Month: March 2022

The 19th-century physicist Michael Faraday was known not only for his seminal experimental contributions to electromagnetism but also for his public speaking. His annual Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution evolved into a holiday tradition that continues today. One of his most famous Christmas lectures concerned the chemical history of a candle. Faraday illustrated his points with a simple experiment: He placed a candle inside a lampglass in order to block out any breezes and achieve "a quiet flame." Faraday then showed how the flame's shape flickered and changed in response to perturbations.

"You must not imagine, because you see these tongues all at once, that the flame is of this particular shape," Faraday observed. "A flame of that shape is never so at any one time. Never is a body of flame, like that which you just saw rising from the ball, of the shape it appears to you. It consists of a multitude of different shapes, succeeding each other so fast that the eye is only able to take cognizance of them all at once."

Now, MIT researchers have brought Faraday's simple experiment into the 21st century. Markus Buehler and his postdoc, Mario Milazzo, combined high-resolution imaging with deep machine learning to sonify a single candle flame. They then used that single flame as a basic building block, creating "music" out of its flickering dynamics and designing novel structures that could be 3D-printed into physical objects. Buehler described this and other related work at the American Physical Society meeting last week in Chicago.

Enlarge / Don't bother me, I'm busy evolving. (credit: Indrek Lainjärv / EyeEm)

When we think of evolution, we often think of slow, gradual changes made over millions of years. However, new research suggests that the process could be happening quite quickly, driving major changes over the course of a single year in response to seasonal changes.

The paper describing that research was released last week and studies evolution in fruit flies over around 10 generations, with each generation of flies spanning less than a dozen days. While fruit flies are notoriously short-lived, and the distance between their generations is tiny, evolution could be happening quicker than previously anticipated even in longer-lived organisms, according to Seth Rudman, assistant professor in the school of biological sciences at Washington State University and one of the authors of the paper.

"Over the last few decades there has been a growing appreciation that evolution can occur fairly rapidly," he told Ars.

Enlarge / US Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger speaking during a March 21 White House daily press briefing. (credit: Getty Images)

The Biden administration on Monday warned that it believes Russian state hackers may step up a cyber offensive that targets US organizations, particularly organizations in the private sector providing critical infrastructure.

Administration officials stressed that they have yet to unearth any evidence of specific cyberattack plans. But in recent weeks, officials have said Kremlin-sponsored strikes on US-based computers and networks was a distinct possibility that security defenders should prepare for. As the US and its allies have ratcheted up sanctions on Russia and the US receives new intelligence assessments, the White House is once again urging vigilance.

Part of Russia’s playbook

“Today, we are reiterating those warnings, and we’re doing so based on evolving threat intelligence, that the Russian government is exploring options for potential cyber attacks on critical infrastructure in the United States,” Anne Neuberger, the White House’s deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, said during a daily press briefing on Monday.