Lifeboat Foundation

A groundbreaking clinical trial has revealed that nerve-stimulating therapy can bring significant improvements to people with severe, treatment-resistant depression.

Nearly 500 participants, many unable to work due to their condition, received devices that stimulate the vagus nerve—a critical connection between the brain and body. After a year, those with activated devices reported measurable improvements in symptoms, quality of life, and daily functioning.

Breakthrough in Treatment-Resistant Depression.

Researchers at the University of Michigan discovered a way to produce bright, twisted light using technology akin to an Edison bulb.

This breakthrough revisits the principles of blackbody radiation, offering the potential for advanced robotic vision systems capable of distinguishing subtle variations in light properties, such as those emitted by living organisms or objects.

Bright, twisted light: a surprising innovation.

Cybersecurity researchers are warning about a spike in malicious activity that involves roping vulnerable D-Link routers into two different botnets, a Mirai variant dubbed FICORA and a Kaiten (aka Tsunami) variant called CAPSAICIN.

“These botnets are frequently spread through documented D-Link vulnerabilities that allow remote attackers to execute malicious commands via a GetDeviceSettings action on the HNAP (Home Network Administration Protocol) interface,” Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Vincent Li said in a Thursday analysis.

“This HNAP weakness was first exposed almost a decade ago, with numerous devices affected by a variety of CVE numbers, including CVE-2015–2051, CVE-2019–10891, CVE-2022–37056, and CVE-2024–33112.”

Brazilian hacker charged with $3.2M Bitcoin extortion for stealing data from 300,000 users in 2020.

Ruijie cloud flaws risk 50,000 devices; Open Sesame bypasses MQTT. Patches issued post-disclosure.

LLMs can create 10,000 malware variants evading detection with 88% success, degrading ML classifiers and risking AI model security.

WhatsApp wins U.S. court ruling against NSO Group for Pegasus misuse; 43 intrusions revealed, damages trial ahead.

Northwestern University engineers have successfully demonstrated quantum teleportation over fiber optic cables actively carrying Internet traffic, marking a significant step toward practical quantum communication networks that could use existing infrastructure.

Published in Optica | Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

“This is incredibly exciting because nobody thought it was possible,” said Northwestern’s Prem Kumar, who led the study. “Our work shows a path towards next-generation quantum and classical networks sharing a unified fiber optic infrastructure. Basically, it opens the door to pushing quantum communications to the next level.”

Although each condition occurs in a small number of individuals, collectively these diseases exert a staggering human and economic toll because they affect some 300 million people worldwide. Yet, with a mere 5 to 7 percent of these conditions having an FDA-approved drug, they remain largely untreated or undertreated.

Developing new medicines represents a daunting challenge, but a new artificial intelligence tool can propel the discovery of new therapies from existing medicines, offering hope for patients with rare and neglected conditions and for the clinicians who treat them.

The AI model, called TxGNN, is the first one developed specifically to identify drug candidates for rare diseases and conditions with no treatments.

Continue reading “Using AI to repurpose existing drugs for treatment of rare diseases” »