Lifeboat Foundation

The gene-silencing complex HUSH might be involved in complex disorders affecting the brain and neurons. However, its mechanism of action remains unclear. Researchers from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) now uncover the in vivo targets and physiological functions of a component of the HUSH gene-silencing complex and one of its associated proteins.

The work, conducted in laboratory mouse models and human brain organoids, links the HUSH complex to normal brain development, neuronal individuality and connectivity, as well as mouse behavior. The findings are published in Science Advances.

The human silencing hub (HUSH) complex was recently identified to be of key importance for silencing repetitive genetic elements including transposons in mammals. The HUSH complex contains MPP8, a protein that binds the histone modification mark H3K9me3. Additionally, HUSH is known to recruit other proteins including the zinc finger protein MORC2.

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered 29 packages in Python Package Index (PyPI), the official third-party software repository for the Python programming language, that aim to infect developers’ machines with a malware called W4SP Stealer.

“The main attack seems to have started around October 12, 2022, slowly picking up steam to a concentrated effort around October 22,” software supply chain security company Phylum said in a report published this week.

The list of offending packages is as follows: typesutil, typestring, sutiltype, duonet, fatnoob, strinfer, pydprotect, incrivelsim, twyne, pyptext, installpy, faq, colorwin, requests-httpx, colorsama, shaasigma, stringe, felpesviadinho, cypress, pystyte, pyslyte, pystyle, pyurllib, algorithmic, oiu, iao, curlapi, type-color, and pyhints.

Researchers detail a new malware campaign by Pakistani hackers targeting Indian government organizations, revealing their new tools and techniques.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published three Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories about multiple vulnerabilities in software from ETIC Telecom, Nokia, and Delta Industrial Automation.

Prominent among them is a set of three flaws affecting ETIC Telecom’s Remote Access Server (RAS), which “could allow an attacker to obtain sensitive information and compromise the vulnerable device and other connected machines,” CISA said.

Nature is (actually) healing.

Thanks to effective bans of harmful chemicals, the hole in the ozone keeps getting smaller.

A 3D-printed device in a tank of water braids nanowires and moves microparticles.

New antennae to access higher and higher frequency ranges will be needed for the next generation of phones and wireless devices. One way to make antennae that work at tens of gigahertz — the frequencies needed for 5G and higher devices — is to braid filaments about 1 micrometer in diameter. However, today’s industrial fabrication techniques won’t work on fibers that small.

Continue reading “Simple 3D-Printed Device May Pave the Way for Far More Powerful Cell Phones and WIFI” »

Other proteins work as well meaning the process can be scaled without interfering with food supplies.

Researchers at Princeton Engineering have found that egg whites can be used to cheaply remove salt and microplastics from seawater, according to a press release by the institution published on Thursday.

The scientists used the food substance to create an aerogel, a lightweight and porous material that can be used in many types of applications, including water filtration, energy storage, and sound and thermal insulation.

Continue reading “Eggs found to remove salt and microplastics from seawater” »

Teleportation became a bit more real on Saturday when a German team of data scientists and engineers won the ANA Avatar XPRIZE competition in Long Beach, California, with a four-wheeled, humanoid robot named NimbRo.

But in this form of teleportation, rather than transporting a human to a remote location, vision, hearing, and a sense of touch were wirelessly transmitted from a humanoid robot to a remote human operator who then directed the robot to complete a series of complex tasks.

Continue reading “Teleportation Anyone? XPRIZE Winner Is The Closest You Can Get” »

‘These structures provide an unprecedented view into the breadth and diversity of nature,’ say the researchers.

In a world first, Meta’s artificial intelligence (AI) has produced the structures of the metagenomic world at the scale of hundreds of millions of proteins, according to a blog by the company published on Tuesday.

“Proteins are complex and dynamic molecules, encoded by our genes, that are responsible for many of the varied and fundamental processes of life. They have an astounding range of roles in biology,” wrote the Meta research team who also published a paper on the matter in the preprint database bioRxiv.

Continue reading “Meta AI creates first ever database of 600 million metagenomic structures” »