Lifeboat Foundation

After a relatively low period of solar activity, the Sun sprung back into action yesterday, May 16. A near-X-class solar flare eruption occurred on the southeastern limb of the Sun. Even as the explosion was on the horizon of the Sun and a part of it was eclipsed due to its edge, the solar flare had a major impact on the Earth. Ultraviolet radiation ionized the upper atmosphere and caused a shortwave radio blackout over North America and the northern parts of South America. And now, fears are rising over another major solar storm that could be headed toward the Earth.

As per a SpaceWeather.com report, “Earth-orbiting satellites detected an M9.6-class solar flare from a sunspot hiding behind the sun’s southeastern limb. It was only percentage points away from being an X-flare. The event could herald a period of renewed solar activity as the sunspot turns toward Earth”.

The radio blackout was so severe that several reports highlighted that most of the shortwave frequencies faded away when the flare erupted. This would have affected mariners, amateur radio operators, and aviators. The blackout persisted for about an hour before subsiding.

A computer based in Russia was able to breach the Washington, D.C., Metro system earlier this year, the Metro’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) said in a new report.

The partially redacted report, released Wednesday and first reported by The Washington Post, said the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) cybersecurity group detected “abnormal network activity originating in Russia” in January.

In a paper published in the journal Nature on May 11, researchers at Google Quantum AI announced that they had used one of their superconducting quantum processors to observe the peculiar behavior of non-Abelian anyons for the first time ever. They also demonstrated how this phenomenon could be used to perform quantum computations. Earlier this week the quantum computing company Quantinuum released another study on the topic, complementing Google’s initial discovery. These new results open a new path toward topological quantum computation, in which operations are achieved by winding non-Abelian anyons around each other like strings in a braid.

Google Quantum AI team member and first author of the manuscript, Trond I. Andersen says, “Observing the bizarre behavior of non-Abelian anyons for the first time really highlights the type of exciting phenomena we can now access with quantum computers.”

Imagine you’re shown two identical objects and then asked to close your eyes. Open them again, and you see the same two objects. How can you determine if they have been swapped? Intuition says that if the objects are truly identical, there is no way to tell.

SideWinder, a state-sponsored group, uses a network of phishing domains to target government and financial sectors in Pakistan and China.

The Nanoracks Starlab (seen on the upper left) is one of three additional contenders aiming to launch and operate a commercial space station before the end of this decade.

In Part 2 looking at LEO space station deployment we focus on Nanoracks’ Starlab and Outposts, Northrop Grumman, and Vast Space.

😗 year 2017.

Certain treatments for patients suffering from chronic diseases, such as inflammatory bowel diseases, require multiple intravenous or subcutaneous injections of specific drugs. Because of the pain and anxiety associated with needles, some patients stop adhering to these treatments.

MIT spinout Portal Instruments has now landed a commercialization deal for a smart, needle-free injection device that could reduce the pain and anxiety associated with needle injections, shorten administration time, and improve patient adherence.

Continue reading “Startup’s needle-free drug injector gets commercialization deal” »

Researchers develop cutting-edge therapy that targets Candida albicans while preserving vaginal microbiota | Drug Discovery And Development.

It’s been living up to that removal lately. At its annual I/O in San Francisco this week, the search giant finally lifted the lid on its vision for AI-integrated search — and that vision, apparently, involves cutting digital publishers off at the knees.

Google’s new AI-powered search interface, dubbed “Search Generative Experience,” or SGE for short, involves a feature called “AI Snapshot.” Basically, it’s an enormous top-of-the-page summarization feature. Ask, for example, “why is sourdough bread still so popular?” — one of the examples that Google used in their presentation — and, before you get to the blue links that we’re all familiar with, Google will provide you with a large language model (LLM)-generated summary. Or, we guess, snapshot.

“Google’s normal search results load almost immediately,” The Verge’s David Pierce explains. “Above them, a rectangular orange section pulses and glows and shows the phrase ‘Generative AI is experimental.’ A few seconds later, the glowing is replaced by an AI-generated summary: a few paragraphs detailing how good sourdough tastes, the upsides of its prebiotic abilities, and more.”

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Continue reading “Could We Find Alien Spacecraft using Gravitational Waves?” »