Month: January 2019

Enlarge / This photomicrograph shows hepatitis caused by the Lassa virus, using toluidine-blue azure II stain, 1972. The Lassa virus can cause altered liver morphology with hemorrhagic necrosis and inflammation. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

The pickup truck was so overloaded with medical equipment that the chassis sagged almost to the ground. Dr. Austin Demby had just finished loading up the Toyota Hilux with as many microscopes, IV bags, computers, and lab and chemistry equipment he could fit in the extended bed. And as fast as possible, he sped away from the hospital in Segbwema, Sierra Leone.

Literally under gunfire, Demby and his colleagues were fleeing the Revolutionary United Front, a violent and destructive rebel army. It was 1991, and a brutal civil war had just erupted, putting the staff at Nixon Memorial Methodist Hospital at extreme risk. So, they were evacuating.

Darting along the muddy roads, they drove into a deep pool of rainwater. Suddenly, the truck stalled. They opened the hood but couldn’t figure out what was wrong. The battery seemed fine.

Enlarge / This photomicrograph shows hepatitis caused by the Lassa virus, using toluidine-blue azure II stain, 1972. The Lassa virus can cause altered liver morphology with hemorrhagic necrosis and inflammation. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

The pickup truck was so overloaded with medical equipment that the chassis sagged almost to the ground. Dr. Austin Demby had just finished loading up the Toyota Hilux with as many microscopes, IV bags, computers, and lab and chemistry equipment he could fit in the extended bed. And as fast as possible, he sped away from the hospital in Segbwema, Sierra Leone.

Literally under gunfire, Demby and his colleagues were fleeing the Revolutionary United Front, a violent and destructive rebel army. It was 1991, and a brutal civil war had just erupted, putting the staff at Nixon Memorial Methodist Hospital at extreme risk. So, they were evacuating.

Darting along the muddy roads, they drove into a deep pool of rainwater. Suddenly, the truck stalled. They opened the hood but couldn’t figure out what was wrong. The battery seemed fine.

Enlarge / One of the malicious ads displayed in a campaign from VeryMal. (credit: Confiant)

Researchers have uncovered a recent malicious advertisement campaign that’s notable for its size, scope, and resourcefulness: a two-day blitz triggered as many as 5 million times per day that used highly camouflaged JavaScript stashed in images to install a trojan on visitors' Macs.

The ads were served by a group security firm Confiant has dubbed VeryMal, a name that comes from veryield-malyst.com, one of the ad-serving domains the group uses. A run that was active from January 11 to January 13 on about 25 of the top 100 publisher sites triggered the image as many as 5 million times a day. In an attempt to bypass increasingly effective measures available to detect malicious ads, the images used steganography—the ancient practice of hiding code, messages, or other data inside images or text—to deliver its malicious payload to Mac-using visitors.

In a blog post published Wednesday, Confiant researcher Eliya Stein wrote:

Enlarge / One of the malicious ads displayed in a campaign from VeryMal. (credit: Confiant)

Researchers have uncovered a recent malicious advertisement campaign that’s notable for its size, scope, and resourcefulness: a two-day blitz triggered as many as 5 million times per day that used highly camouflaged JavaScript stashed in images to install a trojan on visitors' Macs.

The ads were served by a group security firm Confiant has dubbed VeryMal, a name that comes from veryield-malyst.com, one of the ad-serving domains the group uses. A run that was active from January 11 to January 13 on about 25 of the top 100 publisher sites triggered the image as many as 5 million times a day. In an attempt to bypass increasingly effective measures available to detect malicious ads, the images used steganography—the ancient practice of hiding code, messages, or other data inside images or text—to deliver its malicious payload to Mac-using visitors.

In a blog post published Wednesday, Confiant researcher Eliya Stein wrote:

Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook looks on as the iPhone X goes on sale at an Apple Store on November 3, 2017 in Palo Alto, California. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Apple has trimmed the size of its autonomous vehicles team, laying off 200 people, CNBC reports. Code-named "Project Titan," the secret team has been operating for several years, but Apple has yet to reveal what specifically the group is working on.

According to CNBC, the cuts are part of a reorganization led by Doug Field, an Apple executive who went to Tesla a few years ago, then returned to Apple last summer to help lead Project Titan.

Other employees are being reassigned within Apple, CNBC says.

In 1995, a powerful rogue wave slammed into an offshore gas pipeline platform operated by Statoil in the southern tip of Norway. Dubbed the "Draupner wave," it generated intense interest among scientists, since the platform's various sensors and instruments provided precise details about the wave's dynamics. Rogue waves had long been considered a myth, so those readings—combined with damage to the platform consistent with a wave some 84 feet high—provided crucial evidence for the phenomenon

It wasn't long before scientists were attempting to recreate rogue waves in the laboratory, the better to understand the mechanisms behind how they form in the first place. Now a team at the University of Oxford in England has successfully recreated the "Draupner wave" in a circular water tank, according to a new paper in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, shedding further light on the mechanisms that produced it. Bonus: the wave profile bears a striking resemblance to The Great Wave off Kanagawa, a famous 19th-century woodblock print by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai.

"The measurement of the Draupner wave in 1995 was a seminal observation initiating many years of research into the physics of freak waves and shifting their standing from mere folklore to a credible real-world phenomenon," said co-author Mark McAllister of the University of Oxford. "By recreating the Draupner wave in the lab, we have moved one step closer to understanding the potential mechanisms of this phenomenon."