences core facilities and first author on the new paper, 80 percent (40 out of 50) helpers had a satellite bound at the neck. Some of those that did not had remnant satellite tendrils present at the neck. Erill, senior author on the paper, describes them as appearing like “bite marks.”

“When I saw it, I was like, ‘I can’t believe this,’” deCarvalho says. “No one has ever seen a bacteriophage—or any other virus—attach to another virus.”

Nov 3, 2023

Microsoft to throttle Gen AI services for ‘excessive’ users

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Excessive???

Looks more like “we don’t wont you to earn more then us”


Updated T&Cs reveal intent to restrict access under undefined circumstances.

Nov 3, 2023

Nanoparticles deliver treatment directly to tumors of deadly brain cancer

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, nanotechnology, neuroscience

Using nanoparticles administered directly into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), a research team has developed a treatment that may overcome significant challenges in treating a particularly deadly brain cancer.

The researchers, led by professors Mark Saltzman and Ranjit Bindra, administered to mice with medulloblastoma a treatment that features specially designed drug-carrying nanoparticles. The study, published in Science Translational Medicine, showed that mice who received this treatment lived significantly longer than mice in the control group.

Medulloblastoma, a that predominantly affects children, often begins with a tumor deep inside the . The cancer is prone to spread along two protective membranes known as the leptomeninges throughout the , particularly the surface of the brain and the CSF.

Nov 3, 2023

Running Large-Scale CRISPR Screens in Human Neurons

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension, neuroscience

Identifying therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative conditions is often challenging due to the limited accessibility of reproducible, scalable in vitro cell models. Genome-level CRISPR screens are useful for these studies but performing screens that include the necessary replicates requires billions of cells. Human iPSC-derived cells can provide the needed scale, however, the complex process of directed differentiation is time-consuming, resource-intensive, and rarely feasible. Furthermore, delivering ribonucleases by transfection or transduction is inefficient in human iPSC-derived cells, especially delicate cell types like neurons. As a result, scientists often rely on immortalized cell lines, which do not accurately represent human biology or disease states, to run large-scale CRISPR screens.

In this GEN webinar, two experts will discuss solutions for running large-scale CRISPR screens to identify therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative diseases. They will present ioCRISPR-Ready Cells™: human iPSC-derived cells precision reprogrammed with opti-ox™, that constitutively express Cas9 nuclease, which are built for rapidly generating gene knockouts and CRISPR screens. During the webinar, you’ll learn about two peer-reviewed studies that performed large scale CRISPR knockout screens using opti-ox powered glutamatergic neurons with stable Cas9 expression. The first study demonstrates a loss-of-function genetic screen using a human druggable genome library. The second study investigated possible regulators of the RNA binding motif 3 protein, whose enhanced expression is highly neuroprotective both in vitro and in vivo.

Nov 3, 2023

Paralyzed Man Can Use Feel Again Thanks to Groundbreaking AI

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

In the summer of 2020, Keith Thomas dove into a swimming pool and became paralyzed from the chest down. He spent the next six months isolated in the hospital before joining a clinical medical trial that could make history for its use of groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence technology. Five chips were implanted into his brain which connects to a computer that can read his mind and send signals to parts of his body. Inside Edition Digital has more.

Nov 3, 2023

Taking a census of all the immune cells in the human body

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing

A team of environmental and molecular biologists at the Weizmann Institute of Science, working with a colleague from the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital and another with The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, all in Israel, has conducted a census of the immune cells that reside in the human body. The group describes their endeavor in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Prior research has shown that there are many kinds of immune cells in the human body and that they reside in different locations. Most if not all of them have been identified as well. But until now, it was not known how many of each type of cell exist in the average , how much room they take up or how much they weigh. In this new effort, the research team filled in that gap by conducting a three-pronged survey of immune cells in three types of average human bodies—a grown male, a grown woman and a child.

The three-pronged approached involved first studying available literature to obtain as much data as possible regarding the different types of immune cells. The second part involved conducting cell imaging to categorize cell phenotypes and complex immune cell types—a means of describing how much room different immune cells take up, wherever they may live. And the third part consisted of computational techniques to estimate cell numbers in different parts of the body, with which the team was able to calculate weights and mass.