Lifeboat Foundation

NASAs Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus decades ago shaped scientists’ understanding of the planet but also introduced unexplained oddities. A recent data dive has offered answers.

In 1986, Voyager 2’s flyby of Uranus caught the planet during a rare magnetic anomaly caused by unique space weather, which influenced its magnetosphere’s behavior, offering new insights into its intense radiation belts and suggesting potential activity on its moons.

Voyager 2’s Historic Uranus Flyby

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a new material poised to revolutionize the next generation of high-power electronics, making them faster, more transparent, and more efficient. This engineered material enables electrons to move at higher speeds while staying transparent to both visible and ultraviolet light, surpassing previous performance records.

The research, published in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, marks a significant leap forward in semiconductor design, which is crucial to a trillion-dollar global industry expected to continue growing as digital technologies expand.

Semiconductors power nearly all electronics, from smartphones to medical devices. A key to advancing these technologies lies in improving what scientists refer to as “ultra-wide band gap” materials. These materials can conduct electricity efficiently even under extreme conditions. Ultra-wide band gap semiconductors enable high-performance at elevated temperatures, making them essential for more durable and robust electronics.

The business contact information for 122 million people circulating since February 2024 is now confirmed to have been stolen from a B2B demand generation platform.

The data comes from DemandScience (formerly Pure Incubation), a B2B demand generation company that aggregates data.

Data aggregation is the process of collecting, compiling, and organizing data from public sources to create a comprehensive dataset valuable for digital marketers and advertisers in creating rich “profiles” used to generate leads or marketing information.

Hackers are using a novel technique that abuses extended attributes for macOS files to deliver a new trojan that researchers call RustyAttr.

The threat actor is hiding malicious code in custom file metadata and also uses decoy PDF documents to help evade detection.

The new technique is similar to how the Bundlore adware in 2020 hid its payloads in resource forks to hide payloads for macOS. It was discovered in a few malware samples in the wild by researchers at cybersecurity company Group-IB.

We will be having an early Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday, the 27th, with a few Lifeboat Foundation people in Austin, Texas. Let us know if you wish to join!

There is a challenge related to prostate cancer from cancer cells that form resistance to treatments as the disease progresses. For medical science, these resistance mechanisms are not yet fully understood.

A new study by the University of Eastern Finland has filled some of this knowledge gap. The scientists found that inflammation-promoting immune cells, M1 macrophages, can transform cancer cells into stem-like cells and thus immune to treatment.

The study examined the impact of factors promoting inflammation in a tumour microenvironment on the progression of prostate cancer. Researchers focused particularly on the role of M1 and M2 macrophages in the tumour microenvironment. Macrophages are immune cells whose large number in the tumour area is often a sign of poor prognosis in relation to prostate cancer. These white blood cells stimulate the action of other immune system cells.

A collection of perforated pebbles from an archaeological site in Israel may be spindle whorls, representing a key milestone in the development of rotational tools including wheels, according to a study published November 13, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Talia Yashuv and Leore Grosman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Non-invasive BCIs let you harness tech benefits and enhance cognition without implanting a brain chip.

The problem with conventional non-invasive BCIs is that they are not as accurate as invasive BCIs. They collect data using external sensors that are not in direct contact with brain tissues, and any disturbance in a user’s surroundings could affect their function.

Continue reading “AI-powered non-invasive BCIs to help you control objects by thought” »

Supported, in part, by NASA and administrated by Resources for the Future, Kevin Boyle and colleagues from Moravian University, Penn State, and the University of Rhode Island have assessed the feasibility of implementing a smartphone app designed to convey cholera risk forecasts to households to mitigate the threat of cholera in Bangladesh. This forms part of early warning measures.

The research is titled “Early warning systems, mobile technology, and cholera aversion: Evidence from rural Bangladesh,” and it appears in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

For the research, the team developed CholeraMap, an Android-based smartphone application that conveys cholera risk forecasts to households. The app enables users to access risk predictions – from low to medium to high – for both their community and individual home locations.