# websec: everyone is a target (N3v$r M1^d!), by Kevin

<< At the end of the day, Cardwell [Kevin Cardwell] notes that "no product will make you secure." What's important is setting up a process of defenses because he says, "everyone is a target." >>

Leah Becerra. How to protect your data from cyberattacks. The Kansas City Star. May 25, 2017

https://m.phys.org/news/2017-05-cyberattacks.html

also

<< “Much of what I did I now regret,” Burr [Bill Burr], who is now retired, told the Wall Street Journal. “In the end, it was probably too complicated for a lot of folks to understand very well, and the truth is, it was barking up the wrong tree.” >>

James Titcomb. Password guru who told the world to make them complicated admits: I got it completely wrong. 8 Aug 8, 2017

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/08/08/man-wrote-password-bible-admits-advice-completely-wrong/

Robert McMillan. The Man Who Wrote Those Password Rules Has a New Tip: N3v$r M1^d! Aug. 7, 2017

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-who-wrote-those-password-rules-has-a-new-tip-n3v-r-m1-d-1502124118

https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/

# s-acad: the nomad razor by Richard

<< Over drinks one evening, a Christian journalist described witnessing an episode of faith healing. Instead of dismissing the story outright, Dawkins pressed for details >>

<< Some people define atheism as a positive conviction that there are no gods and agnosticism as allowing for the possibility, however slight. In this sense I am agnostic, as any scientist would be. But only in the same way I am agnostic about leprechauns and fairies. Other people define agnosticism as the belief that the existence of gods is as probable as their nonexistence.  In this sense I am certainly not agnostic >> Richard Dawkins

John  Horgan.  Richard Dawkins Offers Advice for Donald Trump, and Other Wisdom. Aug 10, 2017.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/richard-dawkins-offers-advice-for-donald-trump-and-other-wisdom/

# s-behav: they behave strangely in the darkness caused by a solar eclipse

<< Many accounts of solar eclipses include tales of animals behaving strangely >>

<< There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence for how animals and even plants respond to totality [of solar eclipses] >>

<< Crickets chirped and frogs croaked [..]  Gnats and mosquitoes swarmed [..] Bees returned to hives and chickens to roost >>

<< small, light-sensitive crustaceans and zooplankton swam upward toward the dark during eclipses, similar to how the tiny animals behave at night >>

<< The sun’s disappearance prompted orb weaver spiders to take down their webs >>

<< captive chimpanzees scaled a climbing structure and faced the blocked sun >>

Lisa Grossman. What do plants and animals do during an eclipse?
A citizen science project aims to gather data to put science behind anecdotal evidence. Aug 12, 2017

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/2017-solar-eclipse-animals

<< The behavior of colonial orb-weaving spiders (Metepeira incrassata) in tropical Veracruz, Mexico was studied during the total solar eclipse on July 11, 1991. Spiders behaved in a manner typical of daily activity until totality, when many began taking down webs. After solar reappearance, most spiders that had begun taking down webs rebuilt them >>

Uetz, G.W., Hieber, C.S., et al.     Behavior of Colonial Orb-weaving Spiders during a Solar Eclipse. Ethology, 96: 24–32. Jan 12, 1994. doi:10.1111/j.1439-0310.1994.tb00878.x

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1994.tb00878.x/full

<< This year, the California Academy of Sciences is soliciting citizen scientists to record their observations of any animals they see using the academy’s iNaturalist app >>

Solar Eclipse 2017: Life Responds.

http://www.calacademy.org/citizen-science/solar-eclipse-2017

# n-soc: charlottesville, what to do now, by Jeffrey

<< The question is: what to do now? The answer lies in the source of the problem. The huge mess began with bad ideas. The only means available – and it is the most powerful – is to fight bad ideas with good ideas. >>

<< What are those good ideas?  The progress of the last 500 years shows us precisely what the good ideas are: social harmony, human rights, the aspiration of universal dignity, the conviction that we can work together in mutual advantage, the market economy as a means of peace and prosperity, and, above all else, the beauty and magnificence of the idea of liberty itself. >>

Jeffrey A. Tucker. The Violence in Charlottesville. Aug 12, 2017

https://fee.org/articles/the-violence-in-charlottesville/

also

# n-laws: nashville looks back. Apr 8, 2016.

http://flashontrack.blogspot.it/2016/04/n-laws-nashville-looks-back.html

# s-evol: nomadic pulses: when dinosaurs ruled the earth, they took to the skies ...

<< New fossil discoveries show that prehistoric “squirrels” glided through forests at least 160 million years ago, long before scientists had thought >>

<< In a study published on Wednesday, a team of paleontologists added some particularly fascinating new creatures to the Mesozoic Menagerie. These mammals did not lurk in the shadows of dinosaurs >>

Carl Zimmer. When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Mammals Took to the Skies. August 9, 2017

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/science/dinosaurs-flying-mammals-squirrels.html

https://twitter.com/NYTScience/status/895359121943351296

<< Two new eleutherodonts from the Late Jurassic period have skin membranes and skeletal features that are adapted for gliding >>

Qing-Jin Meng,David M. Grossnickle, et al. New gliding mammaliaforms from the Jurassic. Nature  (2017) doi:10.1038/nature23476 Publ. Aug 09, 2017
   
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature23476.html

# s-gst: they take decisions in a way that is not necessarily uniform (jazzy? funky? fuzzy?)

AA << found that fate decision is not a unique programmed event, but the result of a very dynamic process composed of spontaneous fluctuation and selective stabilisation of alternative cellular states >>

<< The whole process is reminiscent of trial-and-error learning in which each cell explores—at its own rhythm and independently of cell division—different molecular possibilities (i.e. different genes turned on or off) before reaching a stable combination of active genes and the corresponding morphology >>

AA << observed that some cells seem to "hesitate" and change morphology many times before reaching a stable state >>

Which type of cell to become: Decision through indecision.
July 27, 2017

https://m.phys.org/news/2017-07-cell-decision-indecision.html

<< Individual cells take lineage commitment decisions in a way that is not necessarily uniform >>

AA << identifies a new category of cells with fluctuating phenotypic characteristics, demonstrating the complexity of the fate decision process >>

Alice Moussy, Jérémie Cosette, et al. Integrated time-lapse and single-cell transcription studies highlight the variable and dynamic nature of human hematopoietic cell fate commitment. PLoS Biol 15(7): e2001867 doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2001867

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2001867

FonT

in pratica un lancio di dadi, ... quasi.

<< Amico, qualunque  cosa suonerai . . . >>

http://inkpi.blogspot.it/2007/01/2113-soniche-ramulo.html

# s-phyto: mRNA instability may facilitate rapid recovery of plants after stressful events

<< Stress recovery may prove to be a promising approach to increase plant performance, and theoretically, mRNA instability may facilitate faster recovery.   Transcriptome (RNA-seq, qPCR, sRNA-seq, PARE) and methylome profiling during repeated excess-light stress and recovery was performed at intervals as short as three minutes >>

AA << demonstrate that 87% of the stress-upregulated mRNAs analysed exhibit very rapid recovery >>

Peter Alexander Crisp, Diep Ganguly, et al.  Rapid recovery gene downregulation during excess-light stress and recovery in Arabidopsis. The Plant Cell Publ. July 2017 doi: 10.1105/tpc.16.00828

http://www.plantcell.org/content/early/2017/07/13/tpc.16.00828