Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists have discovered a mutation in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, that plays a key role in its ability to infect the central nervous system. The findings may help scientists understand its neurological symptoms and the mystery of “long COVID,” and they could one day even lead to specific treatments to protect and clear the virus from the brain.

The new collaborative study between scientists at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois-Chicago uncovered a series of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (the outer part of the virus that helps it penetrate cells) that enhanced the virus’s ability to infect the brains of mice.

“Looking at the genomes of viruses found in the brain compared to the lung, we found that viruses with a specific deletion in spike were much better at infecting the brains of these animals,” said co-corresponding author Judd Hultquist, assistant professor of medicine (infectious diseases) and microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “This was completely unexpected, but very exciting.”

Ha! I like his style. Never would have imagined McCulloch (yes as in the McCulloch-Pitts neuron or perceptron) to be like this. Quite the role model.

He’s definitely prophetic here.

Continue reading “The Father of Neural Nets Warren McCulloch Talks Mind, Brain, Thinking & Feeling Machines” »

Denis Noble is a renowned biologist and pioneer in systems biology, known for his groundbreaking work on the heart and his influential contributions to the understanding of biological systems.

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b9…

Continue reading “‘GENES ARE NOT THE BLUEPRINT FOR LIFE’ | Denis Noble” »

Water plays a crucial role in human survival on the lunar surface, thus attracting extensive research attention. Prof. Wang Junqiang’s team at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has recently developed a new method of massive water production through a reaction between lunar regolith and endogenous hydrogen.

Research results of previous lunar explorations, like the Apollo and Chang’E-5 missions, have revealed the widespread presence of water on the moon. However, the water content in lunar minerals is extremely low, ranging from 0.0001% to 0.02%. It remains challenging to extract and utilize water in situ on the moon.

“We used lunar regolith samples brought back by the Chang’E-5 mission in our study, trying to find a way to produce water on the moon,” said Wang. The study was published in The Innovation.

Apple drops lawsuit against NSO Group, citing risk of exposing critical threat intelligence amid growing spyware threats.

It also follows the discovery of a stealthy threat actor that presents itself as a legitimate enterprise and has been advertising automated CAPTCHA-solving services at scale to other cybercriminals and helping them infiltrate IT networks.

Dubbed Greasy Opal by Arkose Labs, the Czech Republic-based “cyber attack enablement business” is believed to have been operational since 2009, offering to customers a toolkit of sorts for credential stuffing, mass fake account creation, browser automation, and social media spam at a price point of $190 and an additional $10 for a monthly subscription.

The product portfolio runs the cybercrime gamut, allowing them to develop a sophisticated business model by packaging several services together. The entity’s revenues for 2023 alone are said to be no less than $1.7 million.

Discover how Beyond Identity’s deterministic security approach eliminates phishing, credential theft, and other cyber threats with passwordless, phish.

Playing by quantum rules.

Astronomers have identified the largest and most distant water reservoir ever detected in the universe. This immense collection of water, equivalent to 140 trillion times the water in Earth’s oceans, surrounds a quasar over 12 billion light-years away.

“The environment around this quasar is very unique in that it’s producing this huge mass of water,” stated Matt Bradford from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laborator y. “It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times.” Bradford leads one of the teams behind this groundbreaking discovery. Their research, partially funded by NASA, appears in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Quasars are powered by enormous black holes that consume surrounding gas and dust, emitting vast amounts of energy. The quasar in question, APM 08279+5255, harbors a black hole 20 billion times more massive than the sun and produces energy equivalent to a thousand trillion suns.