Lifeboat Foundation

This special issue of Nature shines a spotlight on collaborations in science today, particularly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. It reveals that such cooperation, although complex, is thriving in many ways. It is clearly essential, both to the progress of research and for the betterment of society. But, at the same time, international collaboration is under pressure, partly as a result of geopolitical tensions. And science’s historical conventions continue to hinder such team-based working.

The other is the initiative created in Flint. Lewis is a community activist and now principal investigator at the Flint Center for Health Equity Solutions. Sadler is a geographer at Michigan State University. They draw lessons from how researchers and members of the community worked together to identify where diseases were concentrated. It’s a frank account that also flags the fact that some scientists discounted and overlooked ideas from communities, and raises the injustice of work that saves lives not necessarily meeting the ‘excellence’ criteria needed to progress in academic institutions.

These are clearly testing times for collaboration. The stories and data show that there is still some way to travel before all parts of the research enterprise recognize the true value of working across borders, cultures and disciplines.

Continue reading “Research collaborations bring big rewards: the world needs more” »

The inner core underwent preferential equatorial growth and translation after nucleation ~0.5–1.5 billion years ago, according to an analysis of its seismic anisotropy and self-consistent geodynamic simulations.

Cosmic-ray particles and γ-rays striking superconducting circuits can generate qubit errors that are spatially correlated across several millimetres, hampering current error-correction approaches.

Measurements on a chiral magnet show that non-symmorphic symmetries enforce topological crossings exactly at the Fermi level in certain materials; these crossings can be controlled by an applied magnetic field.

A new malware evasion technique has been discovered by researchers — ‘Process Ghosting’

A Middle Eastern advanced persistent threat (APT) group has resurfaced after a two-month hiatus to target government institutions in the Middle East and global government entities associated with geopolitics in the region in a rash of new campaigns observed earlier this month.

Sunnyvale-based enterprise security firm Proofpoint attributed the activity to a politically motivated threat actor it tracks as TA402, and known by other monikers such as Molerats and GazaHackerTeam.

The threat actor is believed to be active for a decade, with a history of striking organizations primarily located in Israel and Palestine, and spanning multiple verticals such as technology, telecommunications, finance, academia, military, media, and governments.

A spyware in a 6-year-old Ferocious Kitten covert surveillance campaign now targets Telegram and Psiphon VPN users in Iran.

It’s SpaceX’s 19th rocket launch (and landing) of the year.

All of this is great news for SpaceX, as the company has been relying heavily on its fleet of veteran rockets, with many Falcon 9 first stages having racked up five or more flights each.

Out of 19 missions so far this year, only one has featured a brand new Falcon 9; the rest were on flight-proven boosters.

Continue reading “SpaceX launches advanced GPS satellite for US Space Force, sticks rocket landing at sea” »

Using LIGO’s laser beams to reduce jiggling rather than detect gravitational waves, scientists have gotten closer to the realm of quantum mechanics.