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Apr 22, 2020

Nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords allegedly from NIH, WHO, Gates Foundation and others are dumped online

Posted by in category: futurism

Unknown activists have posted nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords allegedly belonging to the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation and other groups working to combat the coronavirus pandemic, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online extremism and terrorist groups.


While SITE was unable to verify whether the email addresses and passwords were authentic, the group said the information was released Sunday and Monday and almost immediately used to foment attempts at hacking and harassment by far-right extremists. An Australian cybersecurity expert, Robert Potter, said he was able to verify that the WHO email addresses and passwords were real.

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Apr 22, 2020

Video shows thief stole van Gogh painting with sledgehammer

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, security

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — All it took was a few sturdy swings with a sledgehammer and a prized painting by Vincent van Gogh was gone.

A Dutch crime-busting television show has aired security camera footage showing how an art thief smashed his way through reinforced glass doors at a museum in the early hours of March 30. He later hurried out through the museum gift shop with a Vincent van Gogh painting tucked under his right arm and the sledgehammer in his left hand.

Police hope that publicizing the images will help them track down the thief who stole Van Gogh’s “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884” from the Singer Laren Museum while it was shut down due to coronavirus containment measures.

Apr 22, 2020

FC-31: China’s Next Carrier Jet is Stolen and Stealthy

Posted by in category: military

China’s expanding aircraft carrier fleet needs fighters — and they might be stealthy.

By Caleb Larson

Apr 22, 2020

US reportedly has contingency plans in place if Kim Jong Un dies

Posted by in categories: government, health

The US government has contingency plans in place in the event North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un should die after reports that his health was in grave condition.

Sources discussed the plans but urged caution about the veracity of the reports, which claimed Kim is in bad shape after a cardiovascular procedure, Fox News reported.

Those plans include the possibility of a mass-scale humanitarian crisis inside the hermit nation such as a famine, according to the report.

Apr 22, 2020

Second 12-tonne haul of pangolin scales seized in less than a week

Posted by in category: futurism

SINGAPORE — Less than a week after a record 12.9 tonnes of pangolin scales were seized from a container by the authorities here, another 12.7 tonnes have been uncovered in a joint operation by the National Parks Board (NParks), Singapore Customs and the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA).

The 40ft (12m) container that was on its way by ship from Nigeria to Vietnam was declared to contain “cassia seeds” but was found on Monday (April 8) to be holding the animal parts, estimated to be worth about $51.6 million, in 474 bags at the Pasir Panjang Scanning Station.

The haul came from two species, the white-bellied tree pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis) and the giant ground pangolin (Smutsia gigantea) and are likely to have come from 21,000 pangolins.

Apr 22, 2020

Artificial intelligence finds disease-related genes

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science, robotics/AI

An artificial neural network can reveal patterns in huge amounts of gene expression data, and discover groups of disease-related genes. This has been shown by a new study led by researchers at Linköping University, published in Nature Communications. The scientists hope that the method can eventually be applied within precision medicine and individualised treatment.

It’s common when using social media that the platform suggests people whom you may want to add as friends. The suggestion is based on you and the other person having common contacts, which indicates that you may know each other. In a similar manner, scientists are creating maps of biological networks based on how different proteins or genes interact with each other. The researchers behind a new study have used artificial intelligence, AI, to investigate whether it is possible to discover biological networks using deep learning, in which entities known as “artificial neural networks” are trained by experimental data. Since artificial neural networks are excellent at learning how to find patterns in enormous amounts of complex data, they are used in applications such as image recognition. However, this machine learning method has until now seldom been used in biological research.

“We have for the first time used deep learning to find disease-related genes. This is a very powerful method in the analysis of huge amounts of biological information, or ‘big data’,” says Sanjiv Dwivedi, postdoc in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM) at Linköping University.

Apr 22, 2020

👽 Universal Vaccine, a consideration?

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Chinese research i think.


Developing an effective universal influenza vaccine against influenza virus with highly conserved antigenic epitopes could induce a broad-spectrum immune response to prevent infection.

(An epitope, also known as antigenic determinant, is the part of an antigen that is recognized by the immune system, specifically by antibodies, B cells, or T cells. For example, the epitope is the specific piece of the antigen to which an antibody binds. See picture1)

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Apr 22, 2020

Oil Pollution from BP Spill Found in Thousands of Fish in Gulf

Posted by in category: futurism

Toxic oil pollution has been detected in thousands of fish in the Gulf of Mexico, 10 years after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The spill was the largest in U.S. history and released millions of gallons of oil into the ocean.

Apr 22, 2020

Fusion Energy Gets Ready to Shine—Finally

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

Three decades and $23.7 billion later, the 25,000-ton International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is close to becoming something like the sun.

Apr 22, 2020

Tel Aviv University scientist awarded US patent for novel coronavirus vaccine design

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

This is pretty cool:

The vaccine targets the novel coronavirus’s Achilles’ heel, its Receptor Binding Motif (RBM), a critical structure that enables the virus to bind to and infect a target cell. According to Prof. Gershoni, the vaccine would reconstruct the coronavirus’s RBM, a tiny feature of its “spike” protein. Though the virus uses many different proteins to replicate and invade cells, the “spike” protein is the major surface protein that it uses to bind to a receptor — another protein that acts like a doorway into a human cell. After the spike protein binds to the human cell receptor, the viral membrane fuses with the human cell membrane, allowing the genome of the virus to enter human cells and begin infection.


Tel Aviv University’s Professor Jonathan Gershoni has been awarded a US patent for a novel coronavirus vaccine design.