Author: kenmay

How gold nanoparticles may make killing tumors easier

Enlarge / Nanoparticles (black dots) sit in the remains of a cell they’ve helped kill. (credit: University of Michigan ) One of the ways to kill a cancer is to cook it, since heat can kill cells. The trick, of course, is to only cook the cancer and not the surrounding tissue. To do this, you need to have an accurate idea of the extent of a tumor, a precise mechanism for delivering heat, and a damn good thermometer. It may surprise you to learn that gold nanoparticles do a pretty good job of achieving the first two. The third—a good thermometer—has eluded researchers for quite some time. But, now it seems that gold nanoparticles may provide the full trifecta . Drowning a tumor in molten gold Some cancers—the ones most people imagine when they think of cancer—form lumps of tissue. At some point, these lumps require a blood supply. Once supplied with blood vessels, the tumor can not only grow, but it has a readily available transport system to deliver the cells that can spread the cancer throughout the body. For the patient, this is not good news. The development of a blood supply opens up new imaging and treatment options, though. Cancer tumors are not well-organized tissues compared to healthy tissue like muscle or kidney tissue. So there are lots of nooks and crannies in a tumor that can trap small particles. And this disorganization is exactly what researchers hope to take advantage of. Gold nanoparticles are injected into the blood stream; these exit the blood supply, but, in most of the body, they get rapidly cleaned out. Except that, inside tumors, the nanoparticles lodge all over the place. Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How gold nanoparticles may make killing tumors easier

Chromecast and Google Homes reportedly overloading home Wi-Fi [Updated]

Enlarge / The Google Home Mini, the original Google Home, and the Google Home Max. (credit: Google ) Update: Google has posted a support page for this issue promising a fix tomorrow (1/18). The page says the issue is limited to “People with an Android phone and a Chromecast built-in device (such as a Chromecast or Google Home device) on the same Wi-Fi network” and that a fix will be rolling out via Play Services. The original story is below. Users on the  Google help forums and  Reddit  are reporting that Google Home and Google Chromecast devices are causing issues with their Wi-Fi networks. Users say hooking up these Google hardware products leads to an unstable Wi-Fi network or a network that goes down entirely. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Chromecast and Google Homes reportedly overloading home Wi-Fi [Updated]

Meteor lights up southern Michigan

Enlarge / That’s no moon! Early last night local time, a meteor rocketed through the skies of Southern Michigan, giving local residents a dramatic (if brief) light show. it also generated an imperceptible thump, as the UG Geological Survey confirmed that there was a coincident magnitude 2.0 earthquake. The American Meteor Society has collected over 350 eyewitness accounts , which ranged from western Pennsylvania out to Illinois and Wisconsin. They were heavily concentrated over southern Michigan, notably around the Detroit area. A number of people have also posted videos of the fireball online; one of the better compilations is below. A compilation of several videos from Syracuse.com. The American Meteor Society estimates that the rock was relatively slow-moving at a sedate 45,000km an hour. Combined with its production of a large fireball, the researchers conclude it was probably a big rock. NASA’s meteorwatch Facebook page largely agrees and suggests that this probably means that pieces of the rock made it to Earth. If you were on the flight path, you might want to check your yard. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Meteor lights up southern Michigan

America’s Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back — And Hypersonic

A Lockheed Skunk Works executive implied last week at an aerospace conference that the successor to one of the fastest aircraft the world has seen, the SR-71 Blackbird, might already exist. Previously, Lockheed officials have said the successor, the SR-72, could fly by 2030. Bloomberg reports: Referring to detailed specifics of company design and manufacturing, Jack O’Banion, a Lockheed vice president, said a “digital transformation” arising from recent computing capabilities and design tools had made hypersonic development possible. Then — assuming O’Banion chose his verb tense purposely — came the surprise. “Without the digital transformation, the aircraft you see there could not have been made, ” O’Banion said, standing by an artist’s rendering of the hypersonic aircraft. “In fact, five years ago, it could not have been made.” Hypersonic applies to speeds above Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The SR-71 cruised at Mach 3.2, more than 2, 000 mph, around 85, 000 feet. “We couldn’t have made the engine itself — it would have melted down into slag if we had tried to produce it five years ago, ” O’Banion said. “But now we can digitally print that engine with an incredibly sophisticated cooling system integral into the material of the engine itself and have that engine survive for multiple firings for routine operation.” The aircraft is also agile at hypersonic speeds, with reliable engine starts, he said. A half-decade before, he added, developers “could not have even built it even if we conceived of it.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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America’s Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back — And Hypersonic

The Windows 10 control panel modernization continues: Fonts get some love

Enlarge / The Settings app is gaining new powers to control your PC’s settings. (credit: Thurrott.com ) The Windows user interface has a certain archaeological quality to it. While the upper layers tend to be new—using the styling and conventions of the day—dig a little deeper and you can find elements that are decades old. With each Windows release, Microsoft has heaped new stuff onto the pile, but it hasn’t spent much time going back and revamping the old bits. Very occasionally, the relics of yesteryear are identified and excised, but more often than not, they’re left alone. One area where this is particularly plain is Control Panel. Control Panel spans many eras of Windows development, and so Windows’ settings are spread across three different styles of interface. The very oldest are the individual Control Panel applets in their tabbed dialog boxes; more recent are the Explorer-based Control Panels. The very newest is the Settings app. With Windows 10, the company has, for the first time ever, taken serious strides toward modernizing even old parts of the operating system. With each new update, more and more settings are being moved from Control Panel into the Settings app. This creates the possibility that perhaps one day Windows will have a single application that is used for all its major settings and configurations. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The Windows 10 control panel modernization continues: Fonts get some love

China Builds ‘World’s Biggest Air Purifier’ That Actually Works

The South China Morning Post shares an update on the status of an experimental tower in northern China, dubbed the world’s biggest air purifier by its operators. According to the scientist leading the project, the tower — which stands over 328 feet (100 meters) tall — has brought a noticeable improvement in air quality. From the report: The head of the research, Cao Junji, said improvements in air quality had been observed over an area of 10 square kilometers (3.86 square miles) in the city over the past few months and the tower has managed to produce more than 10 million cubic meters (353 million cubic feet) of clean air a day since its launch. Cao added that on severely polluted days the tower was able to reduce smog close to moderate levels. The system works through greenhouses covering about half the size of a soccer field around the base of the tower. Polluted air is sucked into the glasshouses and heated up by solar energy. The hot air then rises through the tower and passes through multiple layers of cleaning filters. The average reduction in PM2.5 — the fine particles in smog deemed most harmful to health — fell 15 per cent during heavy pollution. Cao said the results were preliminary because the experiment is still ongoing. The team plans to release more detailed data in March with a full scientific assessment of the facility’s overall performance. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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China Builds ‘World’s Biggest Air Purifier’ That Actually Works

Danish police charge 1,000 people following Facebook sex video

Facebook is no stranger to notifying police when there’s clear evidence of a crime, but its latest action has had consequences on a much larger scale than usual. Danish police have charged 1, 004 young people (some under 18) after Facebook notified authorities that Messenger users were sharing a video of two teens under 15 years old having sex, violating laws against the distribution of indecent images of children. Many of those who shared the video did so ‘just’ a few times, police said , but others shared it hundreds of times — they knew what they were doing, even if they didn’t realize it was illegal. Anyone found guilty would face no more than 20 days in prison, but they’d also be added to an offender registry for the next 10 years. The last messages were shared in the fall of 2017, but charges are only coming now because it’s a “very large and complex case, ” according to police. The investigation included four Danish police bureaus, and came after US authorities relayed Facebook’s warning to Europol. It can be tricky to catch ad hoc sharing of illegal videos on messaging services like this, both because of the private nature of the messages and because some users are bound to have end-to-end encryption turned on. Ultimately, it relies on someone in the sharing chain deciding to report the offending material — and in this case, it’s clear that it took a while before someone came forward. Privacy concerns are going to rule out active monitoring, but this does suggest that Facebook and others might want to do more to encourage voluntary reports. Via: BBC Source: The Local

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Danish police charge 1,000 people following Facebook sex video

Quika promises free satellite internet for developing countries

Facebook’s plans for free satellite internet access may have run into some… setbacks , but another company is promising to make that ubiquitous data a practical reality. Quika, a company led by the chief of satellite provider Talia, is launching a free satellite broadband service in the second quarter of 2018. It’s promising speedy, low-latency Ka-band data in developing countries where income inequality and a lack of infrastructure (especially in rural areas) make conventional internet access impractical for most. Service will begin with Afghanistan, Iraq and most of Africa, but there are promises of more countries afterward. The strategy behind this no-charge access isn’t terribly complicated: Quika is planning to support its free plan through its paid services for enterprises and internet providers. Also, while the service itself will be free, Quika notes that customers may have to pay for setup or make a deposit on the necessary hardware. It’s far from certain that this will work as well as advertised. It depends on having enough corporate customers to subsidize free access, and capacity could be an issue. It may not be very fast if there are loads of users, and launching additional satellites isn’t always quick or easy. If this lives up to promises, though, it could go a long way toward fulfilling promises of democratizing internet access. Google is already providing some free balloon-based internet , but only on a limited, experimental scale. This could make free internet a staple in many parts of the world. Source: BusinessWire , Quika

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Quika promises free satellite internet for developing countries

‘Very High Level of Confidence’ Russia Used Kaspersky Software For Devastating NSA Leaks

bricko shares a report from Yahoo Finance: Three months after U.S. officials asserted that Russian intelligence used popular antivirus company Kaspersky to steal U.S. classified information, there are indications that the alleged espionage is related to a public campaign of highly damaging NSA leaks by a mysterious group called the Shadow Brokers. In August 2016, the Shadow Brokers began leaking classified NSA exploit code that amounted to hacking manuals. In October 2017, U.S. officials told major U.S. newspapers that Russian intelligence leveraged software sold by Kaspersky to exfiltrate classified documents from certain computers. (Kaspersky software, like all antivirus software, requires access to everything stored on a computer so that it can scan for malicious software.) And last week the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. investigators “now believe that those manuals [leaked by Shadow Brokers] may have been obtained using Kaspersky to scan computers on which they were stored.” Members of the computer security industry agree with that suspicion. “I think there’s a very high level of confidence that the Shadow Brokers dump was directly related to Kaspersky … and it’s very much attributable, ” David Kennedy, CEO of TrustedSec, told Yahoo Finance. “Unfortunately, we can only hear that from the intelligence side about how they got that information to see if it’s legitimate.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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‘Very High Level of Confidence’ Russia Used Kaspersky Software For Devastating NSA Leaks

Lenovo Discovers and Removes Backdoor In Networking Switches

An anonymous reader writes: Lenovo engineers have discovered a backdoor in the firmware of RackSwitch and BladeCenter networking switches. The company released firmware updates last week. The Chinese company said it found the backdoor after an internal security audit of firmware for products added to its portfolio following the acquisitions of other companies. Lenovo says the backdoor affects only RackSwitch and BladeCenter switches running ENOS (Enterprise Network Operating System). The backdoor was added to ENOS in 2004 when ENOS was maintained by Nortel’s Blade Server Switch Business Unit (BSSBU). Lenovo claims Nortel appears to have authorized the addition of the backdoor “at the request of a BSSBU OEM customer.” In a security advisory regarding this issue, Lenovo refers to the backdoor under the name of “HP backdoor.” The backdoor code appears to have remained in the firmware even after Nortel spun BSSBU off in 2006 as BLADE Network Technologies (BNT). The backdoor also remained in the code even after IBM acquired BNT in 2010. Lenovo bought IBM’s BNT portfolio in 2014. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Lenovo Discovers and Removes Backdoor In Networking Switches