Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by MKLMS

Military Thread V30

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 07:30:00 +0800

Military Thread V29

MKLMS — Tue, 31 May 2022 22:16:26 +0800

[center][/center]

[center]No trolls, flaming, flame-baiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Links to previous Military Threads (V1-V28)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Other Military Forums & Blogs:
Mymil
Forum Panggilan Pertiwi
Malaysia Military Power
Malaysian Defence

Please PM me to add more.

Change log for V29 post #1:
20220531
- copied template from post #1 of Military Thread V28
20241225
- edited post #1 of Military Thread V29

Military Thread V28

MKLMS — Sat, 03 Apr 2021 15:40:41 +0800

[center][/center]

[center]No trolls, flaming, flame-baiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Links to previous Military Threads (V1-V27)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Malaysian Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Other Military Forums & Blogs:
Mymil
Forum Panggilan Pertiwi
Malaysia Military Power
Malaysian Defence

Please PM me to add more.

Change log for V28 post #1:
20210403
- copied template from post #1 of Military Thread V27

Military Thread V27

MKLMS — Sun, 07 Jul 2019 11:16:41 +0800

[center][/center]

[center]No trolls, flaming, flame-baiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Links to previous Military Threads (V1-V26)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Malaysian Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Other Military Forums & Blogs:
Mymil
Forum Panggilan Pertiwi
Malaysia Military Power
Malaysian Defence

Please PM me to add more.

Change log for V27 post #1:
20190707
- copied template from post #1 of Military Thread V26

Military Thread V26

MKLMS — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 11:11:13 +0800

[center][/center]

[center]No trolls, flaming, flame-baiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Links to previous Military Threads (V1-V25)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Malaysian Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Other Military Forums & Blogs:
Mymil
Forum Panggilan Pertiwi
Malaysia Military Power
Malaysian Defence

Please PM me to add more.

Change log for V26 post #1:
20180702
- copied template from post #1 of Military Thread V25

Military Thread V25

MKLMS — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 14:47:54 +0800

[center][/center]

[center]No trolls, flaming, flamebaiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Links to previous Military Threads (V1-V24)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Malaysian Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Other Military Forums & Blogs:
Mymil
Forum Panggilan Pertiwi
Malaysia Military Power
Malaysian Defence

Please PM me to add more.

Change log for V24 post #1:
20170908
- copied template from post #1 of Military Thread V24

Sea salts come with a dash of microplastics

MKLMS — Sat, 13 May 2017 18:54:36 +0800

QUOTE

Sullied seasoning: Sea salts come with a dash of microplastics

It doesn’t pose a health risk, but it serves up a spicy reminder of pollution problem.

Beth Mole - 5/13/2017, 5:06 AM

When plastic garbage makes its way to the sea, it eventually breaks down into tiny fragments that return to us in salty seasonings, Malaysian researchers report in Scientific Reports.

In a survey of 16 sea salts from eight countries, researchers found microplastic particles lurking in all but one. In total, the researchers collected 72 particles from the salts and used micro-Raman spectroscopy to identify their components, which were mainly plastic polymers and pigments.

The amount of microplastics in the salts was so low that they pose no health risk—even if the only salt you ever eat is sea salt and you eat a lot of it. However, the flavored pollution is still worth keeping an eye on, the researchers argue.

Based on their findings and data on global salt consumption, the researchers estimated that people might consume around 37 microplastic particles from sea salt per year—if all the sodium in their diet came from sea salt. By contrast, previous research estimates that shellfish-loving Europeans may consume up to 11,000 microplastic particles a year. It’s not yet clear if that amount poses a health risk.

Link to full news article: Sullied seasoning: Sea salts come with a dash of microplastics

Link to publication reported by the news: The presence of microplastics in commercial salts from different countries

Military Thread V24

MKLMS — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 02:46:46 +0800

[center][/center]

[center]No trolls, flaming, flamebaiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Links to previous Military Threads (V1-V23)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Malaysian Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Other Military Forums & Blogs:
Mymil
Forum Panggilan Pertiwi
Malaysia Military Power
Malaysian Defence

Please PM me to add more.

Change log for V24 post #1:
20170317
- copied TS template from post #1 of Military Thread V23

Military Thread V23

MKLMS — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 03:48:23 +0800

[center][/center]

[center]No trolls, flaming, flamebaiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Links to previous Military Threads (V1-V22)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Malaysian Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Other Military Forums & Blogs:
Mymil
Forum Panggilan Pertiwi
Malaysia Military Power
Malaysian Defence

Please PM me to add more.

Change log for V23 post #1:
20161117
- copied TS template from post #1 of Military Thread V22

Military Thread V22

MKLMS — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 10:44:27 +0800

[center][/center]

[center]No trolls, flaming, flamebaiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Links to previous Military Threads (V1-V21)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Malaysian Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Other Military Forums & Blogs:
Mymil
Forum Panggilan Pertiwi
Malaysia Military Power
Malaysian Defence

PM me to add more.

Change log for V22 post #1:
20160916
- copied TS template from post #1 of Military Thread V21
20160917
- post #1 clean up, updated the links to other military forum and blog

Military Thread V21

MKLMS — Fri, 27 May 2016 23:45:23 +0800

[center]

Military Thread V1 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V2 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V3 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V4 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V5 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V6
Military Thread V7
Military Thread V8
Military Thread V9
Military Thread V10
Military Thread V11
Military Thread V12
Military Thread V13
Military Thread V13B
Military Thread V15
Military Thread V16
Military Thread V17
Military Thread V18
Military Thread V19
Military Thread V20

No trolls, flaming, flamebaiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Malaysia Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

PM me to add more.

Others Military Forum:
Mymil
militarynut
Militaryphotos.net Malaysia Thread
panggilanpertiwi
[right][snapback]74586048[/snapback][/right]

Change log for V21 post #1:
20160527
- copied TS template from post #1 of Military Thread V20
20160601
-Added RMAF 58th years of service
20160602
-Amended to Ulang Tahun TUDM(58), Askar Wataniah(53)
-Amended to Ulangtahun TUDM & Askar Wataniah ke-58
20160613
-Emptied topic description
20160831
-Added Happy 59th Malaysia Independence Day
20160916
-Emptied topic description
-Close thread
[right][snapback]77745568[/snapback][/right]

New Kidney Transplants Procedure

MKLMS — Sat, 19 Mar 2016 16:49:58 +0800

QUOTE

New Procedure Allows Kidney Transplants From Any Donor

By GINA KOLATAMARCH 9, 2016 (The New York Times)

In the anguishing wait for a new kidney, tens of thousands of patients on waiting lists may never find a match because their immune systems will reject almost any transplanted organ. Now, in a large national study that experts are calling revolutionary, researchers have found a way to get them the desperately needed procedure.

In the new study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, doctors successfully altered patients’ immune systems to allow them to accept kidneys from incompatible donors. Significantly more of those patients were still alive after eight years than patients who had remained on waiting lists or received a kidney transplanted from a deceased donor.

The method, known as desensitization, “has the potential to save many lives,” said Dr. Jeffery Berns, a kidney specialist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and the president of the National Kidney Foundation.

It could slash the wait times for thousands of people and for some, like Clint Smith, a 56-year-old lawyer in New Orleans, mean the difference between receiving a transplant and spending the rest of their lives on dialysis.

The procedure, Mr. Smith said, “changed my life.”

Researchers estimate about half of the 100,000 people in the United States on waiting lists for a kidney transplant have antibodies that will attack a transplanted organ, and about 20 percent are so sensitive that finding a compatible organ is all but impossible. In addition, said Dr. Dorry Segev, the lead author of the new study and a transplant surgeon at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, an unknown number of people with kidney failure simply give up on the waiting lists after learning that their bodies would reject just about any organ. Instead, they resign themselves to dialysis, a difficult and draining procedure that can pretty much take over a person’s life.

Desensitization involves first filtering the antibodies out of a patient’s blood. The patient is then given an infusion of other antibodies to provide some protection while the immune system regenerates its own antibodies. For some reason — exactly why is not known — the person’s regenerated antibodies are less likely to attack the new organ, Dr. Segev said. But if the person’s regenerated natural antibodies are still a concern, the patient is treated with drugs that destroy any white blood cells that might make antibodies that would attack the new kidney.

The process is expensive, costing $30,000, and uses drugs not approved for this purpose. The transplant costs about $100,000. But kidney specialists argue that desensitization is cheaper in the long run than dialysis, which costs $70,000 a year for life.

Although by far the biggest use of desensitization would be for kidney transplants, the process might be suitable for living-donor transplants of livers and lungs, researchers said. The liver is less sensitive to antibodies so there is less need for desensitization, “but it’s certainly possible if there are known incompatibilities,” Dr. Segev said. With lungs, he said, desensitization “is theoretically possible,” although he said he was not aware of anyone doing it yet.

In the new study, 1,025 patients at 22 medical centers who had an incompatible donor were compared to an equal number of patients who remained on waiting lists for an organ or who had an organ from a deceased but compatible donor. After eight years, 76.5 percent of those who received an incompatible kidney were still alive, compared with 62.9 percent who remained on the waiting list or received a deceased donor kidney and 43.9 percent who remained on the waiting list but never got a transplant.

The desensitization procedure takes time — for some patients as long as two weeks — and is performed before the transplant operation, so patients must have a living donor. It is not known how many have someone willing to donate a kidney, but doctors say they often see situations in which a relative or even a friend is willing to donate but is incompatible.

“Often patients are told that their living donor is incompatible, so they are stuck on waiting lists,” for a deceased donor, Dr. Segev said.

In recent years, an option called a kidney exchange has helped some in this situation. Patients who have incompatible living donors can swap donors with someone whose donor may be compatible with them. Often, there are chains of patient-donor pairs leading to a compatible organ swap.

That process can be successful, said Dr. Krista L. Lentine, the medical director of the living donation program at the Saint Louis Center for Transplantation, but patients often still cannot find a compatible organ because they have antibodies that would reject almost every kidney. In those cases, “desensitization may be the only realistic option for receiving a transplant,” said Dr. Lentine, who was not involved with the study.

Dr. Jeffrey Campsen, a transplant surgeon at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center who also was not a study investigator, said his group focused on exchanges and had been fairly successful. But he also comes across patients whose donors do not want to participate. “There is a hurdle if the donor and patient have an emotional bond,” he said.

The new data showing the success of desensitization “lets people get behind it,” Dr. Campsen said, adding, “I do think it is something we would consider.”

Mr. Smith, the New Orleans patient who went through desensitization, had progressive kidney disease that slowly scarred his kidneys until, in 2004, they stopped functioning. His sister-in-law, Allison Sutton, donated a kidney to him, and he had a transplant, but after six and a half years, it failed. He went on dialysis, spending four days a week hooked up to dialysis machines for hours. It was keeping him alive, he told his friends, but it was not a life.

Then a nurse suggested that he ask Johns Hopkins about its desensitization study. “I was like, whatever I could do,” he said. He discovered that he qualified for the study. But he needed a donor.

One day, his wife, Sheryl Smith, was talking on the phone to a college friend, Angela Watkins, who lives in Augusta, Ga., and mentioned that Mr. Smith was praying for a donor. Mrs. Watkins’s husband, David Watkins, a judge in state court, had been friends with Mr. Smith in college and the two wives, also college friends, had kept in touch over the years.

Mrs. Watkins told her husband about the conversation, and they asked themselves if they should offer to donate.

“We talked and researched and prayed,” Judge Watkins said. Finally, he said, they came to a conclusion. “We have a moral obligation to at least see if we would qualify.” And he thought that he should be the one to go first. If he did not qualify, his wife could be tested.

Mr. Smith warned his old friend that donating was an enormous undertaking. “He said, ‘You can’t grasp what you are doing.’ I heard him but it didn’t register,” Judge Watkins said. “I told him, ‘I have something you need, so what’s the big deal?’ ”

Of course, it was a big deal. Although Judge Watkins had prepared by getting himself in top physical shape, it still took about six months to recover from the operation.

That was four years ago, and Mr. Smith’s new kidney is still functioning and he is back to his active life, forever grateful to his friend.

“Every night,” he says, “during my nightly prayers with my wife, I thank God for bringing David and Allison to me and for giving me the gift of life.

“But for David giving me this gift, I would still be in that dialysis chair.”
Correction: March 9, 2016
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the role of Dr. Krista L. Lentine, the medical director of the living donation program at the Saint Louis Center for Transplantation, in the study of kidney transplants. She was not involved.

To summarize.

The desensitization method in this news enable doctors to alter the patients’ immune systems, allowing the patient to accept kidneys from incompatible donors.

Desensitization method involves first filtering the antibodies out of a patient’s blood. The patient is then given an infusion of other antibodies to provide some protection while the immune system regenerates back its own antibodies. Interestingly, the person’s newly regenerated antibodies are less likely to attack the new organ. But if the person’s regenerated natural antibodies are still a concern, the patient is treated with drugs that destroy any white blood cells that might make antibodies that would attack the new kidney.

The desensitization procedure takes time — for some patients as long as two weeks — and is performed before the transplant operation, so patients must have a living donor.

The desensitization is expensive, costing $30,000, and uses drugs not approved for this purpose. The transplant costs about $100,000.

However it is much cheaper in the long run compared to dialysis, which costs $70,000 a year for life.

This method could slash the waiting times for thousands of people waiting for kidney transplant because the number of possible kidney donor available now increases tremendously. It improves the quality of life as the patient are not stuck spending the rest of their lives on dialysis.

Although by far the biggest use of desensitization would be for kidney transplants, the process might be suitable for living-donor transplants of livers and lungs (might be because further research will be needed to evaluate them).

Source: New Procedure Allows Kidney Transplants From Any Donor
Credit to Aoirann from SpaceBattles Non-scifi debate forum for the news.

Military Thread V20

MKLMS — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 00:42:53 +0800

[center]

Military Thread V1 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V2 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V3 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V4 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V5 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V6
Military Thread V7
Military Thread V8
Military Thread V9
Military Thread V10
Military Thread V11
Military Thread V12
Military Thread V13
Military Thread V13B
Military Thread V15
Military Thread V16
Military Thread V17
Military Thread V18
Military Thread V19

No trolls, flaming, flamebaiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Malaysia Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Treatment saved ~90% of terminal cancer patients

MKLMS — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 14:34:00 +0800

QUOTE

Treatment saved ~90% of terminal cancer patients, but it has scary side effects

Scientists cautiously optimistic about reprogramming immune cells to wipe out cancer.

by Beth Mole - Feb 17, 2016 8:40am CST

WASHINGTON—Militarizing the body’s natural immune responses so that it can fight off cancerous uprisings has been seen as a promising strategy for years. Now, a sneak peek of data from a small clinical trial suggests that the method may in fact be as useful as doctors hope—but there are still some serious kinks to work out.

In a trial of 29 people with a deadly form of leukemia—acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)—and no other treatment options, 27 went into remission after scientists plucked some of their immune cells, engineering them to fight cancer, then replaced them. The method was also successful at treating handfuls of patients with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The preliminary, unpublished findings were reported at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.

While the early result suggests the treatment can be effective for these types of cancer, there were severe problems during the trials: several patients suffered extreme, full-body inflammation (cytokine release syndrome) in response to the treatment and needed to be placed in intensive care. Two patients died.

The risks may seem acceptable to terminal cancer patients who have exhausted all other treatment options and are facing a prognosis of just months to live. However, the severe reactions set the treatment option apart from standard cancer therapies, which are effective for many leukemia patients and have less dangerous side effects. It’s also unclear if the therapy would be widely effective against other types of cancer that have solid tumors, such as breast cancer.

It’s a “highly effective” strategy, said Stanley Riddell of the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who presented the trial data at the meeting. But, he cautioned, there are challenges ahead to make the treatment safer and useful for other cancers.

In general, the treatment works by first collecting a patient’s immune cells—specifically T cells that patrol the body, seeking and destroying invading germs or foreign enemies. To do this, the cells look for certain molecular patterns found on those cellular combatants. But, once in lab, researchers can reprogram the T cells’ pattern recognition (antigen receptors) so that the cells target cancer cells. In this case, the resulting T cells, called CAR-T cells for “chimeric antigen receptors,” identify a protein called CD19, which is found on cells involved with lymphomas and leukemias.

This isn’t the first time such cells have been used in humans. Late last year, researchers in London announced they had engineered CAR T cells to save the life of a toddler with ALL.

Researchers are now working on ways to tweak the T cells and the treatment strategy to make safe, long-lasting cancer cures, researchers at the meeting reported.

News from arstechnica.com: Treatment saved ~90% of terminal cancer patients, but it has scary side effects

Seems like the lethal side effect is due to the modified T-cell being too effective, overclocking the body immune system to destroy all cancer cell in short time. Now they just need to do further fine tuning to moderate the immune reaction, reduce the lethal side effect and make the treatment safer.

Military Thread V19

MKLMS — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 00:03:26 +0800

[center]

Military Thread V1 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V2 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V3 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V4 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V5 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V6
Military Thread V7
Military Thread V8
Military Thread V9
Military Thread V10
Military Thread V11
Military Thread V12
Military Thread V13
Military Thread V13B
Military Thread V15
Military Thread V16
Military Thread V17
Military Thread V18

No trolls, flaming, flamebaiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Malaysia Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Military Thread V18

MKLMS — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 15:42:37 +0800

[center]

Military Thread V1 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V2 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V3 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V4 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V5 // cache at Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Military Thread V6
Military Thread V7
Military Thread V8
Military Thread V9
Military Thread V10
Military Thread V11
Military Thread V12
Military Thread V13
Military Thread V13B
Military Thread V15
Military Thread V16
Military Thread V17

No trolls, flaming, flamebaiting, and anything related to bad manners allowed.
Politics should stay out
Thank You[/center]

Malaysia Military Documentary

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

PM me to add more.

Others Military Forum
Mymil
militarynut
Militaryphotos.net Malaysia Thread
panggilanpertiwi
[right][snapback]74586048[/snapback][/right]

Change log for V18 post #1:
20150916
- copied yinchet TS template from post #1 of Military Thread V17
- added link to Military Thread V17
- added alternative link to Military Thread V1, V2, V3, V4 and V5

Dino, espionage malware with a French connection

MKLMS — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 11:53:10 +0800

Researchers expose Dino, espionage malware with a French connection
Software tied to "Animal Farm" group, state-sponsored hackers who hit Syria.

Security researchers at ESET in Bratislava, Slovakia have published an analysis of another apparently state-sponsored cyber-espionage tool used to target computers in Iran—and potentially elsewhere. The malware, also recently mentioned by Kaspersky researchers, was named "Dino" by its developers and has been described as a "full featured espionage platform." And this advanced persistent threat malware, according to researchers, might as well come with a "fabriqué en France" stamp on it.

Based on analysis of Dino's code from a sample that infected systems in Iran in 2013, "We believe this malicious software has been developed by the Animal Farm espionage group, who also created the infamous Casper, Bunny and Babar malware," ESET's Joan Calvet wrote in a blog post today. The Casper malware was part of a large-scale attack on Syrian computers last fall. "Dino contains interesting technical features, and also a few hints that the developers are French speaking," Calvet noted.

Other members of the "Animal Farm" malware family have been attributed to French intelligence agencies by researchers—including a 2011 analysis by Canada's Communications Security Establishment revealed by documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Dino shares attributes with the other members of the "Animal Farm" malware family and improves on many of the techniques of "Babar," the previous generation intelligence-gathering software implant.

Napoleonic code

Dino's role is to exfiltrate data—package it and ship it back through a command and control network infrastructure to the malware's masters. Calvet described Dino as "an elaborate backdoor built in modular fashion." It uses its own task-scheduling code similar to cron in Unix and a custom, encrypted in-memory file system called "ramFS" by its developers—a characteristic shared with other "Animal Farm" malware. The ramFS file system acts as a "protected container" for Dino's executable files, allowing the malware to self-destruct and leave few traces in disk storage of the system that was infected.

To keep Dino persistent between shutdowns and restarts of a targeted system, Dino uses on-disk encrypted file storing modules and data stores in a serialized format. When the malware restarts after a system reboot or remote reset, a module in the malware called PSM decrypts the storage file and loads its contents back into the ramFS memory. "Funnily enough," Calvet wrote, "the key serving to encrypt the file on disk is 'PsmIsANiceM0du1eWith0SugarInside.'"

The ESET researchers cataloged the commands that could be remotely executed through Dino and found that most of them were focused on searching through files and performing covert file transfers. The "search" command can perform very specific gathering tasks, Calvet noted. "For example, it can provide all files with a '.doc' extension, the size of which is bigger than 10 kilobytes, and that were modified in the last 3 days," Calvet wrote. The search command packs all the files it finds into an archive, which is in turn scheduled for upload to the command and control servers.

The output returned from Dino's "sysinfo" command bears a striking resemblance to the data format used by "beacon" malware discovered by the Canadian Communications Security Establishment's analysts—data that led the CSE to discover the Babar malware. It sends back information on the infected system and its owner, as well as the version number for the malware itself. Additional signs of Dino's connection to a French organization include resources in the compiled binary that bear the hexadecimal language code value of 1036—the code for "French (France)."

Also, Dino's code is statically linked to the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library (GnuMP); the GnuMP code in Dino included path references to C libraries from the developer's computer, which include a directory called "arithmetique" (French for arithmetic). And while the error logging code of Dino is in English, it does not appear to be the English of a native speaker.

ESET researchers would not definitively say that they believe French intelligence is behind Dino, but they did strongly connect Dino to the other malware already attributed to the Animal Farm group.

Target du jour

Dino was detected on multiple systems in Iran in 2013, according to Calvet. That is consistent with the focus of its predecessor, Babar, which was on Iran's science and technology community, according to CSE analysts. But the Animal Farm group has also used malware to spy on a broad range of targets in Europe, Africa, and North America—including a possible infiltration of a French-language media company in Canada.

According to Kaspersky, Dino is distributed by a malware package called Tafacalou. The vast majority of Tafacalou victims have been in Syria, Iran, and Malaysia—with the US and China trailing far behind.

Other members of the Animal Farm malware family have been detected as far back as 2010, and researchers at Kaspersky believe the group behind Animal Farm has been active since at least 2009, "and there are signs that earlier malware was developed as far back as 2007," a member of Kaspersky's Global Research and Threat Analysis Team wrote in a March blog post.

Humanitarian organizations, activists, and businesses have been targeted, as well as government organizations and military contractors—indicating that economic espionage and national security issues are on the menu. For example, Babar was used to target the European Financial Association and targets in Greece, Norway, and Spain.

While Dino and its cohorts don't offer direct evidence of cyber-espionage by a specific French intelligence organization, they do suggest that France's government is attempting to play on the same stage as the NSA and its "Five Eyes" counterparts in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Original Article: Researchers expose Dino, espionage malware with a French connection

Free 'AGE OF WONDERS' game from gog.com

MKLMS — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 21:03:06 +0800

gog.com is offering AGE OF WONDERS game for free. However, the number of free copies given out is limited.

Go to the frontpage of gog.com and scroll down until the 'Free game: A wonderful present for everyone' section. The game is listed there.

Link:

http://www.gog.com/
http://www.gog.com/game/age_of_wonders

Artificial sweeteners linked to obesity epidemic

MKLMS — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 10:23:01 +0800

Artificial sweeteners may set the stage for diabetes in some people by hampering the way their bodies handle sugar, according to results of a study released Wednesday by the journal "Nature."

Artificial sweeteners may leave their users glucose intolerant
Saccharin and other sweeteners alter the bacteria living in our guts.

by John Timmer - Sept 18 2014, 2:59am MPST

(Photo: Jenny Kane, AP)

People who are watching their weight will often opt for a diet soda, reasoning that the fewer calories, the better. But the availability of drinks and foods made with artificial sweeteners like saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame hasn't seemed to help much with our booming obesity levels. Now, some researchers might have identified a reason for this: the sweeteners leave their users with elevated blood glucose levels. But they don't seem to act directly on human metabolism. Instead, the effects come through alterations in the bacterial populations that live inside us.

The paper that describes this work, which was performed by a large collaboration of researchers from Israel, is being released by Nature today. The researchers note that epidemiological studies about the effects of artificial sweeteners have produced mixed results; some show a benefit, while others indicate that they're associated with weight gain and diabetes risk. Given that human populations haven't given us a clear answer, the researchers turned to mice, where they could do a carefully controlled study.

They started taking a group of genetically matched mice and spiking their drinking water with either sucrose or a commercial prep of an artificial sweetener (either saccharin, sucralose, or aspartame). After five weeks, they checked the blood glucose levels of these animals. Eleven weeks later, the groups that were given the artificial sweeteners all had elevated blood glucose levels compared to those that received sucrose. This is typically a sign of metabolic problems, most often caused by insulin losing its effectiveness. It can be a precursor to type 2 diabetes.

The same held true if the animals were given a high-fat diet, which indicates the same problem occurs in the population that is likely to be using the artificial sweeteners: the obese.

That's a striking result, but it doesn't tell us anything about how the artificial sweeteners are causing this effect. Over the past few years, however, diabetes research has pointed a finger at the symbiotic bacteria that live in our digestive tract—termed the "gut microbiome." These organisms get a chance to digest anything we eat as well, and they can both alter the nutrients our own cells have access to and release chemicals that influence human health.

The authors wondered whether the gut bacteria might be acting as intermediaries between the artificial sweeteners and the glucose response. Their first test of this idea was simply to wipe out the bacteria with a heavy dose of antibiotics. When they did so, the difference between the animals getting glucose and the animals getting artificial sweeteners vanished. To really nail down the case, the authors obtained fecal material from the mice given artificial sweeteners and transferred it to mice that had been treated with antibiotics. The mice receiving the transplants showed reduced tolerance to glucose.

Could this really be relevant to human health? To get a hint, the team got seven healthy volunteers to start consuming high levels of saccharin (the FDA's recommended maximum daily dose). At the end of a week, four of them ended up with a reduced insulin response. Again, the researchers took stool samples and gave them to germ-free mice. Fecal transplants from those who had a poor insulin response transferred this response to the mice; fecal transplants from the ones who were unaffected by the saccharine had no effect.

What could possibly be happening with these bacteria? To find out, the researchers did a sampling of the DNA in the fecal samples. Having artificial sweeteners clearly shifted the bacterial species present in the gut microbiome, causing the numbers of some groups to rise and others to fall. The same result occurred if the samples were grown in culture. In addition, the genes expressed by the resulting populations were different. Some metabolic pathways became more active, while others were toned down. (It's not clear whether this shift is from the changing bacterial populations or from different metabolic behavior among whatever bacterial species are present.)

This will have two effects: it will both change the nutrients available for human cells, and it will change the metabolic products that are released by the bacteria. Presumably, one or both of these effects alters how the body handles insulin and glucose, although the precise mechanism will need to await further studies.

For those of you who remember early health scares about artificial sweeteners and are thinking "aha, they were right!"—they weren't. Those worries focused on effects specific to the chemicals themselves. These findings are general to any artificial sweetener, even though the three have distinctive chemical properties.

This also doesn't mean that these sweeteners are unadulterated evil. The human trials were extremely short and had a small population, so they will need a more thorough follow-up. Even then, it was clear that not everyone has the same response to artificial sweeteners. This shouldn't be a surprise. People have a far more varied microbiome than genetically identical lab mice raised in sterile conditions will, and that microbiome will interact with the different things that people eat as a normal part of their diets.

Understanding the details of when and how the microbiome influences insulin levels will take a lot of additional work. Only when that work is done will we have a clear picture of who is likely to see a negative effect from using artificial sweeteners. So although this was a comprehensive study about what happens in mice, the emphasis has to be on the word "may" when the authors conclude, "Our findings suggest that NAS may have directly contributed to enhancing the exact epidemic that they themselves were intended to fight."

Link to article: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/art...ose-intolerant/