America’s Federal Aviation Agency signed an agreement with the state of Kansas’s department of transportation to establish a 770-nautical mile Kansas Supersonic Transportation Corridor for testing aircraft up to Mach 3, reports Aviation International News:
The agreement would provide a critical testing site for the emerging group of supersonic aircraft as civil supersonic flight remains banned over land. Flight testing for models such as Aerion’s AS2 and Boom’s Overture is expected this decade, while NASA noise trials with the Lockheed Martin X-59 demonstrator are anticipated by 2024. “This year marks 73 years since Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and with this supersonic flight corridor Kansas will have a unique role in the next generation of supersonic transportation,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) in the announcement of the agreement…

The General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) lauded the establishment of the corridor, saying it will help in the “re-birth” of civil supersonic travel. “The Kansas Supersonic Transportation Corridor will assist in the assessment of sound mitigating structural and engine designs as well as state of the art atmospheric acoustic modeling that eliminates the sonic boom and shapes the noise signature of an aircraft traveling faster than the speed of sound to a very low volume rumble,” said GAMA president and CEO Pete Bunce. “The validation of these technological breakthroughs through the use of sophisticated ground acoustic and telemetry sensors will provide the necessary data to assist global regulators and policymakers in modernizing supersonic flight policies.”

NASA plans to use the Lockheed Martin X-59 demonstrator to test low-boom noise effects over various populations. “I’m really excited about quiet supersonic technology and its ability to be transformative for flight and our economy,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

Aerion, meanwhile, plans to test “Boom Cruise” technology that is designed to keep the sonic boom from reaching the ground with plans to begin flight trials in 2025, while Boom is looking at low boom technologies for its commercial airliner Overture.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – America Creates a 770-Mile Corridor for Testing Supersonic Aircraft Up to Mach 3

Reuters notes the “miraculous speed” of mRNA vaccines, while also calling it “a glimpse of what’s possible if it can be applied post-pandemic to treat cancer or rare diseases.”

The vaccine market alone is worth about $35 billion each year, and investors apparently believe mRNA companies will capture around two-third of that, leading market researcher Bernstein to evalaute the combined worth of mRNA companies at nearly $180 billion.

The technology is the closest thing yet to making medicine digital. MRNA vaccines essentially inject genetic code that instructs a recipients’ cells to construct a part of the virus. The body recognizes the produced protein as foreign and mounts a future immune response when exposed. Moderna and BioNTech’s vaccines show the technology works fast. Vaccines typically take a decade to develop. They took less than a year…

The speed of mRNA therapeutics is a big advantage. For example, flu vaccines only reduce the risk of illness by up to 60% because makers must guess which strains will be prevalent each season. Sometimes they’re wrong. Shaving months off means better guesses, and higher efficacy.

The bigger opportunity comes from the validation of the mRNA “platform”. Instructing cells to produce desired proteins could lead to multiple advances. Perhaps they can instruct the body to more vigorously attack cancerous cells or repair damaged tissue. Producing missing proteins might fight inherited diseases…

Success against Covid-19 means these companies will be flush with cash from sales and attract partnerships and scientific talent. That should make 2021 a watershed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Can mRNA Biotechnology be Adapted to Improve Flu Vaccines and Fight Cancer?

CNN reports:
US officials and private sector experts investigating the massive data breach that has rocked Washington increasingly believe the attackers were ultimately discovered because they took a more aggressive “calculated risk” that led to a possible “unforced error” as they tried to expand their access within the network they had penetrated months earlier without detection, according to a US official and two sources familiar with the situation… FireEye was tipped off to the hackers’ presence when they attempt to move laterally within the firm’s network, according to the sources, a move that suggested the hackers were targeting sensitive data beyond emails addresses or business records.

Whether that exposure was the result of a mistake by the attackers or because they took a calculated risk remains unclear, the sources said. “At some point, you have to risk some level of exposure when you’re going laterally to get after the things that you really want to get. And you’re going to take calculated risks as an attacker,” one source familiar with the investigation said…

Now, the hackers are attempting to salvage what access they can as the US government and private sector are “burning it all down,” sources said, referring to their complete overhaul of networks, which will force the attackers to find new ways of getting the information they seek. Meanwhile, US officials continue to grapple with the fallout and assess just how successful the operation was, the US official said, noting that it is clear the nation-state responsible invested significant time and resources into the effort. While the scope of the hacking campaign remains unclear, government agencies that have disclosed they were impacted have said there is no evidence to date that classified data was compromised. But the way the hackers were discovered suggests the operation was intended to steal sensitive information beyond what was available on unclassified networks and sought to establish long-standing access to various targeted networks, the sources said.

The fact that FireEye — not the federal government — discovered the breach has also raised questions about why the attack went undetected at US government agencies.

The article also notes FireEye’s acknowledgement that the breach “occurred when the hackers, who already had an employee’s credentials, used those to register their own device to FireEye’s multi-factor authentication system so they could receive the employee’s unique access codes.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – ‘Unforced Error’ in Suspected Russian Data Breach May Have Led to Its Discovery

Ananda Sharma, founder of the app Gyroscope, describes to a local TV station the monolith he discovered during a Christmas-morning jog under a candy-cane red sunrise.
“I think I smelled it before I saw it…”
He spotted a double rainbow and wanted to peek at that too. At first, he thought the monolith was “a big post,” but as he got closer, he smelled the gingerbread scent wafting toward him. The monolith is standing in panels separated by icing…
“It made me smile.

SFGate spoke to another eye-witness:

Alexis Gallagher also happened upon the sweet monolith at about 8:25 a.m. Friday morning, confirming it was made of gingerbread, frosting and gumdrops… “I had a closer look and it looks like there’s a plywood skeleton underneath, but I try not to dwell on such mundane realities.”

Gallagher added that he had to “stop my dog from nibbling on it…”
When reached for an official comment, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department General Manager told the TV news reporter that the gingerbread monolith “Looks like a great spot to get baked.”
Then he added more sternly that “we will leave it up until the cookie crumbles.”

But their article notes it raises several questions for Bay Area residents:
Did Christmas-happy aliens beam it down from above? Did some rogue artificial intelligence escape a nearby Google campus, and, driven mad by our plethora of Christmas music…design an art piece to brighten our days? And just how expensive is it to rent a highrise apartment within its crumbly, ginger-pungent walls…?

SFGate’s report ends with Ananda Sharma noting that it began raining in San Francisco at 11:30 a.m., adding, “not sure what happens to gingerbread in the rain but it probably isn’t good.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – How San Francisco Got a Very Special Monolith on Christmas Day