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Nov 12, 2019

DDoS Attacks Target Amazon, SoftLayer and Telecom Infrastructure

Posted by in category: futurism

The specific type of TCP attack used in the recent spate of DDoS efforts were TCP SYN-ACK reflection attacks.

Nov 12, 2019

NSW and QLD bushfires: ‘Catastrophic’ fire danger forecast for today

Posted by in category: futurism

“The catastrophic weather conditions mean that things can change very quickly,” she told reporters in Sydney.

Catastrophic fire danger has been declared for Sydney and the Hunter Valley region to the north today with severe and extreme danger across vast tracts of the rest of the state.

The week-long declaration of a state of emergency gives the Rural Fire Service sweeping powers.

Nov 12, 2019

150 Years of Nature Papers

Posted by in category: futurism

This week’s cover shows Nature’s publication record over 150 years. Explore the growing web of collaboration and science in an interactive graphic here: https://go.nature.com/32wf2SB

Nov 12, 2019

Assembling Large Frames in Space For Massive Mars Colonization Ship

Posted by in category: space travel

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VKEY8ZKIw2E

Gateway Foundation is working on creating orbital assembly line and block construction systems. They would want to create a 244 meter long and 71 meter wide Mars Colonial Transport.

Nov 12, 2019

Specific neurons that map memories now identified in the human brain

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, neuroscience, virtual reality

An important aspect of human memory is our ability to conjure specific moments from the vast array of experiences that have occurred in any given setting. For example, if asked to recommend a tourist itinerary for a city you have visited many times, your brain somehow enables you to selectively recall and distinguish specific memories from your different trips to provide an answer.

Studies have shown that —the kind of you can consciously recall like your home address or your mother’s name—relies on healthy medial temporal lobe structures in the , including the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex (EC). These regions are also important for spatial cognition, demonstrated by the Nobel-Prize-winning discovery of “place cells” and “grid cells” in these regions— that activate to represent specific locations in the environment during navigation (akin to a GPS). However, it has not been clear if or how this “spatial map” in the brain relates to a person’s memory of events at those locations, and how in these regions enables us to target a particular memory for retrieval among related experiences.

A team led by neuroengineers at Columbia Engineering has found the first evidence that in the human brain target specific memories during recall. They studied recordings in neurosurgical patients who had electrodes implanted in their brains and examined how the patients’ brain signals corresponded to their behavior while performing a virtual-reality (VR) object-location memory task. The researchers identified “memory-trace cells” whose activity was spatially tuned to the location where subjects remembered encountering specific objects. The study is published today in Nature Neuroscience.

Nov 11, 2019

SpaceX launch highlights threat to astronomy from ‘megaconstellations’

Posted by in categories: internet, satellites

Spaceflight company SpaceX is set to launch 60 communications satellites into orbit today as the basis for a web of spacecraft designed to provide global Internet access. But many astronomers worry that such ‘megaconstellations’ — which are also planned by other companies that could launch tens of thousands of satellites in the coming years — might interfere with crucial observations of the Universe. They fear that megaconstellations could disrupt radio frequencies used for astronomical observation, create bright streaks in the night sky and increase congestion in orbit, raising the risk of collisions.


Researchers fear that plans to send tens of thousands of communications satellites into orbit will disrupt scientific observations of the Universe.

Nov 11, 2019

2019 Mercury Transit

Posted by in category: space

Q: What did Mercury say when it was asked to line up between Earth and the Sun?

A: I’ll pass! 😎

We were in for a rare treat during today’s #MercuryTransit, which only happens about 13 times a century! Revel in the views captured our NASA Sun Science-observing satellite in a variety of a variety of wavelengths of light in the extreme ultraviolet: https://go.nasa.gov/2NF6tQQ

Nov 11, 2019

The U.S. military, algorithmic warfare, and big tech

Posted by in categories: information science, military, robotics/AI

The U.S. military is preparing for the age of AI and algorithmic warfare, and it’s getting help from tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.

Nov 11, 2019

Natural image reconstruction from brain waves: a novel visual BCI system with native feedback

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Here we hypothesize that observing the visual stimuli of different categories trigger distinct brain states that can be decoded from noninvasive EEG recordings. We introduce an effective closed-loop BCI system that reconstructs the observed or imagined stimuli images from the co-occurring brain wave parameters. The reconstructed images are presented to the subject as a visual feedback. The developed system is applicable to training BCI-naïve subjects because of the user-friendly and intuitive way the visual patterns are employed to modify the brain states.

Currently, the usage of EEG-based BCIs in assistive and rehabilitation devices mostly comes down to the following scenarios:

Nov 11, 2019

The Important Gut-Behavior Relationship

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, existential risks, neuroscience

Both humans and mice respond to fear in ways that are deeply etched in survival mechanisms that have evolved over millions of years. Feeling afraid is part of a response that helps us to survive; we learn to respond appropriately, based on our assessment of the danger we face. Importantly, part of this response involves extinguishing fear and modifying our behavior accordingly, once we have learned that a potential threat poses little or no imminent danger. The inability to adapt to fears or lay them aside is involved in disorders such as PTSD and anxiety.

The researchers from Weill Cornell demonstrated that changes in the microbiome can result in an impaired ability to extinguish fear. This was true of two groups of mice: one group had been treated with antibiotics; the other group was raised entirely free of germs. The ability of both groups of mice to extinguish fear was compared with that of control mice whose microbiome was not altered. The difference suggested that signals from the microbiome were necessary for optimal extinction of conditioned fear responses.