Daily Archives: June 30, 2025

A tiny implant just helped paralyzed rats walk again—is human recovery next? | ScienceDaily

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A groundbreaking study from the University of Auckland and Chalmers University of Technology is offering new hope for spinal cord injury patients. Researchers have developed an ultra-thin implant that delivers gentle electric currents directly to the injured spinal cord. This device mimics natural developmental signals to stimulate nerve healing, and in animal trials, it restored movement and touch sensation in rats—without causing inflammation or damage.

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Spinal cord injuries shatter the signal between the brain and body, often resulting in a loss of function.”Unlike a cut on the skin, which typically heals on its own, the spinal cord does not regenerate effectively, making these injuries devastating and currently incurable,”

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“We developed an ultra-thin implant designed to sit directly on the spinal cord, precisely positioned over the injury site in rats,” Dr Harland says.

The device delivers a carefully controlled electrical current across the injury site. “The aim is to stimulate healing so people can recover functions lost through spinal-cord injury,” Professor Darren Svirskis, director of the CatWalk Cure Program at the University’s School of Pharmacy says.

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After four weeks, animals that received daily electric field treatment showed improved movement compared with those who did not.

Throughout the 12-week study, they responded more quickly to gentle touch.

“This indicates that the treatment supported recovery of both movement and sensation,” Harland says. “Just as importantly, our analysis confirmed that the treatment did not cause inflammation or other damage to the spinal cord, demonstrating that it was not only effective but also safe.”

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Source: A tiny implant just helped paralyzed rats walk again—is human recovery next? | ScienceDaily

Scientists Discover Unknown Organelle Inside Our Cells

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The organelle, a type of specialized structure, has been dubbed a “hemifusome” by its discoverers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. This little organelle has a big job helping our cells sort, recycle and discard important cargo within themselves, the scientists say. The new discovery could help scientists better understand what goes wrong in genetic conditions that disrupt these essential housekeeping functions.

“This is like discovering a new recycling center inside the cell,” said researcher Seham Ebrahim, PhD, of UVA’s Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics. “We think the hemifusome helps manage how cells package and process material, and when this goes wrong, it may contribute to diseases that affect many systems in the body.”

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UVA’s expertise in cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) – a powerful imaging method that “freezes” cells in time – to create striking images of the organelle.

The scientists believe hemifusomes facilitate the formation of vesicles, tiny blister-like sacs that act as mixing bowls, and of organelles made up of multiple vesicles. This process is critical to cellular sorting, recycling and debris disposal, the researchers report.

“You can think of vesicles like little delivery trucks inside the cell,” said Ebrahim, of UVA’s Center for Membrane and Cell Physiology. “The hemifusome is like a loading dock where they connect and transfer cargo. It’s a step in the process we didn’t know existed.”

While the hemifusomes have escaped detection until now, the scientists say they are surprisingly common in certain parts of our cells.

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“Now that we know hemifusomes exist, we can start asking how they behave in healthy cells and what happens when things go wrong. That could lead us to new strategies for treating complex genetic diseases.”

Findings Published

The researchers have published their findings in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The research team consisted of Amirrasoul Tavakoli, Shiqiong Hu, Ebrahim and Kachar.

The research was supported by the NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders, grant Z01-DC000002; the Owens Family Foundation; and a startup grant from UVA’s Center for Cell and Membrane Physiology.

Source: Scientists Discover Unknown Organelle Inside Our Cells

Update your Brother printer: Multiple Critical Vulnerabilities found

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Rapid7 conducted a zero-day research project into multifunction printers (MFP) from Brother Industries, Ltd. This research resulted in the discovery of 8 new vulnerabilities. Some or all of these vulnerabilities have been identified as affecting 689 models across Brother’s range of printer, scanner, and label maker devices. Additionally, 46 printer models from FUJIFILM Business Innovation, 5 printer models from Ricoh, 2 printer models from Toshiba Tec Corporation, and 6 models from Konica Minolta, Inc. are affected by some or all of these vulnerabilities. In total, 748 models across 5 vendors are affected. Rapid7, in conjunction with JPCERT/CC, has worked with Brother over the last thirteen months to coordinate the disclosure of these vulnerabilities.

The most serious of the findings is the authentication bypass CVE-2024-51978. A remote unauthenticated attacker can leak the target device’s serial number through one of several means, and in turn generate the target device’s default administrator password. This is due to the discovery of the default password generation procedure used by Brother devices. This procedure transforms a serial number into a default password. Affected devices have their default password set, based on each device’s unique serial number, during the manufacturing process. Brother has indicated that this vulnerability cannot be fully remediated in firmware, and has required a change to the manufacturing process of all affected models. Only affected models that are made via this new manufacturing process will be fully remediated against CVE-2024-51978. For all affected models made via the old manufacturing process, Brother has provided a workaround.

A summary of the 8 vulnerabilities is shown below:

CVE Description Affected Service CVSS
CVE-2024-51977 An unauthenticated attacker can leak sensitive information. HTTP (Port 80), HTTPS (Port 443), IPP (Port 631) 5.3 (Medium)
CVE-2024-51978 An unauthenticated attacker can generate the device’s default administrator password. HTTP (Port 80), HTTPS (Port 443), IPP (Port 631) 9.8 (Critical)
CVE-2024-51979 An authenticated attacker can trigger a stack based buffer overflow. HTTP (Port 80), HTTPS (Port 443), IPP (Port 631) 7.2 (High)
CVE-2024-51980 An unauthenticated attacker can force the device to open a TCP connection. Web Services over HTTP (Port 80) 5.3 (Medium)
CVE-2024-51981 An unauthenticated attacker can force the device to perform an arbitrary HTTP request. Web Services over HTTP (Port 80) 5.3 (Medium)
CVE-2024-51982 An unauthenticated attacker can crash the device. PJL (Port 9100) 7.5 (High)
CVE-2024-51983 An unauthenticated attacker can crash the device. Web Services over HTTP (Port 80) 7.5 (High)
CVE-2024-51984 An authenticated attacker can disclose the password of a configured external service. LDAP, FTP 6.8 (Medium)

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Source: Multiple Brother Devices: Multiple Vulnerabilities (FIXED) – Rapid7 Blog