Lifeboat Foundation

Jun Huang from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago.

Founded in 1,890, the University of Chicago (UChicago, U of C, or Chicago) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Located on a 217-acre campus in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, near Lake Michigan, the school holds top-ten positions in various national and international rankings. UChicago is also well known for its professional schools: Pritzker School of Medicine, Booth School of Business, Law School, School of Social Service Administration, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, Divinity School and the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.

Irvine, Calif., June 30, 2022 — University of California, Irvine-led researchers have discovered that a signaling molecule called SCUBE3 potently stimulates hair growth and may offer a therapeutic treatment for androgenetic alopecia, a common form of hair loss in both women and men.

The study, published online today in Developmental Cell, determined the precise mechanism by which the dermal papilla cells – specialized signal-making fibroblasts at the bottom of each hair follicle – promote new growth. Although it’s well known that dermal papilla cells play a pivotal role in controlling hair growth, the genetic basis of the activating molecules involved has been poorly understood.

“At different times during the hair follicle life cycle, the very same dermal papilla cells can send signals that either keep follicles dormant or trigger new hair growth,” said Maksim Plikus, Ph.D., UCI professor of developmental & cell biology and the study’s corresponding author. “We revealed that the SCUBE3 signaling molecule, which dermal papilla cells produce naturally, is the messenger used to ‘tell’ the neighboring hair stem cells to start dividing, which heralds the onset of new hair growth.”

An international team of researchers led by the ETH Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS has more accurately recreated the early history of several asteroids than ever before. Their findings suggest that the early solar system was more chaotic than previously assumed.

Before the Earth and other planets formed, the young sun was surrounded by cosmic gas and dust. Slowly, rock shards of varying sizes formed from the dust over the millennia. Many of these became building blocks for subsequent planets. Others did not become planets and continue to circle the sun today, such as asteroids in the asteroid belt.

Iron samples from the cores of asteroids that had fallen on Earth as meteorites were analyzed by researchers from ETH Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS in conjunction with an international team. In doing so, they revealed a portion of their early past during the formation of planets. Their results were recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

In Latin, nova means “new.” In astronomy, that refers to a temporary bright “star” in the night sky. But the causes of these brief but brilliant stars are varied.

Classical novae occur in a binary star system with a white dwarf and a star close enough together that the white dwarf pulls, or accretes, material from its companion. The material — mostly hydrogen — sits on the surface of the white dwarf until enough has been gathered to kick-start a nuclear fusion reaction, the same process that powers the Sun. As the hydrogen is converted into heavier elements, the temperature increases, which in turn increases the rate of hydrogen burning. At this point, the white dwarf experiences a runaway thermonuclear reaction, ejecting the unburnt hydrogen, which releases 10,000 to 100,000 times the energy our Sun emits in a year. Because the white dwarf remains intact after blowing away this excess, a stellar system can experience multiple classical novae.

Kilonovae occur when two compact objects, like binary neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole, collide. These mergers, as their name suggest, are about 1,000 times brighter than a classical nova, but not as bright as a supernova, which is 10 to 100 times brighter than a kilonova.

Ranjan KC shared a link to the group: Ray Kurzweil.

With the Linpack exaflops milestone achieved by the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the United States is turning its attention to the next crop of exascale machines, some 5-10x more performant than Frontier. At least one such system is being planned for the 2025–2030 timeline, and the DOE is soliciting input from the vendor community to inform the design and procurement process.

A request for information (RFI) was issued today by the Department of Energy, seeking feedback from computing hardware and software vendors, system integrators, and other entities to assist the DOE National Laboratories in planning for next-gen exascale systems. The RFI says responses will “inform one or more DOE system acquisition RFPs, which will describe requirements for system deliveries in the 2025–2030 timeframe.” This could include the successor to Frontier (aka OLCF-6), the successor to Aurora (aka ALCF-5), the successor to Crossroads (aka ATS-5), the successor to El Capitan (aka ATS-6) as well as a future NERSC system (possibly NERSC-11). Note that of the “predecessor systems,” only Frontier has been installed so far.

Continue reading “US Pursues Next-gen Exascale Systems with 5-10x the Performance of Frontier” »

Two researchers show that for neural networks to be able to remember better, they need far more parameters than previously thought.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has blocked dozens of malicious domains and websites used by hack-for-hire groups in attacks targeting high-risk targets worldwide.

Unlike commercial surveillance vendors whose tools are deployed in attacks by clients, hack-for-hire operators are directly involved in attacks and are usually employed by a firm offering such services. In some cases, they can also be “freelance” threat actors.

They’re hired for their hacking skills by clients who lack them or who want to conceal their identity if the attacks are detected and investigated.

Microsoft is warning that toll fraud malware is one of the most prevalent threats on Android and that it is evolving with features that allow automatic subscription to premium services.

Toll fraud is a subset of billing fraud, where the threat actor tricks victims into calling or sending an SMS to a premium number.

The difference is that toll fraud does not work over WiFi and forces the devices to connect to the mobile operator’s network.

CISA has re-added a security bug affecting Windows devices to its list of bugs exploited in the wild after removing it in May due to Active Directory (AD) certificate authentication issues caused by Microsoft’s May 2022 updates.

The flaw is an actively exploited Windows LSA (Local Security Authority) spoofing vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022–26925 and confirmed to be a new PetitPotam Windows NTLM Relay attack vector.

Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this bug to force domain controllers to authenticate them remotely via the Windows NT LAN Manager (NTLM) security protocol and, likely, take over the entire Windows domain.