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Blog – Page 792

About 2,890 kilometres beneath our feet lies a gigantic ball of liquid metal: our planet’s core. Scientists like me use the seismic waves created by earthquakes as a kind of ultrasound to “see” the shape and structure of the core.

Using a new way of studying these waves, my colleague Xiaolong Ma and I have made a surprising discovery: there is a large donut-shaped region of the core around the Equator, a few hundred kilometres thick, where seismic waves travel about 2% slower than in the rest of the core.

We think this region contains more lighter elements such as silicon and oxygen, and may play a crucial role in the vast currents of liquid metal running through the core that generate Earth’s magnetic field. Our results are published today in Science Advances.

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In the digital realm, secrets (API keys, private keys, username and password combos, etc.) are the keys to the kingdom. But what if those keys were accidentally left out in the open in the very tools we use to collaborate every day?

A Single Secret Can Wreak Havoc

Imagine this: It’s a typical Tuesday in June 2024. Your dev team is knee-deep in sprints, Jira tickets are flying, and Slack is buzzing with the usual mix of cat memes and code snippets. Little do you know, buried in this digital chatter is a ticking time bomb – a plaintext credential that gives unfettered access to your company’s crown jewels.

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Eight vulnerabilities have been uncovered in Microsoft applications for macOS that an adversary could exploit to gain elevated privileges or access sensitive data by circumventing the operating system’s permissions-based model, which revolves around the Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC) framework.

“If successful, the adversary could gain any privileges already granted to the affected Microsoft applications,” Cisco Talos said. “For example, the attacker could send emails from the user account without the user noticing, record audio clips, take pictures, or record videos without any user interaction.”

The shortcomings span various applications such as Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel PowerPoint, and OneNote.

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Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have shown that therapeutically restoring ‘youthful’ levels of a specific subunit of the telomerase enzyme can significantly reduce the signs and symptoms of aging in preclinical models. If these findings are validated in clinical trials, they could have important therapeutic implications for age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease, and cancer.

The study, published in Cell, identified a small molecule compound that restores physiological levels of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT), which normally is repressed with the onset of aging. Maintenance of TERT levels in aged lab models reduced cellular senescence and tissue inflammation, spurred new neuron formation with improved memory, and enhanced neuromuscular function, which increased strength and coordination.

The researchers show that TERT functions not only to extend telomeres, but also acts as a transcription factor to affect the expression of many genes directing neurogenesis, learning and memory, cellular senescence, and inflammation.

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Neurons in the brain are like vast networks, receiving thousands of signals from other neurons through tiny structures called synapses.

Researchers from Bonn and Japan have clarified how neighboring synapses coordinate their response to plasticity signals: Nerve cells in the brain receive thousands of synaptic signals via their “antenna,” the so-called dendritic branch. Permanent changes in synaptic strength correlate with changes in the size of dendritic spines. However, it was previously unclear how the neurons implement these changes in strength across several synapses that are close to each other and active at the same time.

The researchers—from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) and the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS)—assume that the competition between for molecular resources and the spatial distance between simultaneously stimulated spines affect their resulting dynamics. The results of the study have now been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Neurons are the computing units of the brain. They receive thousands of synaptic signals via their dendrites, with individual synapses undergoing activity-dependent plasticity. This is the mechanism underlying our memory and thinking and reflects long-lasting changes in synaptic strength.

Continue reading “Study reveals how neighboring synapses coordinate their response to plasticity signals” | >

The most powerful battery in Australia, and biggest single power unit ever to be connected to the country’s main grid, has completed the first stage of its connection and commissioning process, according to its owner Akaysha Energy.

The Waratah Super Battery will be sized at 850 megawatts (MW) and 1,680 megawatt hours (MWh), and its principal role will be to act as a kind of giant shock absorber, allowing the power lines transporting renewable power from the regions to the major load centres on the coast to operate at or near full capacity.

The battery is being built at the site of the already shuttered Munmorah coal fired generator, and will play a key role as the state’s remaining coal fired power plants are retired, even though the closure of the biggest of them all, the 2.88 GW Eraring generator, has been pushed back by at least two years to late 2027.

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