# e-sec: a priori cracked; 'verifiable computing' vs chip manufacturing

<< Medical devices, public infrastructure and voting machines, as well as financial, military and government electronics could all be compromised long before their first use if backdoors were added to their chips during the manufacturing process.  The issue could affect CPUs, GPUs and motherboards, but also storage and memory components. These days we're seeing more companies employ cryptographic signing for their software to ensure that the code delivered to the users is identical what was written by the vendors (although not all companies are taking this to heart yet). A similar validation process is needed for hardware to ensure its integrity. >>

Lucian Armasu. University Researchers Invent Solution To Protect Chips Against Manufacturing Sabotage. August 26, 2016  4:00 PM

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/chip-protection-solution-manufacturing-sabotage,32569.html

Researchers design a chip that checks for  sabotage. Integrated Circuits Can Monitor Their Own Computations and Flag Defects. August 23, 2016

http://engineering.nyu.edu/press-releases/2016/08/23/cybersecurity-researchers-design-chip-checks-sabotage

# s-phys: spontaneous oddities observed in a home-made black hole in sound

AA << observe spontaneous Hawking radiation, stimulated by quantum vacuum fluctuations, emanating from an analogue black hole in an atomic Bose–Einstein condensate. >>

Jeff Steinhauer. Observation of quantum Hawking radiation and its entanglement in an analogue black hole. Nature Physics (2016) doi:10.1038/nphys3863 Published online 15 Aug 2016

http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys3863.html

Davide Castelvecchi. Artificial black hole creates its own version of Hawking radiation. Result could be closest thing yet to an observation of the bizarre phenomenon. 15 Aug 2016.

http://www.nature.com/news/artificial-black-hole-creates-its-own-version-of-hawking-radiation-1.20430

Ron  Cowen. One-man  band:  the  solo  physicist  who  models  black holes  in  sound. Working  alone,  Jeff  Steinhauer  has  created  a  sonic  analogue  of  Hawking  radiation.  15  Aug 2016.

http://www.nature.com/news/one-man-band-the-solo-physicist-who-models-black-holes-in-sound-1.20437

# s-psych: bias in moral judgment

AA << results suggest that a victim's plight is perceived as less severe when others share it, and this bias is common to both third-party judges and victims. >>

Konis D, Haran U, et al. A Sorrow Shared Is a Sorrow Halved: Moral Judgments of Harm to Single versus Multiple Victims. Front Psychol. 2016 Aug 2;7:1142. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01142. eCollection 2016.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27531988

# s-brain: 70-years after; Dr. Albert revisited

<< Treating an addiction to a mind-altering substance with another mind-altering substance might seem counterintuitive, but more and more, researchers are finding ways that psychedelic drugs like psilocybin mushrooms and party drugs like ketamine could actually help people get over alcohol and drug addictions. >>

Kevin Loria. Science Doctors are talking about using psychedelic drugs to treat alcoholics. 21 Aug 2016.

http://www.businessinsider.com/doctors-using-ketamine-lsd-and-mushrooms-to-treat-mental-illness-2016-8

Zoe  Cormier. Magic-mushroom  drug  lifts  depression  in  first  human trial. Researchers'  long  fight  to  test  psilocybin's  safety  finally  yields  fruit.  Nature.  17  May  2016. doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19919.

http://www.nature.com/news/magic-mushroom-drug-lifts-depression-in-first-human-trial-1.19919

Dr. Albert (Albert Hofmann) in: Lysergic acid diethylamide. 21 Aug 2016.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide

# s-esobio: we're not finding them 'cause they've vanished inside ...

<< What if we're not finding aliens because they've already vanished from this reality into virtual worlds? >>

@singularityhub. 18 Ago 2016 10:23

https://twitter.com/singularityhub/status/766369830043803649

<< Proposed by futurist John Smart, the theory suggests that technological civilizations — and the Fermi paradox assumes there would be many by now — don’t colonize outer space (and thus flood the cosmos with signatures we could easily find). Instead, they move toward inner space by building vast digital realities on computers much smaller than we can detect. >>

Aaron Frank. Why No Aliens?  Aug 18, 2016.

http://singularityhub.com/2016/08/18/why-no-aliens-they-live-in-video-game-universes-like-a-future-no-mans-sky/

# s-nano: self-assembly, also in nanotech

<< some nanomaterials can be coaxed into snapping themselves into desired formations-a process called self-assembly >>

AA << have just developed a way to direct the self-assembly of multiple molecular patterns within a single material, producing new nanoscale architectures.  >>

Smarter  self-assembly  opens  new  pathways  for  nanotechnology. August  8,  2016.

http://m.phys.org/news/2016-08-smarter-self-assembly-pathways-nanotechnology.html

A. Stein, G. Wright, et al. Selective directed self-assembly of coexisting morphologies using block copolymer blends. Nature Communications 7, Article number: 12366 (2016) doi:10.1038/ncomms12366

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12366

# s-evol: closer to gorillas

<< Surprising  results  from  a  new  study  reveal the  heel bone  from  our  fossil relative  is  closer  related  to  gorillas. >>

<< The  new study  that  for  the  first  time  examined  the  internal  anatomy  of a  fossil  human  relative’s  heel  bone,  or  calcaneus,  shows  greater similarities  with  gorillas  than  chimpanzees >>

Wits  University. More  gorilla  than  chimp. 11  Aug 2016.

https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/research-news/2016/2016-08/more-gorilla-than-chimp.html

Angel Zeininger, Biren A. Patel, et al. Trabecular architecture in the StW 352 fossil hominin calcaneus. Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 97, Aug. 2016, Pages 145–158. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.05.009.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.05.009