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As fish wriggle, they create a complex push–pull pattern in the water that propels them forward. Many studies have shown how the motion of a fish’s tail forms a vortex around its leading edge that provides thrust; however, it has been difficult to capture how the water flow around other parts of the fish interacts with this vortex to impact the overall propulsion. Jiacheng Guo at the University of Virginia and colleagues recently demonstrated how different fins create currents that can constructively interact to improve swimming efficiency [1].

Guo and colleagues studied how the flow around the lower back—or anal—fin interacts with the flow around the tail—or caudal—fin. First, they took a high-resolution video of a swimming rainbow trout and created a computational fluid dynamics model to accurately reproduce the fish’s motion and the water currents that it induced. Then they modified the anal fin in the model to see how this would change the pattern of water flow around the trout and affect the forward thrust.

The researchers found that the anal fin increases propulsion in two ways. It creates a vortex that stabilizes and strengthens the caudal-fin vortex, and it helps maintain a pressure difference across the fish’s body that reduces drag. Changes to the size or position of the anal fin decreased the swimming efficiency, demonstrating that the natural fish physiology is optimal.

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Cybersecurity researchers said they have discovered what they say is the first open-source software supply chain attacks specifically targeting the banking sector.

“These attacks showcased advanced techniques, including targeting specific components in web assets of the victim bank by attaching malicious functionalities to it,” Checkmarx said in a report published last week.

“The attackers employed deceptive tactics such as creating a fake LinkedIn profile to appear credible and customized command-and-control (C2) centers for each target, exploiting legitimate services for illicit activities.”

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Apple has rolled out security updates to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and Safari to address several security vulnerabilities, including one actively exploited zero-day bug in the wild.

Tracked as CVE-2023–38606, the shortcoming resides in the kernel and permits a malicious app to modify sensitive kernel state potentially. The company said it was addressed with improved state management.

“Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.7.1,” the tech giant noted in its advisory.

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Zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows Installers for the Atera remote monitoring and management software could act as a springboard to launch privilege escalation attacks.

The flaws, discovered by Mandiant on February 28, 2023, have been assigned the identifiers CVE-2023–26077 and CVE-2023–26078, with the issues remediated in versions 1.8.3.7 and 1.8.4.9 released by Atera on April 17, 2023, and June 26, 2023, respectively.

“The ability to initiate an operation from a NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM context can present potential security risks if not properly managed,” security researcher Andrew Oliveau said. “For instance, misconfigured Custom Actions running as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM can be exploited by attackers to execute local privilege escalation attacks.”

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Maintenance of mRNA and protein localization in motor neurons is a potential therapeutic avenue for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), report researchers from The Francis Crick Institute and the University College London (UCL). A new study shows how the extensive changes in mRNA and protein in ALS motor neurons are linked to mutations in an ATPase called VCP. These mutations may contribute to the mislocalization of RNA binding proteins (RBPs) that tend to clump together and the redistribution of the mRNAs they are bound to. Inhibition of VCP partly restored mRNA and protein localization and other ALS phenotypes. These results show how RBP mislocalization and mRNA redistribution in motor neurons are linked to ALS and how VCP inhibition could be used as a treatment.

The study “Nucleocytoplasmic mRNA redistribution accompanies RNA binding protein mislocalization in ALS motor neurons and is restored by VCP ATPase inhibition” was published today in Neuron.

“For the patients I see, it’s devastating that there aren’t yet impactful treatments available for ALS,” said Rickie Patani, PhD, senior group leader of the Human Stem Cells and Neurodegeneration Laboratory at the Crick, professor at UCL, and consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology. “This research represents a shift in our thinking about what causes ALS—it doesn’t involve abnormal movement of just a few proteins, but the abnormal localization of hundreds of proteins and mRNAs. This opens new avenues for research and potential therapies.

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I expect this to double over at least 2 maybe 3 times between now and 2030. AND, we here need to back it at every step if we really want indefinite life extension. Time to pick a side is right now.

The arrival of artificial intelligence into healthcare means everyone could one day have a doctor in their pocket, but Google’s chief health officer has urged caution about what AI can do and what its limits should be.

“There’s going to be an opportunity for people to have even better access to services, [and] to great quality services,” Dr Karen DeSalvo told Guardian Australia in an interview last week.

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It’s said the way to one’s heart is through the stomach, but it looks like the way to a healthy brain is by dropping a deuce regularly. According to new research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Amsterdam this week, chronic constipation appears to be linked to worsening cognitive abilities, likely due to an imbalance of gut bacteria causing inflammation.

While the study has yet to be peer-reviewed, it emphasizes a link between cognition and the microbiome — microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, and fungi living rent-free in and on our bodies — that hasn’t gone unnoticed. There’s still a whole lot we don’t know about the microbiome, but what we do know suggests these microscopic houseguests can be manipulated to improve our own health.

To offset cognitive decline, it could be as simple as a daily probiotic, says Mashael Aljumaah, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and North Carolina State University. In findings presented Monday at the American Society for Nutrition in Boston, Aljumaah and her colleagues at UNC and Kent State University in Ohio found that for older adults, a daily probiotic containing gut-friendly Lactobacillus rhamnosus helped improve mild cognitive impairment by resetting the imbalance in gut bacteria.

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