Lifeboat Foundation

But why would anyone want to live that long? Imagine, for a start, all the debt you’d accrue.

A new disruptive technology is on the horizon and it promises to take computing power to unprecedented and unimaginable heights.

And to predict the speed of progress of this new “quantum computing” technology, the director of Google’s Quantum AI Labs, Hartmut Neven, has proposed a new rule similar to the Moore’s Law that has measured the progress of computers for more than 50 years.

But can we trust “Neven’s Law” as a true representation of what is happening in quantum computing and, most importantly, what is to come in the future? Or is it simply too early on in the race to come up with this type of judgement?

Staphylococcus aureus bacteria are a major cause of serious infections that often persist despite antibiotic treatment, but scientists at the UNC School of Medicine have now discovered a way to make these bacteria much more susceptible to some common antibiotics.

The scientists, in a study published in Cell Chemical Biology, found that adding molecules called rhamnolipids can make aminoglycoside antibiotics, such as tobramycin, hundreds of times more potent against S. aureus — including the strains that are otherwise very hard to kill. The rhamnolipids effectively loosen up the outer membranes of S. aureus cells so that aminoglycoside molecules can get into them more easily.

“There’s a great need for new ways to kill bacteria that tolerate or resist standard antibiotics, and to that end we found that altering membrane permeability to induce aminoglycoside uptake is an extremely effective strategy against S. aureus,” said study senior author Brian Conlon, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the department of microbiology and immunology at the UNC School of Medicine.

Several countries have been targeted by a long-term campaign operated by financially motivated threat actors who used a backdoor and a remote access Trojan (RAT) malicious combo to take control of infected computers.

The two malicious payloads dubbed BalkanDoor and BalkanRAT by the ESET researchers who spotted them have been previously detected in the wild by the Croatian CERT in 2017 and, even earlier, by a Serbian security outfit in 2016.

However, ESET was the first to make the connection between them, after observing several quite significant overlaps in the entities targeted by their operators, as well as Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP) similarities.

The F.B.I. should follow the example of European law enforcement and help victims of ransomware decrypt their data.

Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has broken records in July. Scientists warn that, after a point, the Amazon might not be able to recover.

If a police officer suspects you’ve had too much to drink before getting behind the wheel of your car, they can use a breathalyzer to estimate your blood alcohol level on the spot.

But if a cop thinks you’re driving stoned, they currently don’t have any evidence-based way to immediately confirm their suspicions — they typically have to rely on subjective roadside sobriety tests.

Now, though, Canadian startup SannTek Labs says it’s developed a marijuana breathalyzer — and it’s caught the eye of top startup accelerator Y Combinator.

THE INSTITUTE Teenager Ari Firester watched on television last year as members of a youth soccer team were saved from a flooded cave in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand. The two-week-long effort, which left one rescuer dead, inspired Firester to create a technology that might prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.

Firester, 16, a junior at Hunter College High School in New York City, created “Wormbot,” an earthworm-inspired robot capable of maneuvering in narrow spaces. The project was displayed at Intel’s annual International Science and Engineering Fair, held in May in Phoenix. His invention earned him the US $10,000 IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship, which is given at the fair.

Controlled by an Arduino microcontroller and built with off-the-shelf items, the robot makes wormlike movements by using eight retractable claws along its length to grip its surroundings and prevent it from slipping. The modular robot is powered by compressed air. The control and power components are connected to the robot through a thin, plastic air tube. By using inflatable actuators, its body can be lengthened, shortened, or bent.

This week, two companies say that their technologies were able to work together successfully broker and transport a load without any human help.

On Thursday, July 8, Starsky Robotics and Loadsmart issued an announcement about the trucking industry’s first autonomous dispatch and delivery.

The companies say that this “marks the first time an autonomous company and a digital broker have collaborated to price, book and load a shipment without any human involvement.”