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Finastra, a global leader in financial technology that serves 45 of the world’s top 50 banks, has confirmed a major data breach impacting its internal file transfer system. The London-based firm, which facilitates vital banking and wire transfers for over 8,100 financial institutions worldwide, detected the breach on Nov. 7.

The breach targeted Finastra’s internally hosted Secure File Transfer Platform, or SFTP, which was exploited using stolen credentials—essentially, a username and password. The attacker claims to have leveraged IBM Aspera, a high-speed file transfer tool to exfiltrate data from Finastra’s systems.

The cybercriminal, known by the alias “abyss0,” first advertised the stolen data for sale on BreachForums, a notorious online marketplace for cybercrime, on October 31. Initially priced at $20,000, the data’s asking price was later halved to $10,000. After gaining attention, “abyss0” disappeared, erasing their presence on both BreachForums and Telegram. This sudden retreat suggests they either secured a buyer or sought to avoid further scrutiny.

Genes aren’t the sole driver instructing cells to build multicellular structures, tissues, and organs. In a paper published in Nature Communications, USC Stem Cell scientist Leonardo Morsut and Caltech computational biologist Matt Thomson characterize the influence of another important developmental driver: cell density, or how loosely or tightly cells are packed into a given space.

In both computational models and laboratory experiments, the team of scientists used cell density as an effective tool for controlling how mouse cells pattern themselves into complex structures.

“This paper represents progress towards our big picture goal of engineering synthetic tissues,” said Morsut, an assistant professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, and biomedical engineering at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Summary: The Human Cell Atlas (HCA) consortium has published over 40 studies revealing groundbreaking insights into human biology through large-scale mapping of cells. These studies cover diverse areas such as brain development, gut inflammation, and COVID-19 lung responses, while also showcasing the power of AI in understanding cellular mechanisms.

By profiling over 100 million cells from 10,000 individuals, HCA is building a “Google Maps” for cell biology to transform diagnostics, drug discovery, and regenerative medicine. The initiative emphasizes diversity, including underrepresented populations, to ensure a globally inclusive understanding of health and disease.

Summary: Autism-linked SHANK3 gene mutations disrupt not only neurons but also oligodendrocytes, essential for producing myelin, which insulates nerve fibers. This damage reduces brain signal efficiency and impairs behavior.

Using gene therapy, researchers successfully repaired these cells in a mouse model, restoring their function and myelin production. They validated their findings with human-derived stem cells, confirming similar impairments and repair mechanisms.

This discovery highlights a significant role for oligodendrocytes in autism and opens the door for innovative treatments targeting myelin dysfunction. The study underscores both the biological complexity of autism and the promise of genetic therapies for intervention.

In 2024, the Kavli Institute of Brain and Mind will reach its 20th anniversary. To celebrate this milestone, we hosted a special symposium on Monday, October 28, 2024 at Salk Institute-The Generative Mind: Biological and Artificial Intelligence. Please enjoy the presentation \.

AlphaQubit: an AI-based system that can more accurately identify errors inside quantum computers.

AlphaQubit is a neural-network based decoder drawing on Transformers, a deep learning architecture developed at Google that underpins many of today’s large language models. Using the consistency checks as an input, its task is to correctly predict whether the logical qubit — when measured at the end of the experiment — has flipped from how it was prepared.

We began by training our model to decode the data from a set of 49 qubits inside a Sycamore quantum processor, the central computational unit of the quantum computer. To teach AlphaQubit the general decoding problem, we used a quantum simulator to generate hundreds of millions of examples across a variety of settings and error levels. Then we finetuned AlphaQubit for a specific decoding task by giving it thousands of experimental samples from a particular Sycamore processor.

Continue reading “AlphaQubit tackles one of quantum computing’s biggest challenges” »

The latest AI News. Learn about LLMs, Gen AI and get ready for the rollout of AGI. Wes Roth covers the latest happenings in the world of OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, NVIDIA and Open Source AI.

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Continue reading “Sam Altman ‘Level 4 Innovator is MUCH closer’ | PLUS ‘Unsupervised Sentiment Neuron’ breakthrough” »

We converted the calculations in Morgan Levine and Steve Horvath’s famous research paper on phenotypic age into a free biological age calculator.

It’s a great (cheap) alternative to $400 epigenetic age tests and means you can test more frequently to see if longevity interventions are actually…

This free biological age calculator is based on a pioneering paper by longevity experts Dr. Morgan Levine and Dr. Steve Horvath.

Continue reading “Free Biological Age Calculator” »