Monday 3 June 2019

Maestro: a new attack that orchestrates malicious flows with BGP

Researchers at the University of Tennessee have recently identified the Maestro attack, a new link flooding attack (LFA) that leverages plane traffic control engineering techniques to concentrate botnet-sourced distributed denial of service (DDos) flows on transit links. In their paper, recently published on arXiv, the researchers outlined this type attack, tried to understand its scope and presented effective mitigations for network operators who wish to insulate themselves from it.

* This article was originally published here

Significant barriers to care for patients seeking medication for opioid use

Buprenorphine-naloxone (buprenorphine), a highly effective, evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD), is difficult to access in states with high rates of death associated with OUD, according to new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study also found that access to buprenorphine is especially challenging among patients with Medicaid coverage.

* This article was originally published here

Stanford Doggo: a highly agile quadruped robot

Researchers at Stanford University have recently created an open-source quadruped robot called Stanford Doggo. Their robot, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv and set to be published by IEEE Explore, exceeds the performance of many state-of-the-art legged robots in vertical jumping agility.

* This article was originally published here

Trap-and-release accelerates study of swimming ciliated cells

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have been studying cilia for years to determine how their dysfunction leads to infertility and other conditions associated with cilia-related diseases. Now, they will be able to perform these studies more rapidly through a new method that uses sound waves to momentarily trap cells propelled by cilia, then releases them to measure their movement as they swim away.

* This article was originally published here

Only few hundred training samples bring human-sounding speech in Microsoft TTS feat

Microsoft Research Asia has been drawing applause for pulling off text to speech requiring little training—and showing "incredibly" realistic results.

* This article was originally published here

Pressure injuries at time of ICU admission tied to longer stays

(HealthDay)—Pressure injuries at the time of admission to an intensive care unit may predict patients at risk for longer hospital stays, according to a study published in the June issue of Critical Care Nurse.

* This article was originally published here

Diabetes drug alleviates anxiety in mice

The antidiabetic medication metformin reduces anxiety-like behaviors in male mice by increasing serotonin availability in the brain, according to a study published in JNeurosci. These findings could have implications for the treatment of patients with both metabolic and mental disorders.

* This article was originally published here

Early contact with needle-exchange program reduces hepatitis C infection

People who inject drugs and who are female, homeless or amphetamine users often share needles and syringes, and consequently run a higher risk of hepatitis C virus infection that affects the liver. However, as a new doctoral thesis from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden demonstrates, early contact with a needle-exchange programme can have a protective effect.

* This article was originally published here

Study delivers insight into possible origins of immunological memory

Natural killer cells are part of the innate immune system. Their role is to detect virus-infected cells and destroy them. When an infection is detected, a small subset of the most effective killer cells is identified and selectively expanded—as a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now been able to show for the first time. This could represent a simple and evolutionary ancient form of immunological memory.

* This article was originally published here

New organic flow battery brings decomposing molecules back to life

After years of making progress on an organic aqueous flow battery, Harvard University researchers ran into a problem: the organic anthraquinone molecules that powered their ground-breaking battery were slowly decomposing over time, reducing the long-term usefulness of the battery.

* This article was originally published here