Cyber Security  

Computer scientists have developed software that not only detects and eradicates never-before-seen viruses and other malware, but also automatically repairs damage caused by them. The software then prevents the invader from ever infecting the computer again.

Computer scientists have developed software that not only detects and eradicates never-before-seen viruses and other malware, but also automatically repairs damage caused by them. The software then prevents the invader from ever infecting the computer again.

A3 is a software suite that works with a virtual machine – a virtual computer that emulates the operations of a computer without dedicated hardware. The A3 software is designed to watch over the virtual machine’s operating system and applications, says Eric Eide, University of Utah research assistant professor of computer science leading the university’s A3 team with Utah computer science associate professor John Regehr. A3 is designed to protect servers or similar business-grade computers that run on the Linux operating system. It also has been demonstrated to protect military applications.

The new software called A3, or Advanced Adaptive Applications, was co-developed by Massachusetts-based defense contractor, Raytheon BBN, and was funded by Clean-Slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts, a program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The four-year project was completed in late September.

There are no plans to adapt A3 for home computers or laptops, but Eide says this could be possible in the future.

Utah University's Eric Eide
Image Source - Dan Hixson/University of Utah College of Engineering

“A3 technologies could find their way into consumer products someday, which would help consumer devices protect themselves against fast-spreading malware or internal corruption of software components.  But we haven’t tried those experiments yet,” he says.

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Utah computer scientists have created “stackable debuggers,” multiple de-bugging applications that run on top of each other and look inside the virtual machine while it is running, constantly monitoring for any out-of-the-ordinary behavior in the computer.

"A3 technologies could find their way into consumer products someday, which would help consumer devices protect themselves against fast-spreading malware or internal corruption of software components."

Unlike a normal virus scanner on consumer PCs that compares a catalog of known viruses to something that has infected the computer, A3 can detect new, unknown viruses or malware automatically by sensing that something is occurring in the computer’s operation that is not correct. It then can stop the virus, approximate a repair for the damaged software code, and then learn to never let that bug enter the machine again.

While the military has an interest in A3 to enhance cyber security for its mission-critical systems, A3 also potentially could be used in the consumer space, such as in web services like Amazon. If a virus or attack stops the service, A3 could repair it in minutes without having to take the servers down.

To test A3’s effectiveness, the team from the Utah and Raytheon BBN used the infamous software bug called Shellshock for a demonstration to DARPA officials in Jacksonville, Florida, in September. A3 discovered the Shellshock attack on a Web server and repaired the damage in four minutes, Eide says. The team also tested A3 successfully on another half-dozen pieces of malware.

“It is a pretty big deal that a computer system could automatically, and in a short amount of time, find an acceptable fix to a widespread and important security vulnerability,” Eide says. “It’s pretty cool when you can pick the Bug of the Week and it works.”

Now that the team’s project into A3 is completed and proves their concept, Eide says the Utah team would like to build on the research and figure out a way to use A3 in cloud computing, a way of harnessing far-flung computer networks to deliver storage, software applications and servers to a local user via the Internet.

The A3 software is open source, meaning it is free for anyone to use, but Eide believes many of the A3 technologies could be incorporated into commercial products.

Could A3 also be the birth of self-improving artificial intelligence?  We have to wonder.


SOURCE  University of Utah

By 33rd Square

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 Batteries  

Researchers are harnessing the power of sugar to fuel electronics. They project their technique could power a number of devices in the not-to-distant future.

Researchers are charged up about biobatteries, devices able to harness common biological processes to generate electricity. Most biobatteries are unable to generate large amounts of power, but researchers recently developed a prototype version that has the potential to be lighter and more powerful than the batteries typically found in today's portable electronic devices, including smartphones.

In the body, sugar is converted into energy via metabolism, which decomposes it into carbon dioxide and water while releasing electrons. Biobatteries produce energy though the same conversion process by capturing the electrons that are generated in the decomposition of sugar with the same tools that the body uses. Because biobatteries use materials that are biologically based, they are renewable and non-toxic, making them an attractive alternative to traditional batteries that need metals and chemicals to operate.

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Percival Zhang and Zhiguang Zhu, researchers at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, designed a new biobattery with a greater output per weight than the typical lithium-ion batteries used in most electronics. They described the research online last month in the journal Nature Communications.

The new biobattery fully converts sugar to energy, which means more power output than previous biobatteries, and a greater battery charge than common lithium-ion batteries.

“By using the lithium-ion battery, for example, your phone can only last for one day, but in the future it will use sugar as the fuel...then the phone could last 10 days,” said Zhu.

The new biobattery gets its efficiency by using a novel system of enzymes, which are proteins that help the reaction to take place. The system uses two active enzymes that liberate two pairs of electrons from the sugar, while 10 other enzymes help to reset the reaction inside the biobattery. Once the reaction is reset, the active enzymes release another quartet of electrons. After six cycles, the biobattery extracts all of the energy bound in the sugar molecule, along with carbon dioxide and water.

Previous biobatteries could only extract one-sixth the energy of the new biobattery, because they didn't use the non-active enzymes for recycling. By extracting more electrons per weight of sugar, the effective “energy density” of the sugar has increased.

One of the major advantages of this biobattery is that, while the cycle can fully convert sugar to energy, it uses fewer enzymes than the body, making it more robust.

Shelley Minteer, a biobattery expert from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City who was not involved with the work, likes that the team was able to develop an enzyme cycle, also known as an enzyme pathway, which uses fewer enzymes than the body.

“It’s really important to get all the electrons out, but not just to get all of the electrons out,” said Minteer. She added that it’s important to extract all of the electrons using the fewest enzymes.

With their new recycling enzyme system, Zhang and his team have done just that. “I think it's a great [enzyme] pathway,” noted Minteer.

While the new enzyme system marks a major step forward for biobatteries, the technology still has some hurdles to surmount before it is market-ready.

“So far there are two more challenges in front of us,” Zhu explained.

He said that, in the current, non-optimized form of the battery, the power output is still too low for many devices and the lifetime of the cell is still too short, as it cannot yet be recharged.

However, as Minteer noted, these challenges are more “on the engineering side of things.” Zhu and Zhang agree and expect to solve these problems at Zhang’s start-up company, Cell-Free Bioinnovations.


SOURCE  Inside Science Top Image via mattwalker69 via flickr | http://bit.ly/1dK8srs

By Emily Lewis

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 Regenerative Medicine  

A University of Utah doctor has performed the historic first procedure using new regenerative medicine technique called retrograde gene therapy to restore function to a human heart severely damaged by cardiac arrest.

Aman in Utah has become the first patient in the world to undergo retrograde gene therapy at University of Utah Hospital, a novel procedure designed to deliver stem cells to the heart to repair damaged muscle and arteries in the most minimally invasive way possible.

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Amit Patel, M.D., director of Clinical Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering and an associate professor in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Utah School of Medicine. started investigating cell and gene-based therapies for the treatment of heart disease 12 years ago, but only recently received FDA approval to try the therapy on Ernie Lively, who was the first of several patients anxious to receive the treatment.

More than 6 million people are currently living with heart failure. As the condition progresses, patients’ options are usually limited to a heart transplant or assist devices, such as an artificial heart. Patel wanted to find a way to intervene in the progression of heart failure before a patient advanced to the point of needing a heart transplant or device.

Patel and his team came up with the idea of retrograde heart therapy, a concept that has been discussed for 50 years. The first successful procedure was performed on Lively on November. 7.

“It’s incredible. Imagine having a heart procedure that can potentially regenerate or rejuvenate your heart muscle — and it’s done as an outpatient procedure,” said Patel.

Patel used a minimally invasive technique where he went backwards through a patient’s main cardiac vein, or coronary sinus, and inserted a catheter. He then inflated a balloon in order to block blood flow out of the heart so that a very high dose of gene therapy could be infused directly into the heart.

The unique gene therapy did not involve viruses (a rarity for gene therapy, Patel notes) and is pure human DNA infused into patients. The DNA, called SDF-1, is a naturally occurring substance in the body that becomes a homing signal for a patient’s body to use its own stem cells to go to the site of an injury.

Once the gene therapy was injected, the genes acted as “homing beacons.” When the genes are put into patients with heart failure, they marinate the entire heart and act like a look out, Patel said.

“The genes basically act like a light house with a bright signal. They say, ‘ How can we help the ships that need to get to the port — which is the heart –get there. When the signal, or the light from the SDF-1, which is that gene, shows up, the stem cells from not inside your own heart and from those that circulate from your blood and bone marrow all get attracted to the heart which is injured, and they bring reinforcements to make it stronger and pump more efficiently,” said Patel.

After becoming the first patient in the world to undergo the procedure, Lively returned home and is recovering. Before the technique Patel used was available, Lively’s other option would have been a three-to-five day hospital stay. Instead, he is recuperating while daydreaming about what it will be like to be able to ski and enjoy life fully again. He said he has noticed an immediate difference in his health following the procedure.

“I woke up this morning and told my wife, ‘I haven’t felt this good in years,” said Lively. “I moved to Utah because of the snow, but I haven’t been able to ski. I literally didn’t have the heart to do it. Now, I’m excited about living the rest of my life instead of sitting around.”

Patel said watching Lively recover successfully from the surgery is both rewarding and exciting for what the future holds for the procedure and those who may benefit from it. He is already training other physicians around the U.S. to model what he accomplished first this month. He is overseeing a trial of the procedure in which 72 patients will participate over the next few months.

“This is one of the great moments in biological therapy for the heart,” said Patel. “We are providing options for patients who have no possible solutions. This is one of the safest and most reproducible therapies out there for these very sick patients.”



SOURCE  University of Utah

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