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China, Russia have muscled up, and whoever wins up there wins down here

The commander of the US Space Force (USSF) has warned that America risks losing its dominant position in space, and therefore on Earth too.…

Prvočísla nemají být rozmístěna „náhodně“. Atomová jádra opravdu obsahují struktury připomínající molekuly. Hvězdy u centrální černé díry vypadají mladší, protože jedí své sousedy.

Nová sociální dávka má lépe mířit na domácnosti, které pomoc opravdu potřebují. Za finanční podporu stát chce ale vidět snahu pracovat.

Operační systém TrueNAS byl historicky postaven na FreeBSD, ale v posledních letech se vývoj soustředí na verzi postavenou na Linuxu. Proč se to děje a proč už vývojáři nemají v plánu na FreeBSD stavět?

Výzkum mimozemsky vypadající kokolitky Braarudosphaera bigelowii a jejího tajuplného endosymbionta, sinice UCY-A, přinesl překvapivý objev. Podle všeho jsme svědky probíhajícího zrodu organely pro fixaci dusíku, takzvaného nitroplastu. Budoucí organela už má synchronizovaný růst s hostitelskou buňkou a používá proteiny, které jí buňka vyrábí.

Navzdory některým méně optimistickým zprávám se zdá, že AMD vydá všechny tři základní řady produktů postavené na Zen 5 během letošního léta a začne již v červenci…

Update na Android 14 mohou čekat majitelé mnoha zařízení • V tomto přehledu se dozvíte, zda dorazí i do vašeho telefonu • Článek pravidelně aktualizujeme, výrobce řadíme podle abecedy

Growing a substitute liver inside a human body sounds like science fiction.

Yet a patient with severe liver damage just received an injection that could grow an additional “mini liver” directly inside their body. If all goes well, it’ll take up the failing liver’s job of filtering toxins from the blood.

For people with end-stage liver disease, a transplant is the only solution. But matching donor organs are hard to come by. Across the globe, two million people die from liver failure each year.

The new treatment, helmed by biotechnology company LyGenesis, offers an unusual solution. Rather than transplanting a whole new liver, the team is injecting healthy donor liver cells into lymph nodes in the patient’s upper abdomen. In a few months, it’s hoped the cells will gradually replicate and grow into a functional miniature liver.

The patient is part of a Phase 2a clinical trial, a stage that begins to gauge whether a therapy is effective. In up to 12 people with end-stage liver disease, the trial will test multiple doses to find the “Goldilocks” zone of treatment—effective with minimal side effects.

If successful, the therapy could sidestep the transplant organ shortage problem, not just for liver disease, but potentially also for kidney failure or diabetes. The math also works in favor of patients. Instead of one donor organ per recipient, healthy cells from one person could help multiple people in need of new organs.

A Living Bioreactor

Most of us don’t think about lymph nodes until we catch a cold, and they swell up painfully under the chin. These structures are dotted throughout the body. Like tiny cellular nurseries, they help immune cells proliferate to fend off invading viruses and bacteria.

They also have a dark side. Lymph nodes aid the spread of breast and other types of cancers. Because they’re highly connected to a highway of lymphatic vessels, cancer cells tunnel into them and take advantage of nutrients in the blood to grow and spread across the body.

What seems like a biological downfall may benefit regenerative medicine. If lymph nodes can support both immune cells and cancer growth, they may also be able to incubate other cell types and grow them into tissues—or even replacement organs.

The idea diverges from usual regenerative therapies, such as stem cell treatments, which aim to revive damaged tissues at the spot of injury. This is a hard ask: When organs fail, they often scar and spew out toxic chemicals that prevent engrafted cells from growing.

Lymph nodes offer a way to skip these cellular cesspools entirely.

Growing organs inside lymph nodes may sound far-fetched, but over a decade ago, LyGenesis’ chief scientific officer and co-founder, Dr. Eric Lagasse, showed it was possible in mice. In one test, his team injected liver cells directly into a lymph node inside a mouse’s belly. They found the grafted cells stayed in the “nursery,” rather than roaming the body and causing unexpected side effects.

In a mouse model of lethal liver failure, an infusion of healthy liver cells into the lymph node grew into a mini liver in just twelve weeks. The transplanted cells took over their host, developing into cube-like cells characteristic of normal liver cells and leaving behind just a sliver of normal lymph node cells.

The graft could support immune system growth and grew cells to shuttle bile and other digestive chemicals. It also boosted the mice’s average survival rate. Without treatment, most mice died within 10 weeks of the start of the study. Most mice injected with liver cells survived past 30 weeks.

A similar strategy worked in dogs and pigs with damaged livers. Injecting donor cells into lymph nodes formed mini livers in less than two months in pigs. Under the microscope, the newborn structures resembled the liver’s intricate architecture, including “highways” for bile to easily flow along instead of accumulating, which causes even more damage and scarring.

The body has over 500 hundred lymph nodes. Injecting into other lymph nodes located elsewhere also grew mini livers, but they weren’t as effective.

“It’s all about location, location, location,” said Lagasse at the time.

A Daring Trial

With prior experience guiding their clinical trial, LyGenesis dosed a first patient in late March.

The team used a technique called endoscopic ultrasound to direct the cells into the designated lymph node. In the procedure, a thin, flexible tube with a small ultrasound device is inserted through the mouth into the digestive track. The ultrasound generates an image of the surrounding tissue and helps guide the tube to the target lymph node for injection.

The procedure may sound difficult, but compared to a liver transplant, it’s minimally invasive. In an interview with Nature, Dr. Michael Hufford, CEO of LyGenesis, said the patient is recovering well and already discharged from the clinic.

The company aims to enroll all 12 patients by mid 2025 to test the therapy’s safety and efficacy.

Many questions remain. The transplanted cells could grow into mini livers of different sizes, based on chemical signals from the body. Although not a problem in mice and pigs, could they potentially overgrow in humans? Meanwhile, patients receiving the treatment will need to take a hefty dose of medications to suppress their immune systems. How these will interact with the transplants is also unknown.

Another question is dosage. Lymph nodes are plentiful. The trial will inject liver cells into up to five lymph nodes to see if multiple mini livers can grow and function without side effects.

If successful, the therapy has wider reach.

In diabetic mice, seeding lymph nodes with pancreatic cellular clusters restored their blood sugar levels. A similar strategy could combat Type 1 diabetes in humans. The company is also looking into whether the technology can revive kidney function or even combat aging.

But for now, Hufford is focused on helping millions of people with liver damage. “This therapy will potentially be a remarkable regenerative medicine milestone by helping patients with ESLD [end-stage liver disease] grow new functional ectopic livers in their own body,” he said.

Image Credit: A solution with liver cells in suspension / LyGenesis

Far from shrinking, the scale of mercenary surveillance companies paid by governments to spy on journalists, human rights campaigners, and other members of the civil state is growing.

Today Apple warned iPhone users in an astonishing 92 nations that attacks against them have taken place. (The company sends out these notifications several times each year.) Without opposition, governments and other entities will not quit this unconstrained descent into becoming a surveillance society.

You are a surveillance target

According to TechCrunch, Apple wrote users: “Apple detected that you are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID. This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it’s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning — please take it seriously.” 

The latest rash of warnings means Apple has now identified 150 nations in which such attacks have taken place. There are 196 nations on the planet.

“Since 2021, we have sent Apple threat notifications multiple times a year as we have detected these attacks, and to date we have notified users in over 150 countries in total,” Apple said.

Though it may not be aware of every attack, its security teams work around the clock to protect customers against what it has until recently described as “state sponsored mercenary surveillance.” Many of the firms engaged in selling snooping software are, like NSO Group, Israel-based. 

What to do if you receive a warning 

If you have received a threat notification, you should act immediately. Amnesty International’s Security Lab tells us that an Apple threat notification should be seen as a very strong indication that you are being attacked. 

Amnesty’s own forensic tests with individual devices that have received such notifications confirm they should be taken seriously, and if you have received one, you should take immediate steps to remediate and secure your digital existence. 

Apple advises that you secure expert help, such as the rapid-response emergency security assistance provided by the Digital Security Helpline at the non-profit Access Now. Amnesty International and other Security Lab civil society partners are also equipped to provide support to individuals who received the Apple notifications. 

Are these attacks proliferating?

Reuters also notes that Apple has changed how it describes the attacks. The company now tells people that they may have been victims of “mercenary spyware attack,” rather than framing the assault as being “state-sponsored” as it did before. 

While this is described as a reaction to government reluctance to be linked with such attacks, it is also plausible to believe that it reflects continued growth in the surveillance business. As I’ve warned before, today’s expensive state-sponsored attacks become tomorrow’s $100 bargain deal on the dark web. These offensive technologies are utterly insidious and rot the center of democracy.

Apple also updated its Apple Support article concerning mercenary spyware and the threat notifications it has shared. “Mercenary spyware attacks cost millions of dollars and often have a short shelf life, making them much harder to detect and prevent,” the company said. “The vast majority of users will never be targeted by such attacks.”

Ivan Krstić, head of Apple security engineering and architecture, has previously promised to keep fighting back: “Apple runs one of the most sophisticated security engineering operations in the world, and we will continue to work tirelessly to protect our users from abusive state-sponsored actors like NSO Group.”

That said, a report today from Interpres Security seems to confirm the growing magnitude of these threats.

Security advice

In an increasingly challenging security environment, everyone online should protect themselves:

• Update devices with latest software.
• Use complex passcodes.
• Use two-factor authentication.
• Protect their Apple ID with a strong password.
• Install apps only from trusted sources, such as the App Store.
• Use strong and unique passwords.
• Never click on links or attachments from people you do not know.

Finally, if you think you may be a target, use Lockdown Mode.

Apple developed this mode in response to a wave of sophisticated attacks (Pegasus, Devils Tongue and Hermit). Lockdown Mode provides a great deal of protection at the cost of some utility; Apple is expected to continue to invest in securing its platforms, even against the designed in weaknesses it is being forced to adopt in reaction to some regulations, particularly in Europe and the UK.

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

Apple, iOS Security, Mobile Security

Letošní Turingovou cenu (2023 ACM A.M. Turing Award) získal Avi Wigderson.

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Could have been worse – last time researchers checked it was 98.6%

Hospitals – despite being places where people implicitly expect to have their personal details kept private – frequently use tracking technologies on their websites to share user information with Google, Meta, data brokers, and other third parties, according to research published today.…

Je datová schránka spolehlivým identifikátorem odesílatele? Pro stát ano, pro soukromou firmu být nemusí, zvláště když jde o peníze.