Lost City Discovered

 

 

 

 

 

Deep in the jungles of Honduras, an expedition of archaeologists recently discovered a remote city, thought to be lost for a thousand years. The city, believed to be what indigenous people call La Ciudad Blanca, Spanish for “The White City,” is thought to be the ruins of the legendary City of the Monkey God, that explorers have been searching for since Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés claimed to have heard reports of a lost civilization in Honduras that contained a vast wealth.

Deep in the jungles of Honduras, an expedition of archaeologists recently discovered a remote city, thought to be lost for a thousand years. The city, believed to be what indigenous people call La Ciudad Blanca, Spanish for “The White City,” is thought to be the ruins of the legendary City of the Monkey God, that explorers have been searching for since Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés claimed to have heard reports of a lost civilization in Honduras that contained a vast wealth.

The lost city, who’s discovery was so recent and unexpected that it doesn’t even have a name yet, has remained completely untouched since its inhabitants abandoned it. In order to keep it that way, and away from potential looters, it’s location isn’t being disclosed. As evidence of the remoteness of the lost city, the team reported that the animals in the surrounding jungle appeared to have never encountered humans before.

 

For hundreds of years, scientists, archaeologists, and explorers have tried to find the lost City of the Monkey God, and with all the rumors about it, it began to take on an almost Atlantis-like, mythical quality among the locals, who spoke of it as if it were a paradise, where Indians hid from Spanish Conquistadors, and from which “no one ever returned.” Many years after Cortés sought out the lost city, famed aviator, Charles Lindbergh claimed to have seen a white city while flying over Honduras in 1927. The name City of the Monkey God started gaining traction among explorers by the 1930’s, and in 1939, an adventurer by the name of Theodore Morde said he had discovered the lost city, but never revealed its whereabouts, and he committed suicide before he was ever able to return to it. In the 1950’s, Hungarian explorer Tibor Sekelj, financed by the Ministry of Culture of Honduras, launched a small, and ultimately fruitless, expedition to discover the lost city.

 

e end, all expeditions to find La Ciudad Blanca proved unsuccessful, until 2012, when documentary film maker Steve Elkins, using remote sensing technology known as LiDAR (which is believed to stand for Light Detection and Ranging, or alternatively is a portmanteau of ‘light’ and ‘radar’), mapped the ground of the area while flying over it through the thick jungle. When the pictures taken by the LiDAR were later processed, they revealed signs of civilization, such as earthworks and mounds, seemingly shaped by human hands, as well as canals. It was these images that eventually led Fisher and his team to make their amazing ground discovery last week.
It is incredibly rare in this day and age for a lost city to be discovered completely untouched, but sometimes, like the discovery of Mahendraparvata in Cambodia in 2013, explorers get lucky, thanks to the fact that ancient peoples often preferred the solitude and safety of remote locations on which to build their civilizations

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1894809/lost-city-discovered-could-it-be-the-legendary-city-of-the-monkey-god/#4bg3svASp3JJlk1q.99

 

Samsung is Spying on You

 

Does your Samsung TV listen to you? That is the question that was posed on Monday, February 16, by David Lodge in a Pen Test Partners blog. This is a UK-based security company. Sure, the smart TVs have a voice command facility enabled by saying something or the default "Hi TV." What interested Lodge was "a bit of a privacy concern - can Samsung listen in on you whilst you're sat on the sofa watching TV? The easiest way is to intercept some traffic from a TV and see what it's trying to do." Lodge went ahead to do his research. To intercept the traffic he used a TP-Link switch which was able to mirror traffic from one port to another, allowing him to transparently intercept the traffic. From there he could record its handshake as it joined the network and attempted to make a few voice requests in different ways. Lodge said that "This was all recorded in Wireshark and saved as a PCAP for later analysis." (Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer that lets you see what's happening on your network. It lets you capture and interactively browse traffic running on a computer network. It runs on most platforms including Windows, OS X, Linux, and Unix. Network professionals, security experts and developers use this regularly.)

What did Lodge find and conclude? Does the TV listen to you? The answer, he said, is "not unless you ask it to." At the moment, he said, it only listens to audio when you say "Hi TV". Does it send your audio to a third party? Lodge said sometimes. "When you say "Hi TV" it will listen for some simple things, such as volume up and volume down, that it does on TV, anything more complex, such as a web search it will pass to a third party." The Register explained how such spoken web search requests are piped to a company to analyze and turn into query results sent back to the TVs. "A specific server receives data from the televisions in plaintext, and replies with unencrypted responses," said John Leyden.

Looking at the contents of a stream, Lodge did not see SSL encrypted data. "It's not even HTTP data," he wrote, but instead "a mix of XML and some custom binary data packet."

Leo Kelion, technology desk editor, BBC News, reported that Samsung acknowledged some smart TV models were uploading owners' voices to the Internet in unencrypted form. Samsung told the BBC it planned to release new code that would encrypt voice commands for the user's protection. "Our latest Smart TV models are equipped with data encryption and a software update will soon be available for download on other models." The Register similarly reported on a Samsung response. "Since the publication of this story, Samsung has been in touch to say: "Samsung takes consumer privacy very seriously and our products are designed with privacy in mind. Our latest Smart TV models are equipped with data encryption and a software update will soon be available for download on other models."

Earlier, on February 10, Samsung had issued this statement: "You can control your Smart TV, and use many of its features, with voice commands. If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some interactive voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service provider (currently, Nuance Communications, Inc.) that converts your interactive voice commands to text and to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features. Samsung will collect your interactive voice commands only when you make a specific search request to the Smart TV by clicking the activation button either on the remote control or on your screen and speaking into the microphone on the remote control. If you do not enable Voice Recognition, you will not be able to use interactive voice recognition features, although you may be able to control your TV using certain predefined voice commands. You may disable Voice Recognition data collection at any time by visiting the 'settings' menu. However, this may prevent you from using some of the Voice Recognition features."

 

Spider silk dethroned as nature’s toughest fiber

Spider silk is famous for its amazing toughness, and until recently a tensile strength of 1.3 gigapascals (GPa) was enough to earn it the title of strongest natural material. However, researchers report online today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface that the record books need to be updated to properly recognize the incredible strength of the limpet teeth. Marine snails known as limpets (Patella vulgata, pictured) spend most of their lives scraping a set of small teeth along rocks in shallow ocean waters, looking for food. The constant grinding would be enough to quickly reduce most natural materials to nubs, but the limpets’ teeth boast a tensile strength of between 3 and 6.5 GPa, researchers report. Scientists discovered that the teeth are made of a mixture of goethite (an iron-containing crystal) nanofibers encased in a protein matrix. In spite of their amazing strength, the teeth don’t quite best the strongest humanmade materials like graphene, but the new material’s upper range puts it far ahead of Kevlar and on par with the highest quality carbon fibers. Researchers speculate that the material’s durability may have practical applications in dentistry, but it’ll probably be a while before anyone is trading in their own teeth for some limpet chompers.

Stopping HIV with an artificial protein

 

For 30 years, researchers have struggled to determine which immune responses best foil HIV, information that has guided the design of AIDS vaccines and other prevention approaches. Now, a research team has shown that a lab-made molecule that mimics an antibody from our immune system may have more protective power than anything the body produces, keeping four monkeys free of HIV infection despite injection of large doses of the virus.

Intensive hunts are under way for natural HIV antibodies that can stop—or “neutralize”—the many variants of the constantly mutating AIDS virus. Researchers have recently found several dozen broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) that are highly potent and work at low doses. But viral immunologist Michael Farzan of the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida, and 33 co-workers have recently taken a different strategy, building a novel molecule based on our knowledge of how HIV infects cells. HIV infects white blood cells by sequentially attaching to two receptors on their surfaces. First, HIV’s own surface protein, gp120, docks on the cell’s CD4 receptor. This attachment twists gp120 such that it exposes a region on the virus that can attach to the second cellular receptor, CCR5. The new construct combines a piece of CD4 with a smidgen of CCR5 and attaches both receptors to a piece of an antibody. In essence, the AIDS virus locks onto the construct, dubbed eCD4-Ig, as though it were attaching to a cell and thus is neutralized.

In test-tube experiments, eCD4-Ig outperformed all known natural HIV antibodies at stopping the virus from infecting cells, Farzan’s team reports in this week’s issue of Nature. To test how it works in animals, they then put a gene for eCD4-Ig into a harmless virus and infected four monkeys; the virus forces the monkey’s cells to mass produce the construct. When they “challenged” these monkeys and four controls with successively higher doses of an AIDS virus for up to 34 weeks, none of the animals that received eCD4-Ig became infected, whereas all of the untreated ones did.

The new study ups the ante on a similar gene therapy approach with natural antibodies that 6 years ago showed promise in monkey experiments, says an accompanying Nature editorial by AIDS vaccine researcher Nancy Haigwood of Oregon Health & Science University in Beaverton. “I am a huge fan of this paper,” Haigwood says. “It’s really very creative and a breakthrough as far as I am concerned.” Pediatrician Philip Johnson of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, whose lab in 2009 showed success with a gene therapy that delivers an HIV bNAb, adds that eCD4-Ig “is a beautiful thing.”

Building on work by Johnson’s group, Farzan’s team stitched the gene for eCD4-Ig into an adeno-associated virus (AAV) that is harmless to humans. Those viruses, injected into monkey muscles, continued to produce eCD4-Ig for the 40 weeks of the experiment. “Everyone expects with AAV that this can go on forever,” Farzan says. The animals had no detectable immune response against the eCD4-Ig, presumably because it is so similar to pieces of their own cells.

Not everyone is convinced that eCD4-Ig will ultimately work better than natural HIV antibodies. Virologist David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, is working with a group developing its own AAV gene therapy that delivers an HIV bNAb. He describes the eCD4-Ig chimera and the paper as “impressive” and says he welcomes this new approach. But Baltimore, who like Johnson has already moved into early phase human trials with his gene therapy, notes that the new work offers only test-tube and animal data. “It’s perhaps a better construct than the antibodies we’ve been using, but it’s a matter of how it plays out in human trials,” Baltimore says. “I don’t think it’s easy to tell how that will happen.”

Johnson agrees that eCD4-Ig may not work as well as bNAbs in humans, but also says the natural antibodies, even if they have less potency and breadth, may be powerful enough to stop HIV. “How good is good enough?” Johnson asks. “Nobody has a clue about that. The only way you would know really is to do a bake-off in a human trial.”

Farzan says in theory at least, it will be harder for the virus to mutate its way around eCD4-Ig than a bNAb, because HIV needs to bind to CD4 and CCR5. Whether any of these gene therapies will prove safe and practical remains to be seen. Farzan, for his part, has more experiments planned before moving into humans. “We need to do a lot more monkey studies to see if there’s anything weird,” he says.

Posted in Biology, Health

Google Concerned over FBI's Plans

 

Google is warning that the government's quiet plan to expand the FBI's authority to remotely access computer files amounts to a "monumental" constitutional concern.

The search giant submitted public comments earlier this week opposing a Justice Department proposal that would grant judges more leeway in how they can approve search warrants for electronic data.

The push to change an arcane federal rule "raises a number of monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal, and geopolitical concerns that should be left to Congress to decide," wrote Richard Salgado, Google's director for law enforcement and information security.

The provision, known as Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure, generally permits judges to grant search warrants only within the bounds of their judicial district. Last year, the Justice Department petitioned a judicial advisory committee to amend the rule to allow judges to approve warrants outside their jurisdictions or in cases where authorities are unsure where a computer is located.

Google, in its comments, blasted the desired rule change as overly vague, saying the proposal could authorize remote searches on the data of millions of Americans simultaneously—particularly those who share a network or router—and cautioned it rested on shaky legal footing.

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"The serious and complex constitutional concerns implicated by the proposed amendment are numerous and, because of the nature of Fourth Amendment case law development, are unlikely to be addressed by courts in a timely fashion," Salgado wrote.

The Justice Department has countered that the rule change amounts to a small-scale tweak of protocol, one that is necessary to align search-warrant procedures with the realities of modern technology. In its own comments, the Justice Department accused some opponents of the rule change of "misreading the text of the proposal or misunderstanding current law."

"The proposal would not authorize the government to undertake any search or seizure or use any remote search technique not already permitted under current law," Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Bitkower said in a memorandum written late last year and made public Tuesday. He added that investigators are "careful to avoid collateral damage when executing remote searches, just as [they are] careful to avoid injury to persons or damage to property in the far more common scenario of executing physical warrants."

Google is the only major tech firm to weigh in on the little-noticed proposed rule change, for which the public comment period ended on Tuesday. Privacy and civil-liberties groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, and some technology experts have also condemned the plan as a potential threat to the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable government search and seizures.

A change this broad should only be enacted by Congress, they argue.

"I empathize that it is very hard to get a legislative change," Amie Stepanovich, senior policy counsel with Access, a digital-freedom group, told the judicial panel during a meeting called to review the proposal in November. "However, when you have us resorting to Congress to get increased privacy protections, we would also like to see the government turn to Congress to get increased surveillance authority."

Google echoed that concern in its comments, saying the panel should "leave the expansion of the government's investigative and technological tools, if any are necessary or appropriate, to Congress."

Uber's Carpooling Service UberPool Expands To Los Angeles

 

NEW YORK (AP) — Ride-hailing app Uber plans to launch its carpooling service in Los Angeles, one of the most congested cities in the world.

UberPool will allow riders on similar routes to share travel and split the fare with strangers. It will match two users per ride but allow each to have one person accompany them — for a total of four passengers.

The service is slated to begin on Thursday, and Uber says it could reduce rates for users by about 50 percent.

Los Angeles is the fourth most congested metro area in the world, according to Inrix, a Kirkland, Wash.-based traffic research firm, with drivers wasting 66 hours in congestion over the past 12 months.

UberPool is already offered in New York, San Francisco and Paris.

Millions of children exposed to ID theft through Anthem breach

Adults aren't the only ones who can have their identity stolen.

Tens of millions of American children had their Social Security numbers, date of birth and health care ID numbers stolen in the recent data breach at health insurance giant, Anthem Inc. This exposes these kids to the real risk of identity theft.

"Every terrible outcome that can occur as the result of an identity theft will happen to the children who were on that database," said Adam Levin, chairman and founder of IDentityTheft 911. "Criminals will use those stolen Social Security numbers to open accounts, get medical treatment, commit tax fraud, you name it."

Tim Rohrbaugh, chief experience officer at Identity Guard, calls the Anthem breach "catastrophic" and predicts the stolen information "will be used in waves of financial crimes" against American children for decades.

"This is a watershed event," Rohrbaugh said. "There is no other bulk acquisition of this much personal data - names, birthdates, addresses and Social Security numbers - that I am aware of in history."

And because the children's information was linked to their parents' data, it will make it much easier for cybercriminals to commit fraud against the parents as well, Rohrbaugh said.

The Social Security number was never supposed to be used as a national identifier, but it's become that. For an identity thief, that nine-digit number is the brass ring. It's the skeleton key that unlocks your life.

A child's number is even more valuable. Here's why: For most minors, their number is pristine - it's never been used and is not yet associated with a credit file. That means there's very little chance that the credit reporting agencies are monitoring it.

So a criminal can take that stolen number, combine it with someone else's name, address and birth date to create a fake ID - what fraud fighters call a "synthetic ID" - that can be used for all sorts of fraudulent purposes

"Now it's really all about detection," said Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). "Parents need to keep an eye out for any red flags that signal their child's stolen Social Security number has been used by a thief."

Those warning signs include:

• Collection calls or notices for a debt incurred in your child's name
• Mailings that would generally be for someone over the age of 18, such as pre-approved credit card offers, jury duty notices or parking tickets
• An insurance bill or explanation of benefits from a doctor listing medical treatments or services that did not take place
• A notice from the IRS that your child's name and/or Social Security number is already listed on another tax returnFraud experts encourage all parents to check to see if their underage children have credit reports. All three of the major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, allow parents to do this at no cost.