Are Modern Cars Vulnerable to Computer Viruses

Sounds iike the answer is yes. Computer scientists from the University of California and the University of Washington recently proved they could hack into cars and even cause them to crash:"They figured out how to attack vehicles by putting viruses onto compact discs. When unknowing victims

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http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/21019/Are-Modern-Cars-Vulnerable-to-Computer-
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Should Giant Viruses Be Included on the Tree of
Life

A new study of giant viruses supports the idea that viruses are ancient living organisms and not inanimate molecular remnants. The study may reshape the universal family tree, adding a fourth major branch to the three that most scientists agree represent the fundamental domains of life. But I am not sure that makes sense. The reason given for viruses not being “life” is that they cannot reproduce themselves – they hijack living cells to reproduce. The research in the past history of viruses as they evolved into current viruses is interesting but I don’t see the reason to classify current viruses as life.

The researchers used a relatively new method to peer into the distant past. Rather than comparing genetic sequences, which are unstable and change rapidly over time, they looked for evidence of past events in the three-dimensional, structural domains of proteins. These structural motifs, called folds, are relatively stable molecular fossils that ? like the fossils of human or animal bones ? offer clues to ancient evolutionary events, said University of Illinois crop sciences and Institute for Genomic Biology professor Gustavo Caetano-Anollés, who led the analysis.

?Just like paleontologists, we look at the parts of the system and how they change over time,? Caetano-Anollés said. Some protein folds appear only in one group or in a subset of organisms, he said, while others are common to all organisms studied so far.

?We make a very basic assumption that structures that appear more often and in more groups are the most ancient structures,? he said.

Most efforts to document the relatedness of all living things have left viruses out of the equation, Caetano-Anollés said.

?We?ve always been looking at the Last Universal Common Ancestor by comparing cells,? he said. ?We never added viruses. So we put viruses in the mix to see where these viruses came from.?

The researchers conducted a census of all the protein folds occurring in more than 1,000 organisms representing bacteria, viruses, the microbes known as archaea, and all other living things. The researchers included giant viruses because these viruses are large and complex, with genomes that rival ? and in some cases exceed ? the genetic endowments of the simplest bacteria, Caetano-Anollés said.

Related: Plants, Unikonts, Excavates and SARs – Bacteriophages: The Most Common Life-Like Form on Earth – 8 Percent of the Human Genome is Old Virus Genes – Microbes Retroviruses

Open access paper: Giant Viruses Coexisted With the Cellular Ancestors and Represent a Distinct Supergroup Along With Superkingdoms Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya

The discovery of giant viruses with genome and physical size comparable to cellular organisms, remnants of protein translation machinery and virus-specific parasites (virophages) have raised intriguing questions about their origin. Evidence advocates for their inclusion into global phylogenomic studies and their consideration as a distinct and ancient form of life.
…
Results call for a change in the way viruses are perceived. They likely represent a distinct form of life that either predated or coexisted with the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) and constitute a very crucial part of our planet’s biosphere.

?The giant viruses have incredible machinery that seems to be very similar to the machinery that you have in a cell,? he said. ?They have complexity and we have to explain why.?

Part of that complexity includes enzymes involved in translating the genetic code into proteins, he said. Scientists were startled to find these enzymes in viruses, since viruses lack all other known protein-building machinery and must commandeer host proteins to do the work for them.

In the new study, the researchers mapped evolutionary relationships between the protein endowments of hundreds of organisms and used the information to build a new universal tree of life that included viruses. The resulting tree had four clearly differentiated branches, each representing a distinct ?supergroup.? The giant viruses formed the fourth branch of the tree, alongside bacteria, archaea and eukarya (plants, animals and all other organisms with nucleated cells).

The researchers discovered that many of the most ancient protein folds ? those found in most cellular organisms ? were also present in the giant viruses. This suggests that these viruses appeared quite early in evolution, near the root of the tree of life, Caetano-Anollés said.

The new analysis adds to the evidence that giant viruses were originally much more complex than they are today and experienced a dramatic reduction in their genomes over time, Caetano-Anollés said. This reduction likely explains their eventual adoption of a parasitic lifestyle, he said. He and his colleagues suggest that giant viruses are more like their original ancestors than smaller viruses with pared down genomes.

The researchers also found that viruses appear to be key ?spreaders of information,? Caetano-Anollés said.

?The protein structures that other organisms share with viruses have a particular quality, they are (more widely) distributed than other structures,? he said. ?Each and every one of these structures is an incredible discovery in evolution. And viruses are distributing this novelty,? he said.

Most studies of giant viruses are ?pointing in the same direction,? Caetano-Anollés said. ?And this study offers more evidence that viruses are embedded in the fabric of life.?

Maybe adding giant viruses as alive in the past (if they have now lost their former ability to reproduce would make sense). Read the entire press release.

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http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2012/09/14/should-giant-viruses-be-included
-on-the-tree-of-life/

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The subtlety of cosmic violence

One of the most amazing things I can think of can be stated simply: some stars explode.That’s incredible. An entire star, millions of kilometers across and massing octillions of tons, can go supernova, tearing itself to shreds. The explosion is so[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/3runEWYhdcE/

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A prosthesis for damaged brains

Imagine a prosthetic device capable of restoring decision-making in people who have reduced capacity due to brain disease or injury. While this may sound like science fiction, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have proven for the first time that it is possible in non-human primates, and believe that one day it will be possible in people.

Subject: 

• Brain & Behavior

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http://machineslikeus.com/news/prosthesis-damaged-brains

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Apple says new iPhone 5 feature gives life
meaning

Apple rocked the gadget world today with the news that the iPhone 5 includes a new feature that gives shape and purpose to previously empty and meaningless lives.

As Apple explained at its launch of the device, the new feature is an improved version of its personal assistant, Siri, that has been endowed with a quality missing from the previous model: empathy.

In a demonstration before a hushed crowd of Apple enthusiasts, an app developer named Josh asked the new Siri, ?Why didn?t my parents love me??

Subject: 

• Computer Science

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http://machineslikeus.com/news/apple-says-new-iphone-5-feature-gives-life-meaning

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this is exactly how not to argue a point

Sometimes people do mean things to me. Very mean things, like making me read passages by pontificators who have the intellectual depth of the shallow end of the kiddy pool. In this case, I’m talking about Dinesh D’Souza, the pundit who went off the deep end in arguing that showers of missiles from killer drones [...]

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http://worldofweirdthings.com/2012/09/14/this-is-exactly-how-not-to-argue-a-point
/

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Houston: Meetings and Reconnections

?Bring an umbrella to Houston? I figured it would be unnecessary and left it out of my luggage. Lo and behold yesterday morning it began to rain and it seems to have continued off and on most of the day. That hardly matters when you?re in a huge[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/centauri-dreams/eepu/~3/nMHZYjSfdms/

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My group, Your group, or Our group

In science the dilemma of either cooperating or competing is everywhere. The situation is never black or white and depends on the discipline. In this post I will limit myself to the typical small-science group model: one group leader, one or two postdocs and a number – typically between 4 and 6, of PhD students. [...]

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http://www.sciencesurvivalblog.com/phd_life/my-group-your-group-or-our-group-2_68
05

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Notes for a Periodic Table of Elements Songs

Working on creating a Periodic Table of the Elements in which each entry is a song: Love is Like Oxygen – The Sweet Gold – Spandau Ballet Helium – Feeder Titanium – David Guetta Pocket full of Kryptonite?” http://t.co/dMtlfLFu Radiohead ‘My Iron Lung’? Lithium – Nirvana, Iron Man – Black Sabbath, Boron Under A Bad [...]

Notes for a Periodic Table of Elements Songs is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SciencebaseScienceBlog/~3/oHDEbbKF-Qw/notes-for-a-
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Biomeeter: find your way in the world of
conferences

Presenting your data at conferences is key for doing good science. However, finding the right conference can be as challenging as the actual experiments. Especially when you work interdisciplinary there is a lack of overview of what is organized and where. We scientists mostly rely on the occasional mail from our supervisor for our meeting [...]

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http://www.sciencesurvivalblog.com/research-and-education/biomeeter-find-your-way
-in-the-world-of-conferences_6770

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