Virtually all of us are radically changing our lives to adjust to the new realities caused by the coronavirus crisis. This is a major shock to our entire global society, and it certainly will cause major changes in the way that people and organizations think and act in the future. As governments, institutions, and individuals … Continue reading The Next New Normals – in General →

A recent post anticipates that as we go through the current crisis, we will develop a “crisis new normal” and, after we recover from the crisis, a “normal new normal” (NNN).  At this point, governments, institutions, and individuals are still developing new routines as we wait out the crisis by doing things like sheltering in … Continue reading The Next New Normal in Law, Dispute Resolution, and Legal Education →

An article by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, The World After Coronavirus, describes general dynamics of crises and particularly the current crisis: Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life.  That is the nature of emergencies.  They fast-forward historical processes.  Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in … Continue reading Communication, Privacy, and Community in the New Normal →

A Denver event planner creates "Party For One Pep-Up Packs" with donations from area businesses to cheer up the city's essential workers during the COVID-19 outbreak.

They came together for the talk show.

The rapper and Tiny blame today’s music for relationships.

The rapper was seen acting bizarre in a series of videos.

The Jamaican national reportedly suffered a stroke.

The campaign debuts newest “Nearly Nude” style.

The group brings experts and policy makers together

The documentary hits Netflix tomorrow.

Get the tissues ready.

International BET Breaks hosts share their perspectives.

Changing the world one step at a time.

The NBA team is estimated to be worth $4.4 billion.

The group brings experts and policy makers together

The documentary hits Netflix tomorrow.

The singer says she’s having her butt enhancements removed.

The First Daughters are giving us all the feels.

Introducing two new premium themes: Small Business, made for your entrepreneurial endeavors, and Photo Blog, designed to make your photography shine.

In an upcoming webinar on April 2, learn tips on site design, SEO, monetization, and mobile optimization.

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Research Report 16: Guidebook for Managing Small Airports. Second Edition is designed to help airport practitioners, owners, operators, managers, and policymakers of small airports, who may have varying degrees of experience and backgrounds, to fulfill their responsibilities in such areas as financial management, oversight of contracts and leases, safety and security, noise impacts, community relations, compliance with federal and state obligations, facil...

Staff from smaller airports typically lack specialized expertise in the negotiation and development of airport property or the resources to hire consultants. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Research Report 213: Estimating Market Value and Establishing Market Rent at Small Airports provides airport management, policymakers, and staff a resource for developing and leasing airport land and improvements, methodologies for determining market value and appropriate rents, and best practices ...

Aria-body virus removal guide

What is Aria-body?

Aria-body is a piece of malicious software, also known as Aria-body RAT (Remote Access Trojan). RATs allow remote access and control over an infected machine. Aria-body malware has various abilities/features that enable likewise varied misuse. It has been observed being employed primarily for stealing information; this trojan can locate and exfiltrate specific data. This malicious program has been used for espionage, extensively targeting the APAC (Asia Pacific) region. Aria-body has been leveraged against governmental institutions (e.g. science and technology, foreign affairs ministries, government-owned companies, etc.) of Australia, Indonesia, Brunei, Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar and Thailand.

Several groups of reptiles persisted in Jurassic Africa even as volcanism ruined their habitat

Most nuclear data measurements are performed at accelerators large enough to occupy a geologic formation a kilometer wide. But a portable device that can reveal the composition of materials quickly on-site would greatly benefit cases such as in archaeology and nuclear arms treaty verification. Research published this week in AIP Advances used computational simulations to show that with the right geometric adjustments, it is possible to perform accurate neutron resonance transmission analysis in a device just 5 meters long.

Examining the factors that affect the number of females being harvested during the bear hunting season will help Pennsylvania wildlife officials manage population.

This seems to be something of a thing. Our last "Tales From the Quarantine" post focused on how television celebrities had taken to offering people help on Twitter with their virtual home decor in the latest Animal Crossing game. This post also involves Animal Crossing, but in a much more direct way. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are enormous numbers of people who have suddenly found themselves without jobs or regular income. And, so, they've turned to irregular sources of income instead.

Ars Technica has an interesting interview with one of many people who have taken to the internet to indirectly sell Animal Crossing's "bells", the currency of the game.

In the midst of COVID-19, some New Horizons players are turning to World of Warcraft-style gold farming methods to make ends meet. In early April, Lexy, a 23-year-old recent college grad, created a Twitter account offering up bells (Animal Crossing’s in-game currency) for real-world cash (she requested we refer to her by a nickname to avoid potential reprisal from Nintendo). “I got laid off due to COVID so I'm farming bells in ACNH,” she wrote. “I really need to make rent this month so I'm selling 2 mil bells per $5, please message me if interested, I'll give you a discount the more you buy.”

Before setting up this unorthodox income stream, Lexy had been working at a supermarket while developing her animation portfolio. She began exploring the idea of turning bells into cash after showing friends just how much in-game income she’d been making. “One of them asked to legitimately buy some for me,” she recalled in a Twitter interview. “I did some research and found some people selling bells on sites such as eBay, but for pretty ridiculous prices.” (Current prices on eBay seem more competitive, with some sellers offering rare gold tools and gold nuggets to sweeten the deal).

The threat from Nintendo is probably real. After all, unlike some other games where people do this sort of thing, Nintendo's game doesn't include any method for selling in-game resources for real currency. Nintendo is also notoriously prudish about things like this. And, finally, to make an effective go at this sort of thing, it takes some manipulation of the console in a way that is somewhat controversial with gamers generally.

Understandably, Lexy adjusts the clock on her Nintendo Switch to speed up the game’s slow, “natural” money-making cycle of harvesting daily fruit, digging up bells from the ground, and planting a daily “money tree” that can yield big profits. This kind of in-game “time traveling” is controversial practice among casual Animal Crossing players, but it's a practical necessity to maximize real-world bell-farming profits.

As for how much money people like Lexy are bringing in, it's in the four figures, but she wasn't any more specific than that. Payments are made through digital apps like PayPal, after which she visits the game islands of others and deposits the bells.

That all of this is going on during a global pandemic that has some folks farming bells to make ends meet and others with apparently enough disposable income to be buyers is all, of course, deeply strange. But it's also just yet another way technology is having an impact on our lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zero-click remote-code exec hole found by Googler, updates emitted

Samsung has patched a serious security hole in its smartphones that can be exploited by maliciously crafted text messages to hijack devices.…

Familial dysautonomia (FD) is the most prevalent form of hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy (HSAN). In FD, a germline mutation in the Elp1 gene leads to Elp1 protein decrease that causes sympathetic neuron death and sympathetic nervous system dysfunction (dysautonomia). Elp1 is best known as a scaffolding protein within the nuclear hetero-hexameric transcriptional Elongator protein complex, but how it functions in sympathetic neuron survival is very poorly understood. Here, we identified a cytoplasmic function for Elp1 in sympathetic neurons that was essential for retrograde nerve growth factor (NGF) signaling and neuron target tissue innervation and survival. Elp1 was found to bind to internalized TrkA receptors in an NGF-dependent manner, where it was essential for maintaining TrkA receptor phosphorylation (activation) by regulating PTPN6 (Shp1) phosphatase activity within the signaling complex. In the absence of Elp1, Shp1 was hyperactivated, leading to premature TrkA receptor dephosphorylation, which resulted in retrograde signaling failure and neuron death. Inhibiting Shp1 phosphatase activity in the absence of Elp1 rescued NGF-dependent retrograde signaling, and in an animal model of FD it rescued abnormal sympathetic target tissue innervation. These results suggest that regulation of retrograde NGF signaling in sympathetic neurons by Elp1 may explain sympathetic neuron loss and physiologic dysautonomia in patients with FD.

BACKGROUND The anti–programmed cell death 1 (anti–PD-1) antibody pembrolizumab is clinically active against non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In addition to T cells, human natural killer (NK) cells, reported to have the potential to prolong the survival of patients with advanced NSCLC, also express PD-1. This study aimed to investigate the safety and efficacy of pembrolizumab plus allogeneic NK cells in patients with previously treated advanced NSCLC.METHODS In total, 109 enrolled patients with a programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) tumor proportion score (TPS) of 1% or higher were randomly allocated to group A (n = 55 patients given pembrolizumab plus NK cells) or group B (n = 54 patients given pembrolizumab alone). The patients received i.v. pembrolizumab (10 mg/kg) once every 3 weeks and continued treatment until the occurrence of tumor progression or unacceptable toxicity. The patients in group A continuously received 2 cycles of NK cell therapy as 1 course of treatment.RESULTS In our study, patients in group A had longer survival than did patients in group B (median overall survival [OS]: 15.5 months vs. 13.3 months; median progression-free survival [PFS]: 6.5 months vs. 4.3 months; P < 0.05). In group A patients with a TPS of 50% or higher, the median OS and PFS was significantly longer. Moreover, the patients in group A treated with multiple courses of NK cell infusion had better OS (18.5 months) than did those who received a single course of NK cell infusion (13.5 months).CONCLUSIONS Pembrolizumab plus NK cell therapy yielded improved survival benefits in patients with previously treated PD-L1+ advanced NSCLC.TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02843204.FUNDING This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) – Guangdong Joint Foundation of China (no. U1601225); the NSFC (no. 81671965); the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory Construction Project of China (no. 2017B030314034); and the Key Scientific and Technological Program of Guangzhou City (no. 201607020016).