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Graphic showing clusters of Stuxnet infections during targeted attacks launched in 2009 and 2010. Courtesy of Symantec.
Attackers behind the Stuxnet computer worm focused on targeting five organizations in Iran that they believed would get them to their final target in that country, according to a new report from security researchers.
The five organizations, believed to be the first that were infected with the worm, were targeted in five separate attacks over a number of months in 2009 and 2010, before Stuxnet was discovered in June 2010 and publicly exposed. Stuxnet spread from these organizations into other organizations on its way to its final target, which is believed to have been a nuclear enrichment facility or facilities in Iran.
“These five organizations were infected, and from those five computers Stuxnet spread out — not to just computers in those organizations, but to other computes as well,” says Liam O Murchu, manager of operations for Symantec Security Response. “It all started with those five original domains.”
The new information comes in an updated report from researchers at Symantec (.pdf), a computer security firm that has provided some of the leading analysis of the worm since it was discovered.
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Last year, things weren’t looking good for cougars. Carnival banned cougar-themed cruises; Google refused ads from cougar dating sites (despite gladly taking ads for sites that match sugar daddies with college-age women); and a university psychology researcher in Wales released a study, based on dating-website data from around the world, that concluded the whole cougar craze of older women seeking younger men was a “myth” and a “media construct.” Courteney Cox, Kim Cattrall, Susan Sarandon … were they just celebrity front women for an elaborate hoax?
No. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, cougars say they’re pouncing back like Madonna at a Brazilian male modeling agency, out to show the world that their movement is alive and purring. According to Cougarevents.com, on Saturday, Feb. 12, the first Cougar Valentine Convention will take place in Costa Mesa, Calif., outside Los Angeles. The keynote address, by Beverly Hills psychology researcher and “übercougar” Fayr Barkley, will assert that someone like baseball player Alex Rodriguez, 35 (who once dated Madonna, 17 years his senior, but is now with the more age-appropriate Cameron Diaz, 38), is hardly alone. In fact, says Barkley, cougarism isn’t driven by middle-aged gals hunting 20- and 30-something guys, but rather, vice versa: “There are far more younger men looking to date older women,” she argues. “Younger men are driving the cougar dating dynamic.” (See a gallery of the best geeky Valentine’s Day gifts.)
That might sound like a bold claim, since younger men — “cubs,” in cougar parlance — are usually viewed as the minority cohort in that dynamic. But Barkley, who has a syndicated column, “The Uber Cougar Expert Roars,” and whose doctoral thesis examined cougar-cub relationships, says the male-female membership ratio on her dating website, CougarInternational.com (one of the largest of its kind), can be as high as 12 to 1.
Barkley believes, based on two decades of clinical interviews, that the reason involves the psychosexual “imprinting” many men experience as boys and teenagers: “They may have had a positive imprint through a babysitter or a teacher or something as innocuous as actresses on TV, seeing smart, strong, independent women like Charlie’s angels or Emma Peel in her tight outfits stomping bad guys on The Avengers. They yearn for that ideal, who happens to be an older woman, and many go out looking for women like that when they come of age.”
U.C.L.A./VA The bald mice in row C are the same mice shown in group B, after treatment with a hair-growth compound. The mice in row A were given a placebo.
Mouse researchers conducting stress hormone experiments have stumbled onto a surprising new discovery — a potential treatment for hair loss.
Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Veterans Administration were working with genetically altered mice that typically develop head-to-tail baldness as a result of overproducing a stress hormone.
The experiment wasn’t focused on hair loss. Instead, it was designed to study a chemical compound that blocks the effects of stress on the gut. The researchers treated the bald mice for five days with the compound and then returned them to the cages, where they scampered about with several furry mice from a control group.
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PC Magazine Online “PC Magazine is your complete guide to PC computers, peripherals and upgrades. We test and review computer- and Internet-related products and services, report technology news and trends, and provide shopping advice and price comparisons.”
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Sea Ice
Sea ice covers several million square miles of Earth’s surface. Because salt is expelled during the freezing process, this ice is fresher than the seawater from which it forms. Most sea ice is pack ice that drifts across the ocean surface, but some, known as fast ice, is attached to coasts, the seafloor, or grounded icebergs. Factors like the age of the sea ice, air temperatures, and solar insolation all affect its freezing and melting. Why does first-year ice melt more easily than older ice? More…
Gregory Thielker’s awe-inspiring oil paintings explores the sensation of seeing through a car windshield while driving through the rain. His paintings are so realistic that you can almost feel the wet and cold weather.
Amazing Rainy Day Paintings by Gregory Thielker
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Eben Moglen Is Reshaping Internet With a Freedom Box – NYTimes.comThe list begins with “cheap, small, low-power plug servers,” Mr. Moglen said. “A small device the size of a cellphone charger, running on a low-power chip. You plug it into the wall and forget about it.”
Almost anyone could have one of these tiny servers, which are now produced for limited purposes but could be adapted to a full range of Internet applications, he said.
“They will get very cheap, very quick,” Mr. Moglen said. “They’re $99; they will go to $69. Once everyone is getting them, they will cost $29.”
The missing ingredients are software packages, which are available at no cost but have to be made easy to use. “You would have a whole system with privacy and security built in for the civil world we are living in,” he said. “It stores everything you care about.”
The list begins with “cheap, small, low-power plug servers,” Mr. Moglen said. “A small device the size of a cellphone charger, running on a low-power chip. You plug it into the wall and forget about it.”
Almost anyone could have one of these tiny servers, which are now produced for limited purposes but could be adapted to a full range of Internet applications, he said.
“They will get very cheap, very quick,” Mr. Moglen said. “They’re $99; they will go to $69. Once everyone is getting them, they will cost $29.”
The missing ingredients are software packages, which are available at no cost but have to be made easy to use. “You would have a whole system with privacy and security built in for the civil world we are living in,” he said. “It stores everything you care about.”
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It may come as a surprise, but the genetic ingredients that assemble you are strikingly similar to those that assemble a fly. So why do you and a fly look so different as adults? The answer lies in where, how, and for how long those ingredients “turn on” during your embryonic development. The intricacies of this early stage of life are now being revealed thanks to the new field of “evo devo,” short for evolutionary developmental biology. In this interview, Harvard developmental biologist Cliff Tabin talks about why evo devo is so fascinating, how he keeps up in a dizzyingly advancing field, and how he, like most biologists, was totally blindsided by the discovery that all animals share the same basic toolkit of body-building genes.
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Panama CanalTrade between Colombia and China has increased from $10m in 1980 to more than $5bn last year.
Colombia has announced it is negotiating with China to build an alternative to the Panama Canal.
The proposed transport route is intended to promote the flow of goods between Asia and Latin America.
China and Colombia announce ‘alternative Panama Canal’
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World’s largest lake sheds light on climate change
Originally posted 2011-02-17 13:27:20. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
