Life as we know it is carbon-based, but does it have to be this way? There’s another element on the periodic table that shares some of the key properties of carbon but is far more abundant on most planets. I’m talking about silicon. So is there silicon-based life out there?
Our lifespans might feel like a long time by human standards, but to the Earth it’s the blink of an eye. Even the entirety of human history represents a tiny slither of the vast chronology for our planet. We often think about geological time when looking back into the past, but today we look ahead. What might happen on our planet in the next billion years?
Written and presented by Prof David Kipping, edited by Jorge Casas.
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A device developed at the University of Florida for the U.S. military provides protection from mosquitos for an extended period and requires no heat, electricity or skin contact.
The controlled-release passive device was designed by Nagarajan Rajagopal, a Ph.D. candidate and Dr. Christopher Batich in UF’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. It recently was tested successfully in a four-week semi-field study at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Gainesville in a collaboration with Dr. Daniel Kline, Dr. Jerry Hogsette and Adam Bowman from the USDA’s Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology.
Results showed the controlled release of the repellent transfluthrin was effective in preventing multiple species of mosquitos from entering the testing site. Transfluthrin is an organic insecticide considered to be safe for humans and animals.
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered the real-world identity of the threat actor behind Golden Chickens malware-as-a-service, who goes by the online persona “badbullzvenom.”
ESentire’s Threat Response Unit (TRU), in an exhaustive report published following a 16-month-long investigation, said it “found multiple mentions of the badbullzvenom account being shared between two people.”
The second threat actor, known as Frapstar, is said to identify themselves as “Chuck from Montreal,” enabling the cybersecurity firm to piece together the criminal actor’s digital footprint.
Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a PlugX sample that employs sneaky methods to infect attached removable USB media devices in order to propagate the malware to additional systems.
“This PlugX variant is wormable and infects USB devices in such a way that it conceals itself from the Windows operating file system,” Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Mike Harbison and Jen Miller-Osborn said. “A user would not know their USB device is infected or possibly used to exfiltrate data out of their networks.”
The cybersecurity company said it uncovered the artifact during an incident response effort following a Black Basta ransomware attack against an unnamed victim. Among other tools discovered in the compromised environment include the Gootkit malware loader and the Brute Ratel C4 red team framework.
