Lifeboat Foundation

The uptake of artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision and machine learning has been high in some industries, such as retail (see AiFi and Standard AI) and automotive (see Waymo and Tesla), but we’re now starting to see it break into some of the most critical aspects of society.

The recent accelerations in healthcare are perhaps the best example of this. Over 90% of hospitals and healthcare systems now have an AI or automation strategy in place, up from 53% in 2019, and “the global market for surgical robotics and computer-assisted surgery is anticipated to grow from $6.1 billion in 2020 to $11.6 billion by 2025.”

AI is starting to become more than just a buzzword. At this very moment, we’re starting to see AI-enhanced advanced tooling augment human capabilities and reshape how surgical procedures are planned, executed and managed. With aging populations, rising costs, lack of medical staff and backlogs worse than ever (almost 8 million people in the U.K.), the demand for AI-driven efficiency and surgery precision is escalating like never before.

New AI system uses tongue color images to accurately diagnose diseases:

AI analyzes tongue colors for real-time disease diagnoses such as anemia, COVID-19, vascular and gastrointestinal issues, or asthma.

Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder; KU Leuven; the Flatiron Institute and the University of Wisconsin–Madison recently set out to answer a long-standing research question, specifically whether charged particles in the turbulent flows commonly surrounding black holes and other compact objects can be accelerated to very high energies.

Monitoring evolving DDoS trends is essential for anticipating threats and adapting defensive strategies. The comprehensive Gcore Radar Report for the first half of 2024 provides detailed insights into DDoS attack data, showcasing changes in attack patterns and the broader landscape of cyber threats. Here, we share a selection of findings from the full report.

Key Takeaways

The number of DDoS attacks in H1 2024 has increased by 46% compared to the same period last year, reaching 445K in Q2 2024. Compared to data for the previous six months (Q3–4 2023), it increased by 34%.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the molecular system responsible for carrying genetic information in living organisms, utilizing its two helical strands to transcribe and amplify this information. Scientists are highly interested in developing artificial molecular systems that can match or even exceed the functionality of DNA. Double-helical foldamers represent one such promising molecular system.

Helical foldamers are a class of artificial molecules that fold into well-defined helical structures like helices found in proteins and nucleic acids. They have garnered considerable attention as stimuli-responsive switchable molecules, tuneable chiral materials, and cooperative supramolecular systems due to their chiral and conformational switching properties.

Double-helical foldamers exhibit not only even stronger chiral properties but also unique properties, such as the transcription of chiral information from one chiral strand to another without chiral properties, enabling potential applications in higher-order structural control related to replication, like nucleic acids. However, the artificial control of the chiral switching properties of such artificial molecules remains challenging due to the difficulty in balancing the dynamic properties required for switching and stability. Although various helical molecules have been developed in the past, reversal of twist direction in double-helix molecules and supramolecules has rarely been reported.

In a recent study in Nature Communications, researchers increased synaptic serotonin through a selective serotonin-releasing agent (SSRA), fenfluramine, to investigate its impact on human behavior.

Neuroscience research concentrates on the function of central serotonin (5HT) in human behavior, specifically the impact of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Serotonin is necessary for several actions, including eating, sexual function, and goal-directed cognition.

It is difficult to determine the causal relationship between increased synaptic 5-HT and behavior in humans via SSRIs due to SSRIs’ complicated effects on 5-HT and colocalized neurotransmitter systems. A low dose of fenfluramine, approved for the treatment of Dravet epilepsy in 2020, directly and swiftly elevates synaptic 5-HT without altering extracellular dopamine concentrations in mood control areas.

Microsoft on Tuesday shipped fixes to address a total of 90 security flaws, including 10 zero-days, of which six have come under active exploitation in the wild.

Of the 90 bugs, seven are rated Critical, 79 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. This is also in addition to 36 vulnerabilities that the tech giant resolved in its Edge browser since last month.

The Patch Tuesday updates are notable for addressing six actively exploited zero-days.

Ivanti releases critical security updates for vTM and Neurons for ITSM to fix vulnerabilities allowing unauthorized access. Update immediately.

Abstract: In ecological systems, be it a garden or a galaxy, populations evolve from some initial value (say zero) up to a steady state equilibrium, when the mean number of births and deaths per unit time are equal. This equilibrium point is a function of the birth and death rates, as well as the carrying capacity of the ecological system itself. The growth curve is S-shaped, saturating at the carrying capacity for large birth-to-death rate ratios and tending to zero at the other end. We argue that our astronomical observations appear inconsistent with a cosmos saturated with ETIs, and thus SETI optimists are left presuming that the true population is somewhere along the transitional part of this S-curve. Since the birth and death rates are a-priori unbounded, we argue that this presents a fine-tuning problem. Further, we show that if the birth-to-death rate ratio is assumed to have a log-uniform prior distribution, then the probability distribution of the ecological filling fraction is bi-modal — peaking at zero and unity. Indeed, the resulting distribution is formally the classic Haldane prior, conceived to describe the prior expectation of a Bernoulli experiment, such as a technological intelligence developing (or not) on a given world. Our results formally connect the Drake Equation to the birth-death formalism, the treatment of ecological carrying capacity and their connection to the Haldane perspective.

From: David Kipping [view email].