Astronomers Have Found a Strange Neutron Star That "Shouldn't Exist"

Looks like our current theories are wrong.

Roughly 24,000 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, is a dead star that shouldn't exist. Not, that is, according to current theory. The neutron star, accreting material from a much larger binary companion, is spewing out relativistic jets.

The problem is that it also has a strong magnetic field. And relativistic jets have only been observed in neutron stars with magnetic fields 1,000 times weaker.

So, our current understanding of how relativistic jets work simply doesn't account for this weirdo.

A neutron star is one evolutionary end point of a massive star that has gone supernova. Most of the star's material blows off into space while the core collapses in on itself, becoming a super-dense object with powerful gravity.

If it's under about three times the mass of the Sun, it becomes a neutron star, packing all that mass into an object just 10-20 kilometres across; if it's over that mass, it becomes a black hole.

That core collapse has a wicked effect on a neutron star's magnetic field - it "causes the star's magnetic field to increase in strength to several trillion times that of our own Sun, which then gradually weakens again over hundreds of thousands of years," said astronomer James Miller-Jones of Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

Black holes are denser than neutron stars, famously with such powerful gravity that not even light can achieve escape velocity. Although not as strong, neutron stars also have a powerful gravitational field, which means they can accrete matter from other objects in their influence.

This is the case with the neutron star in this study. It's part of a binary system called Swift J0243.6+6124, discovered in October 2017 by the Swift Observatory, in which material from the star is being slurped up by the neutron star.

Jets are well known in the Universe - powerful streams of radiation and particles erupting at near light-speed from the poles of accreting objects.

"They are produced whenever matter falls onto a dense central object, from newly-forming stars to white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes," Miller-Jones wrote for The Conversation.

"The one exception had been neutron stars with strong magnetic fields - around a trillion times stronger than that of the Sun."

We still don't know what powers these jets, but this glaring absence led to the theory that they could be constrained by powerful magnetic fields.

And then along comes Swift J0243.6+6124 to muck things up. The researchers, led by astronomer Jakob van den Eijnden of the University of Amsterdam, observed radio emission coming from the system, in addition to the X-ray emission spotted by Swift that led to the discovery.

After taking observations and analysing the data, they came to the conclusion that the radio emissions were consistent with relativistic jets from sources such as black holes - but, curiously, 100 times weaker than jets from other neutron stars.

"The radio spectrum of Swift J0243 is the same as that of jets from other sources and evolves in the same way," Van den Eijnden said. "The radio brightness also follows that of the in-falling gas, as seen in other jet-creating systems. So for the first time ever, we have observed a jet from a neutron star with a strong magnetic field."

And not just any old strong magnetic field. The magnetic field around Swift J0243.6+6124's neutron star is 10 trillion times stronger than that of the Sun.

This disproves the magnetic field theory about the suppression of jets quite neatly, and calls for a re-examination of how they are produced and launched, the researchers said.

Previously, it had been thought that neutron star jets were channelled from the magnetic field in the inner part of the accretion disc - and if the neutron star's magnetic field was strong enough, it would prevent the accretion disc from getting close enough for this to be triggered.

Except this new discovery kinda puts that theory in the bin.

It could be that, in some cases, the neutron star's rotational energy could be extracted to power the jets instead, Miller-Jones noted; this could explain why the jets were so weak compared to other neutron stars.

"Whatever the explanation, our result is a great example of how science works, with theories being developed, tested against observations and revised in light of new experimental results," he wrote.

"It also provides us with a new class of sources to test how magnetic fields affect the launching of jets, helping us to understand this key feedback mechanism in the universe."

This New Lithium Battery Tech Can Simply Suck Up CO2 to Power Itself

Everybody knows the world's got a serious carbon dioxide problem, but an ingenious and potentially cost-effective way of dealing with our surplus CO2could provide the means of tomorrow's battery technology.

For years scientists have looked at ways of capturing carbon and storing it underground or even potentially in the ocean. But a new system might offer a powerful advantage over these efforts.

The problem with conventional carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) systems, according to researchers at MIT, is that while they're good at preventing CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere and trapping heat, they require a lot of energy to do so.

A study in 2014 estimated CCS uses up to 30 percent of a power plant's generating capacity, and in the end, many such systems only then store the capture CO2 in solid form, but don't actually repurpose it.

A separate branch of CO2 science looks at ways of converting the chemical into other kinds of materials that we could potentially use as a viable fuel source, which many researchers think is a preferable strategy, since it gives back something at the same time.

In that vein, a team at MIT has come up with a lithium-based battery system that soaks up carbon dioxide directly from inside power plants, converting the waste steam into a (CO2-loaded) electrolyte – one of the three main parts of a battery.

Lithium-carbon-dioxide batteries typically require metal catalysts to function, because carbon dioxide is not very reactive. The problem is, the catalysts can be expensive to source, and the chemical reactions involved can be difficult to control.

To get around this, a team led by mechanical engineer Betar Gallant achieved electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion without the metallic catalyst, using only a carbon electrode.

The answer was to use CO2 in a liquid state, incorporating it into an amine solution.

The cathode after discharge, showing carbonate material derived from emissions, and the pristine, pre-discharge surface. (MIT)

"What we've shown for the first time is that this technique activates the carbon dioxide for more facile electrochemistry," Gallant says.

"These two chemistries — aqueous amines and nonaqueous battery electrolytes — are not normally used together, but we found that their combination imparts new and interesting behaviours that can increase the discharge voltage and allow for sustained conversion of carbon dioxide."

The research so far is not ready for commercial use just yet, but the experiments show that the amine technique is competitive with other methods for lithium-gas batteries, although there are definite areas for improvement.

Chiefly, the battery system is currently limited to 10 charge-discharge cycles – a severe restriction that will need to be dramatically boosted if we are to use these lithum-carbon batteries for any serious purpose.

"Future challenges will include developing systems with higher amine turnover to approach near-continuous operation or long cycle life, and to increase the capacity attainable at higher powers," the authors write in their paper.

Ultimately, they acknowledge, it will be years before this kind of battery technology can be used to power things people actually need.

But with every minor hurdle we pass we're getting closer to that end goal – while helping to solve one of today's key environmental dilemmas (and in a way that's more useful than just transplanting it underground and out of sight).

"Lithium-carbon dioxide batteries are years away," Gallant explains, but at least if we can turn CO2 into something like a battery component, it's "one way to sequester it as a useful product."

Experts Cast Doubt on Groundbreaking CRISPR Embryo Editing Research

         **********What did CRISPR actually do to the embryos?**********

CRISPR is one of the most amazing technological advances in recent years, giving scientists the ability to tinker with DNA in ways that were never before possible.

Last month, a team of researchers became the first in the US to use CRISPR to edit human embryos. Now, the results of that study are being called into question.

Scientists led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health and Science University used CRISPR to remove the MYBPC3 gene - which is known to cause a heart disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Afterwards, the embryos were said to repair themselves using healthy genes from their mother as a template.

This hasn't been seen in previous studies utilising CRISPR, which has prompted some scientists to question the legitimacy of the research.

This week, a group of geneticists, developmental biologists, and stem cell researchers posited some alternative explanations in a paper published via bioRxiv.

The response to Mitalipov's study suggests the possibility that some of the embryos never took on any paternal DNA. In that case, they wouldn't have inherited the mutation in the first place; the one that was supposedly removed.

It is possible for embryos to develop from maternal DNA alone during in vitro fertilisation, but that instance wasn't acknowledged by the research.

There's also a chance that CRISPR did remove the mutated gene, but that gene wasn't replaced with a healthy version.

Such a scenario would mean that while no mutation could be detected, other sections of DNA might be missing - which could potentially cause major problems.

Peer review is essential to the growth of emerging technologies like CRISPR. Earlier this year, a paper that highlighted potential issues with CRISPR was swiftly refuted by another team of researchers.

Given that it's entirely possible for phony studies to be published, scientists are often required to keep one another in check.

Mitalipov stands by the study, but acknowledges the importance of interrogating its findings.

"We encourage other scientists to reproduce our findings by conducting their own experiments on human embryos and publishing their results," 

Scientists Have Found a Completely New Way to Attack And Kill Cancer Cells

**********If this works in people, it will be better than chemo.**********

Scientists have made a promising step forward in the ongoing fight against cancer, developing a new way to trigger cancer cell death that might eventually give us a new treatment option with better results than current methods.

Called Caspase-Independent Cell Death (CICD), it was able to completely eradicate tumours in colorectal cancer cells grown in the lab.

If the same effects can be reproduced in humans, then we could be looking at a treatment that can kill off cancers in a way that's less harmful to the body and with a lower chance of the cancer coming back, according to the team from the University of Glasgow in the UK.

"In essence, this mechanism has the potential to dramatically improve the effectiveness of anti–cancer therapy and reduce unwanted toxicity," says one of the researchers, Stephen Tait. "Taking into consideration our findings, we propose that engaging CICD as a means of anti-cancer therapy warrants further investigation."

Conventional anti-cancer treatments work by apoptosis, a kind of programmed cell death where cells effectively get ordered to kill themselves off, via proteins called caspases.

It's how chemotherapy works, for example, and it can work well – but there are caveats.

These therapies can miss some of their targets, which means cancer cells don't get eliminated and the tumours have a better chance of coming back, and can also be damaging to healthy cells, as anyone who's been through chemotherapy will tell you.

Enter CICD, which takes on some of the mechanisms of apoptosis but takes caspases out of the equation. When cells are killed off with CICD, the researchers found, they send a signal to the immune system that can then attack any remaining cancer cells.

It's a cleaner and hopefully safer way of taking a tumour out of a body – though it's worth emphasising that the treatment has only been tested on lab models so far.

"Especially under conditions of partial therapeutic response, as our experiments mimic, our data suggests that triggering tumour-specific CICD, rather than apoptosis, may be a more effective way to treat cancer," says Tait.

The hypothesis is that a therapy wouldn't have to kill off all the cancer cells itself, because the body's own immune system would swoop in and finish the job (cancer tumours are usually notoriously good at hiding from the immune system).

While these experiments focused on colorectal cancer, the researchers say it could be adapted to tackle different types of cancers too. That's one of the areas that will be investigated in future studies as scientists look to see if it could work in humans.

"This new research suggests there could be a better way to kill cancer cells which, as an added bonus, also activates the immune system," says Justine Alford from Cancer Research UK, who wasn't directly involved in the research.

"Now scientists need to investigate this idea further and, if further studies confirm it is effective, develop ways to trigger this particular route of cell death in humans."

We May Have Finally Discovered The Trigger That Starts Autoimmune Diseases

                          **********When the body attacks itself.**********

Scientists have identified a chain reaction that explains why our own bodies can turn against healthy cells, potentially transforming the way we look at autoimmune diseases and the way we treat them.

The reaction, discovered after four years of research in mice, has been described as a "runaway train" where one error leads the body to develop a very efficient way of attacking itself.

The study focussed on B cells gone rogue. Ordinarily these cells produce antibodies and program the immune cells to attack unwanted antigens (or foreign substances), but scientists found an 'override switch' in mouse B cells that distorted this behaviour and caused autoimmune attacks.

"Once your body's tolerance for its own tissues is lost, the chain reaction is like a runaway train," says one of the team, Michael Carroll from Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School (HMS).

"The immune response against your own body's proteins, or antigens, looks exactly like it's responding to a foreign pathogen."

These B-cells-gone-awry could in turn explain the biological phenomenon known as epitope spreading, where our bodies start to hunt down different antigens that shouldn't be on the immune system's 'kill list'.

Epitope spreading has long been observed in the lab but scientists have been in the dark about how it happens, and why autoimmune diseases evolve over time to target an ever-expanding catalogue of healthy organs and tissues.

In this case the research looked at a mouse model of the lupus autoimmune disease, considered an archetypal or 'classic' type of autoimmune disease that many others are based on.

"Lupus is known as 'the great imitator' because the disease can have so many different clinical presentations resembling other common conditions," says one of the researchers, Søren Degn from Boston Children's Hospital and Aarhus University in Denmark.

"It's a multi-organ disease with a plethora of potential antigenic targets, tissues affected and 'immune players' involved."

The confetti technique shows different antibodies in different colours. 

The team used what's known as a 'confetti' technique in their imaging, where fluorescent marker proteins were used to track different B cells in the body.

When B cells sense a foreign body – or something healthy that appears to be a foreign body – they swing into action in clusters called germinal centres. Those centres are why your lymph nodes become swollen when you've got a cold coming on, for example.

B cell clones actually battle each other out inside these centres so the body can determine which antibody is best suited to fight the threat, and in the case of this study that meant one colour of protein winning out against the others.

The problem comes when the body incorrectly identifies a normal protein as a threat. When that happens, the B cell selection process produces what are known as autoantibodies that prove very effective at harming our own bodies.

"Over time, the B cells that initially produce the 'winning' autoantibodies begin to recruit other B cells to produce additional damaging autoantibodies – just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water," says Degn.

This has only been examined in mice so far, but the researchers now want to use the confetti model to look at how B cell production of autoantibodies is regulated and gets sped up.

Eventually, blocking the germinal centres in some way could put a break in the vicious cycle that autoimmune diseases create. It would effectively block the immune system's short term memory, but that kind of treatment is still a long way off.

For now, it's a promising step towards a better understanding of this runaway biological train that's so hard to stop.

"This finding was such a surprise," says Carroll. "It not only tells us that autoreactive B cells are competing inside germinal centres to design an autoantibody, but then we also see that the immune response broadens to attack other tissues in the body, leading to epitope spreading at the speed of wildfire."

How to get over wanacry

1. Let the ransom work as it want.
2. After the time is completed you have three options to get your files and folder back
    1. Right click on my computers and go for configuration of  disk managment and just restore each and every drive so that you can restore your folders according to last configurations before the changes was done to your storage.
   2. Format your pc completely.
      Install windows.
       Instal a software called recuva or esus data manager.
      In recuva first you have to go to a wizard for recovery of type of file 》select storage location》enable deep scan》 select advance mode so that you can get files with preview and it is must to configure a box : save before encryption so that you get original file.

   
     :* using easus data managment recover the data according to asked configuration

   3. Plug out or disconnect the internet
Change the date and time of the pc or lappy .
Copy the data to another storage without opening files.

Any of the above methods will be over written by hackers as they get to know it.
Hurry before they get it done
Tc * any of the method is not gaurenteed it is humble request to try on own responsiblity.

Ransomeware as wanacry making whole world technisions cry

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that carries out the cryptoviral extortion attack from cryptovirology that blocks access to data until a ransom is paid and displays a message requesting payment to unlock it. Simple ransomware may lock the system in a way which is not difficult for a knowledgeable person to reverse. More advanced malware encrypts the victim's files, making them inaccessible, and demands a ransom payment to decrypt them.

The ransomware may also encrypt the computer's Master File Table (MFT) or the entire hard drive.Thus, ransomware is a denial-of-access attack that prevents computer users from accessing files since it is intractable to decrypt the files without the decryption key. Ransomware attacks are typically carried out using a Trojan that has a payload disguised as a legitimate file.

Ransomware stops you from using your PC. It holds your PC or files for "ransom". This page describes what ransomware is and what it does, and provides advice on how to prevent and recover from ransomware infections.

You can also read our blog about ransomware: The 5Ws and 1H of ransomware. 

On this page:

• What does ransomware do?
• Frequently asked questions
• Details for home users
• Details for enterprises and IT professionals
• Prevalent ransomware
• Top ransomware

What does ransomware do?

There are different types of ransomware. However, all of them will prevent you from using your PC normally, and they will all ask you to do something before you can use your PC.

They can target any PC users, whether it’s a home computer, endpoints in an enterprise network, or servers used by a government agency or healthcare provider.

Ransomware can:

• Prevent you from accessing Windows.
• Encrypt files so you can't use them.
• Stop certain apps from running (like your web browser).

Ransomware will demand that you pay money (a “ransom”) to get access to your PC or files. We have also seen them make you complete surveys.

There is no guarantee that paying the fine or doing what the ransomware tells you will give access to your PC or files again.

Details for home users

There are two types of ransomware – lockscreen ransomware and encryption ransomware.

Lockscreen ransomware shows a full-screen message that prevents you from accessing your PC or files. It says you have to pay money (a “ransom”) to get access to your PC again.

Encryption ransomware changes your files so you can’t open them. It does this by encrypting the files – see the Details for enterprises section if you’re interested in the technologies and techniques we’ve seen.

Older versions of ransom usually claim you have done something illegal with your PC, and that you are being fined by a police force or government agency.

These claims are false. It is a scare tactic designed to make you pay the money without telling anyone who might be able to restore your PC.

Newer versions encrypt the files on your PC so you can’t access them, and then simply demand money to restore your files.

Ransomware can get on your PC from nearly any source that any other malware (including viruses) can come from. This includes:

• Visiting unsafe, suspicious, or fake websites.
• Opening emails and email attachments from people you don’t know, or that you weren’t expecting.
• Clicking on malicious or bad links in emails, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media posts, instant messenger chats, like Skype.

It can be very difficult to restore your PC after a ransomware attack – especially if it’s infected by encryption ransomware.

That’s why the best solution to ransomware is to be safe on the Internet and with emails and online chat:

• Don’t click on a link on a webpage, in an email, or in a chat message unless you absolutely trust the page or sender.
• If you’re ever unsure – don’t click it!
• Often fake emails and webpages have bad spelling, or just look unusual. Look out for strange spellings of company names (like “PayePal” instead of “PayPal”) or unusual spaces, symbols, or punctuation (like “iTunesCustomer Service” instead of “iTunes Customer Service”).

Check our frequently asked questions for more information about ransomware, including troubleshooting tips in case you’re infected, and how you can backup your files to help protect yourself from ransomware.

Details for enterprises and IT professionals

The number of enterprise victims being targeted by ransomware is increasing. Usually, the attackers specifically research and target a victim (similar to whale-phishing or spear-phishing – and these in fact may be techniques used to gain access to the network).

The sensitive files are encrypted, and large amounts of money are demanded to restore the files. Generally, the attacker has a list of file extensions or folder locations that the ransomware will target for encryption.

Due to the encryption of the files, it can be practically impossible to reverse-engineer the encryption or “crack” the files without the original encryption key – which only the attackers will have access to.

The best advice for prevention is to ensure company-confidential, sensitive, or important files are securely backed up in a remote, un-connected backup or storage facility.

OneDrive for Business can assist in backing up everyday files.

In some cases, third-party tools released by some security firms are able to decrypt files for some specifically ransomware families. See our blog FireEye and Fox-IT tool can help recover Crilock-encrypted files for an example. Tim Rains, Microsoft Director of Security, released the blog Ransomware: Understanding the risk in April 2016 that summarizes the state of ransomware and provides statistics, details, and preventative suggestions to enterprises and IT professionals: Our Threat intelligence report: Ransomware also includes suggestions on prevention and recovery, statistics, and details.

Prevalent ransomware

Globally, ransomware continues to be a problem. In particular, we’ve seen increases in Italy and the eastern seaboard of the US.

The past six months (between December 2015 and May 2016) have seen the rise of Tescrypt globally. Crowti remains near the top of the pack, as does Brolo and FakeBsod.

Reveton has also dropped down the ladder, now at 1% of the top 10 share, down from 7% for the preceding 6 months.

Figure 1. Top 10 Ransomware (December 2015 to May 2016)      

Figure 2. Top 10 Ransomware (June to November 2015)      

For the top 10 countries with the most detections, the United States takes a full half of all detections. Italy is second, followed closely by Canada, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. After that the distribution is spread across the globe.

Figure 3: Top 10 countries (December 2015 to May 2016)

The greatest detections in the US were for FakeBsod, followed by Tescrypt and Brolo. Tescrypt was also prevalent in Italy.

Figure 4: Top detections in top countries (December 2015 to May 2016)

FakeBsod uses a malicious piece of JavaScript code to lock your web browser and show a fake warning message when you visit a compromised or malicious webpage. The warning message tells you to “contact Microsoft technicians” about an “Error 333 Registry Failure of operating system – Host: Blue screen Error 0x0000000CE”. If you call the phone number in the message you will be asked to pay money to “fix” the issue.

An example of the fake warning message is shown in Figure 5:

Figure 5: Message used by FakeBsod to lock your web browser

You can regain control of your web browser without paying anything by closing the warning message using the Task Manager.

WannaCry locks the data on a computer system and leaves the user with two files: instructions on what to do and the Wanna Decryptor program.

Victims have been warned that their files will be deleted within days if they do not pay up using Bitcoin, the world’s biggest virtual currency.

Investors have been scrambling to buy security stocks since the crisis and with many companies shares now at a record high.

Victims are expected to contact the criminals for a key to unlock their files

previously this attack was don by group of hackers on On 12 May 2017, 

According to this time this attack is no done by a group of people or by any organization it is done by a single person with lots of knowledge of cyber crime who may be technician of any it company or any countries cyber team member who has a reach to database of almost all countries.

i only do have a solution is to have a kill switch and a registered domain .

and only a way to stop this attack is to register the hackers broadcast with a domain which should be non accessible .

other such good option is to stop trading of bitcoins which will forcefully stop the hacker/hackers to stop their farewell.