Counter-drone systems typically attack a UAV’s radio control or GPS systems, disabling pilot control as well as pre-programmed missions. But British defense tech company QinetiQ has now demonstrated a laser-controlled drone these systems can’t stop.
Microsoft has chosen to add specific security measures against brute force attacks against RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol). These security improvements have been introduced in the most recent builds of Windows 11. Given the evolution of this type of attack abusing RDP, Microsoft decided to add the security measure in the latest Insider Preview22528.1000. This system automatically locks accounts for 10 minutes after 10 invalid login attempts. The news was broken by David Weston (VP of OS & Enterprise Security) on Twitter last week.
These kinds of attacks against RDP are quite common in human operated ransomware. With this relatively simple measure, it is possible to complicate brute force attacks, being quite effective in discouraging them. However, it was already possible to activate this measure in Windows 10, so the novelty is really enabling it by default.
A new batch of malicious Android apps filled with adware and malware was found on the Google Play Store that have been installed close to 10 million times on mobile devices.
The apps pose as image-editing tools, virtual keyboards, system optimizers, wallpaper changers, and more. However, their underlying functionality is to push intrusive ads, subscribe users to premium services, and steal victims’ social media accounts.
The discovery of these malicious apps comes from the Dr. Web antivirus team, who highlighted the new threats in a report published today.
New research from Binghamton University, State University of New York offers a second life for CDs: Turn them into flexible biosensors that are inexpensive and easy to manufacture.
In a paper published this month in Nature Communications, Matthew Brown, Ph.D. ‘22, and Assistant Professor Ahyeon Koh from the Department of Biomedical Engineering show how a gold CD’s thin metallic layer can be separated from the rigid plastic and fashioned into sensors to monitor electrical activity in human hearts and muscles as well as lactate, glucose, pH and oxygen levels. The sensors can communicate with a smartphone via Bluetooth.
The fabrication is completed in 20 to 30 minutes without releasing toxic chemicals or needing expensive equipment, and it costs about $1.50 per device. According to the paper, “this sustainable approach for upcycling electronic waste provides an advantageous research-based waste stream that does not require cutting-edge microfabrication facilities, expensive materials or high-caliber engineering skills.”
With our brand new documentary premiering at #SIGGRAPH 2022, you’ll get to take a look behind the scenes of the 2022 Spring GTC and discover how NVIDIA’s creative, engineering, and research teams pushed the limits of NVIDIA GPUs, AI, USD, and @NVIDIA Omniverse to deliver our most watched GTC ever.
Global Documentary Premiere: Wednesday, August 10, at 10:00 a.m. PT
Continue reading “The Art of Collaboration: NVIDIA, Omniverse, and GTC | Documentary Trailer” »
Energy, mass, velocity. These three variables make up Einstein’s iconic equation E=MC2. But how did Einstein know about these concepts in the first place? A precursor step to understanding physics is identifying relevant variables. Without the concept of energy, mass, and velocity, not even Einstein could discover relativity. But can such variables be discovered automatically? Doing so could greatly accelerate scientific discovery.
This is the question that researchers at Columbia Engineering posed to a new AI program. The program was designed to observe physical phenomena through a video camera, then try to search for the minimal set of fundamental variables that fully describe the observed dynamics. The study was published on July 25 in Nature Computational Science.
Continue reading “Roboticists discover alternative physics” »
Researchers from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, studying the molecular landscape of over 500 patients with an aggressive form of multiple myeloma, discovered a prevalence of activated key oncogenic pathways in these patients, much more than previously thought. Upwards of 45–65% of NF-κB and RAS/MAPK pathways each had alterations. The study was published in Nature Communications.
Further, Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology, and his team found a link between mutations and RASopathies, a certain group of genetic syndromes, in patients with relapsed treatment-resistant multiple myeloma. This was the first observation of its kind.
The team compared the molecular makeup of patients with untreated multiple myeloma to those with the relapsed treatment-resistant version of the disease. Comparing these patients allowed researchers to describe drivers of the more aggressive form of multiple myeloma.
University of Iowa researchers have confirmed in a new study that a specific region in the brain is critical to governing the mind’s communication with the body’s motor control system. The findings could yield advances in treatment for Parkinson’s disease, as declining motor coordination is a central symptom of the disorder.
In experiments with humans, the researchers pinpointed the subthalamic nucleus as the region in the brain that communicates with the motor system to help the body stop an action. This communication is vital because it helps humans avoid surprises and react to potentially dangerous or unforeseen circumstances.
The subthalamic nucleus is a tiny grouping of cells that is part of the basal ganglia, which is a key circuit in controlling movement. The basal ganglia takes initial motor commands generated in the brain and either amplify or halt specific parts of those commands as they pass from the central nervous system to the spinal cord.
Observational studies of the relationship between alcohol use and telomere length have produced conflicting results. The largest such study to date, of 4,567 individuals, found no association between alcohol intake and either baseline or longitudinal change in telomere length [9]. Another analysis of two American cohorts (n = 2623) also reported null findings [10]. On the other hand, a few small studies (sample size range: 255‑1800) have observed associations with heavy drinking or AUD. Participants with AUD have been reported to have shorter telomeres compared to healthy controls [11]. A longitudinal study of Helsinki businessmen observed that higher midlife alcohol consumption was associated with shorter telomere length in older age [8]. Drinking 30 g/day of alcohol in older participants was associated with shorter telomeres in a Korean study [12]. Associations were stronger in those experiencing the alcohol flush reaction, raising the intriguing possibility that acetaldehyde, ethanol’s toxic breakdown product, is mechanistically involved. In a recent review of 27 studies, 10 showed significant associations between alcohol use and telomere length [13]. The studies included cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. The majority comprised European participants with ages ranging from the third to seventh decade. Most studies observed positive associations between alcohol and LTL. However heterogeneity between studies in methods of quantifying telomere length and categorizing alcohol intake hindered meta-analysis and aggregation of the data.
MR seeks to identify potentially causal determinants of an outcome. It estimates the association between genetically predicted levels of an exposure and an outcome of interest. Residual confounding and reverse causation aim to be less of a concern than in most other methods of analyzing observational data [14]. With MR, genetic proxies can be used to study the effects of genetically-predicted variability in alcohol consumption or AUD risk. To our knowledge, no MR study of alcohol and telomere length has yet been attempted.
We conducted a large observational study of two alcohol phenotypes, alcohol consumption and AUD, and leucocyte. We then performed linear MR analyses to investigate the evidence for a causal effect between alcohol consumption/AUD and LTL. Estimates generated by our observational and genetic methods were compared. Genetic distinction between different alcohol use traits motivates their separate analysis. Quantity/frequency measures such as drinks per week and AUDIT-C (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test Consumption, a 3 item screening tool), while moderately genetically correlated with AUD, have distinct patterns of genetic correlation with other traits [13]. Furthermore, as there has been much speculation about potential J-shaped relationships between alcohol and health outcomes [15], we performed a non-linear MR analysis to examine the shape of the relationship between alcohol consumption and telomere length.
