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Aug 14, 2024

DDoS Attacks Surge 46% in First Half of 2024, Gcore Report Reveals

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

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%.

Aug 14, 2024

DNA Doppelgängers: Scientists Develop Artificial Molecules With Life-Like Properties

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

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.

Aug 14, 2024

New findings reveal how serotonin shapes behavior in negative situations

Posted by in categories: food, neuroscience

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.

Aug 14, 2024

Microsoft Issues Patches for 90 Flaws, Including 10 Critical Zero-Days

Posted by in category: security

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.

Aug 14, 2024

Critical Flaw in Ivanti Virtual Traffic Manager Could Allow Rogue Admin Access

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, security

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

Aug 14, 2024

Do SETI Optimists Have a Fine-Tuning Problem?

Posted by in categories: alien life, information science

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].

Aug 14, 2024

The Limits of GenAI Educators

Posted by in categories: business, education, robotics/AI

While generative AI tools have been heralded as the future of education, more than 40 years of academic research suggests that it could also harm learning in realms from online tutoring to employee training for three reasons. First, the best student-teacher relationships are empathetic ones but it is biologically impossible for humans and AI to develop mutual empathy. Second, AI might help us bypass the boring task of knowledge accumulation but it is only through that process that we develop higher order thinking skills. Finally, digital tools are notoriously distracting and multitasking diminishes learning. As we think about the benefits of new technology, we must also consider the risks.

Page-utils class= article-utils—vertical hide-for-print data-js-target= page-utils data-id= tag: blogs.harvardbusiness.org, 2007/03/31:999.387329 data-title= The Limits of GenAI Educators data-url=/2024/07/the-limits-of-genai-educators data-topic= AI and machine learning data-authors= Jared Cooney Horvath data-content-type= Digital Article data-content-image=/resources/images/article_assets/2024/07/Jul24_17_545985287-383x215.jpg data-summary=

Three fundamental problems with using LLMs as teachers, tutors, and trainers.

Aug 14, 2024

Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Interaction in VR

Posted by in category: virtual reality

Touch, hit, and drag objects with VR-GS.

Aug 13, 2024

AI model predicts patient decline with near-perfect accuracy using facial expressions

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

Study develops a ConvLSTM model that accurately predicts patient deterioration based on facial expressions, achieving 99.89% accuracy, with potential to improve early detection in healthcare settings.

Aug 13, 2024

Tracking the Distance to Criticality in Systems with Unknown Noise

Posted by in category: neuroscience

A new method of detecting criticality from time-series data outperforms conventional metrics in the presence of variable noise levels for both simulated systems and real neural recordings.

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