Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - SPAM: With coronavirus antibodies fading fast, vaccine hopes fade, too

Submitted by Way Smarter Than You
Way Smarter Than You writes: Disturbing new revelations that permanent immunity to the coronavirus may not be possible have jeopardized vaccine development and reinforced a decision by scientists at UCSF and affiliated laboratories to focus exclusively on treatments.

Several recent studies conducted around the world indicate that the human body does not retain the antibodies that build up during infections, meaning there may be no lasting immunity to COVID-19 after people recover.

Strong antibodies are also crucial in the development of vaccines. So molecular biologists fear the only way left to control the disease may be to treat the symptoms after people are infected to prevent the most debilitating effects, including inflammation, blood clots and death.

"I just donâ(TM)t see a vaccine coming anytime soon," said Nevan Krogan, a molecular biologist and director of UCSFâ(TM)s Quantitative Biosciences Institute, which works in partnership with 100 research laboratories. "People do have antibodies, but the antibodies are waning quickly." And if antibodies diminish, "then there is a good chance the immunity from a vaccine would wane too."
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:If Trump truly were bad (Score 1) 455

by Coffeesloth (#60302733) Attached to: If the US presidential election were today, I would:
Trump is bad, or haven't you paid attention? He did nothing for several months and downplayed the virus danger. He's still trying to downplay the danger as more people die. Prior to that he destroyed the farm industry by removing the sale of corn and soy beans to the largest market (China) all for a supposed trade war. He wasted time and energy promoting North Korea and got played like the stooge he is. He is a failure at business and a failure as a president. He bankrupted two casinos! Two Casinos, how is that possible? Bad Management and he was the one in charge of both.

Contagion rates be damned, if he hadn't been such a fool and removed our person in China that was working with their agency we would have been better prepared. If he hadn't fired everyone in the government that was supposed to plan for a catastrophe like this we would be better prepared. And now he's trying to hide the data because it makes him look bad. I sincerely hope none of your family dies, but if they do rest assured it will be hidden so Trump has good ratings.

Comment Re:Howie Hawkins (Score 0) 455

by Coffeesloth (#60302703) Attached to: If the US presidential election were today, I would:
You're certainly free to vote any way you want but know this. We are not yet a three party system so voting for a green party means you are voting to keep the republican party in power. In fact voting green is almost the same as not voting at all when it comes to the actual election. Maybe some day we'll have more than two parties and then your vote will count. Today however every vote that does not remove Trump for office effectively votes to keep him in.

Submission + - Dogs may use Earth's magnetic field to take shortcuts (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Dogs are renowned for their world-class noses, but a new study suggests they may have an additional—albeit hidden—sensory talent: a magnetic compass. The sense appears to allow them to use Earth’s magnetic field to calculate shortcuts in unfamiliar terrain.

The finding is a first in dogs, says Catherine Lohmann, a biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who studies “magnetoreception” and navigation in turtles. She notes that dogs’ navigational abilities have been studied much less compared with migratory animals such as birds.

Submission + - Iranian Spies Accidentally Leaked Videos of Themselves Hacking (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at IBM's X-Force security team revealed today that they've obtained roughly five hours of video footage that appears to have been recorded directly from the screens of hackers working for a group IBM calls ITG18, and which other security firms refer to as APT35 or Charming Kitten. It's one of the most active state-sponsored espionage teams linked to the government of Iran. The leaked videos were found among 40 gigabytes of data that the hackers had apparently stolen from victim accounts, including US and Greek military personnel. Other clues in the data suggest that the hackers targeted US State Department staff and an unnamed Iranian-American philanthropist.

The IBM researchers say they found the videos exposed due to a misconfiguration of security settings on a virtual private cloud server they'd observed in previous APT35 activity. The files were all uploaded to the exposed server over a few days in May, just as IBM was monitoring the machine. The videos appear to be training demonstrations the Iran-backed hackers made to show junior team members how to handle hacked accounts. They show the hackers accessing compromised Gmail and Yahoo Mail accounts to download their contents, as well as exfiltrating other Google-hosted data from victims. This sort of data exfiltration and management of hacked accounts is hardly sophisticated hacking. It's more the kind of labor-intensive but relatively simple work that's necessary in a large-scale phishing operation. But the videos nonetheless represent a rare artifact, showing a first-hand view of state-sponsored cyberspying that's almost never seen outside of an intelligence agency.

Submission + - Trump's Twitter account has extra protections (theverge.com)

Submitted by kimmmos
kimmmos writes: In yesterday’s massive attack on Twitter, some of the highest-profile accounts on the service, including President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates had their accounts hijacked to peddle bitcoin scams. Notably, however, Donald Trump, perhaps the most famous Twitter user of all, was untouched by the attack, and it could be because Twitter has implemented extra protections for his account.

Submission + - VPN with 'strict no-logs policy' exposed millions of user log files (betanews.com) 3

Submitted by kimmmos
kimmmos writes: An unprotected database belonging to the VPN service UFO VPN was exposed online for more than two weeks. Contained within the database were more than 20 million logs including user passwords stored in plain text.

User of both UFO VPN free and paid services are affected by the data breach which was discovered by the security research team at Comparitech. Despite the Hong Kong-based VPN provider claiming to have a "strict no-logs policy" and that any data collected is anonymized, Comparitech says that "based on the contents of the database, users' information does not appear to be anonymous at all".

Submission + - German Court Bans Tesla Ad Statements Related To Autonomous Driving (reuters.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Germany has banned Tesla from repeating what a court says are misleading advertising statements relating to the capabilities of the firm’s driver assistance systems and to autonomous driving, a Munich judge ruled on Tuesday. Tesla can appeal the ruling. The case was brought by Germany’s Wettbewerbszentrale, an industry sponsored body tasked with policing anti-competitive practices.

The Munich court agreed with the industry body’s assessment and banned Tesla Germany from including “full potential for autonomous driving” and “Autopilot inclusive” in its German advertising materials. It said such claims amounted to misleading business practices, adding that the average buyer might be given the impression that the car could drive without human intervention and might suggest such a system was now legal on German roads.

Submission + - Biden proposes zero carbon energy generation by 2035 (nytimes.com)

Submitted by DogDude
DogDude writes: "One major element of the announcement will include charting a path to zero carbon pollution from the U.S. electricity sector by 2035. According to the Energy Information Association, coal and natural gas still account for more than 60 percent of the sector."

"Campaign officials said they expect to achieve the goal by encouraging the installation of “millions of new solar panels and tens of thousands of wind turbines,” but also keeping in place existing nuclear energy plants. The plan also will call for investing in carbon capture and storage technology for natural gas."

Submission + - How Remote Work Could Destroy Silicon Valley (medium.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “The tech industry is built on serendipity. If workers flee the Bay Area, what’s left?”

More importantly, the Bay Area is the cash cow that keeps Sacramento afloat. Take those revenues away, and what’s left?

Submission + - Statisticians warn that AI is still not ready to diagnose COVID-19 (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by shirappu
shirappu writes: The development of AI systems for medical application is constantly ongoing, and ranges from chatbots and medical imaging to automating paperwork and predictive diagnosis. Many believe AI systems can ease the workload of doctors by predicting COVID-19 in CT scans and X-ray images.

However a group of medical statisticians is reviewing many of these predictive models as they are released, and so far they still aren't performing to a high enough level. The main problems appear to be (perhaps unsurprisingly) a lack of necessary data, and not enough domain expertise.

The leader of the above group of statisticians, Maarten van Smeden, pointed to a lack of cooperation between researchers as a road block in the way of developing truly accurate models. "You need expertise not only of the modeler," he said, "but you need statisticians, epidemiologists and clinicians to work together to make something that is actually useful."

Comment Re:As long as it's enforceable (Score 1) 326

Understanding of course that the system of laws we have in the US is a social code of conduct. Exactly how are they a tool of bullies?

As with the law a code of conduct must be applied to everyone, and in a closed setting should be voted on by everyone so there is a consensus that cannot be exploited by a group of bullies.

Comment Re:I answered Other, but... (Score 0) 326

You are right on the money. This code of conduct issue sounds like just another way for liberals to only play by the rules when it suits their shadowy agenda. Similar to Google yelling 'free speech' when it suits them but censor free speech 'to keep things civil' when that suits them. It's no wonder Google removed 'Don't Be Evil' from their motto, though I'm surprised they were so brazen about admitting their alignment.

Really? Why does a code of conduct only apply to liberals? What group has performed more violations of a civil code of conduct? Not the liberals. Regarding Google, yes they do both of those things but there's another group that over uses the "Free Speech" chant more than them. That group apparently doesn't understand the constitution, because they chant "free speech" when the government isn't restricting it. That other group also says whatever hurtful things they want and yet when it's returned back their reply is "Why can't we be civil?"

That other group by the way goes by the name Republicans.

In regards to your signature, I guess you are calling all white supremacists liberal?

Slashdot Top Deals

The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison

Close