Lifeboat Foundation

New book offers unique perspective on Earth’s history.

Hackers Flood the Internet With 100000 Malicious PDF Documents.

Hackers can now use a JavaScript exploit to trigger Rowhammer attacks remotely on modern DDR4 RAM cards.

Google patches two security vulnerabilities in Chrome for Windows, Mac, and Linux, both of which it says are under active exploitation.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, April 2021 – NSA Discovers New Vulnerabilities Affecting Microsoft Exchange Servers.

A recent report notes that a hacking group is employing search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to trick users into attracting them to over 100000 legitimate-looking malicious websites through the Google browser.

The goal of this campaign is to install a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) on vulnerable devices, which would allow the deployment of subsequent attacks and infections. The eSentire signature experts detected this campaign, mentioning that malicious web pages appear in browser results when the user searches for terms related to invoices, receipts, questionnaires and resume.

Continue reading “Thousands of devices infected with the SolarMarket Trojan via malicious websites” »

Elisabeth Schirmer, Stefan Schuster and Peter Machnik investigated the effects of bisphenols A and S on neuronal functioning. Using in vivo recordings in goldfish they demonstrate that basic neuronal properties such as action potentials and synaptic transmission are perturbed after chronic exposure to bisphenols.

Recent work has shown that human auditory cortex contains neural populations anterior and posterior to primary auditory cortex that respond selectively to music. However, it is unknown how this selectivity for music arises. To test whether musical training is necessary, we measured fMRI responses to 192 natural sounds in 10 people with almost no musical training. When voxel responses were decomposed into underlying components, this group exhibited a music-selective component that was very similar in response profile and anatomical distribution to that previously seen in individuals with moderate musical training. We also found that musical genres that were less familiar to our participants (e.g., Balinese gamelan) produced strong responses within the music component, as did drum clips with rhythm but little melody, suggesting that these neural populations are broadly responsive to music as a whole. Our findings demonstrate that the signature properties of neural music selectivity do not require musical training to develop, showing that the music-selective neural populations are a fundamental and widespread property of the human brain.

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A multivariate genome-wide association study highlighting loci that influence both face and brain shape suggesting shared developmental axes during early embryogenesis. These loci did not overlap with those governing behavioral–cognitive traits or neuropsychiatric risk indicating divergence between early brain development and cognitive function.