NextBigFuture.com

Zooniverse volunteers on Exoplanet Explorers have discovered a new 4-planet system. This new planetary system, 597 light years away in the constellation Aquarius, has dips from four different planets. The planets take only 3 to 13 Earth days to orbit their star. The smallest is just shy of twice Earth’s size, and the largest is 2.74 times as big. 14,000+ volunteers provided over 2 million classifications in just three days to make this discovery possible. The Zooniverse enables everyone to take part in real cutting edge research in many fields across the sciences, humanities, and more. The Zooniverse creates opportunities

Military and civilian technological systems, from fighter aircraft to networked household appliances, are becoming ever more dependent upon software systems inherently vulnerable to electronic intruders. To meet its mission of preventing technological surprise and increasing national security, DARPA has advanced a number of technologies to make software more secure. But what if hardware could be recruited to do a bigger share of that work? That’s the question DARPA’s new System Security Integrated Through Hardware and Firmware (SSITH) program aims to answer. “Security for electronic systems has been left up to software until now, but the overall confidence in this approach

How different will the future be from today? As different as we can imagine, and possibly stranger and more wonderful than we ever HAVE imagined. The key is turning our visions for the future into the future itself. And that begins with articulating our visions. In this collection of essays compiled by the hosts of the popular internet radio series, The World Transformed, world-leading futurists, scientists, authors, artists and others share their visions for changes that are on their way, or that we can bring about, that will transform our world forever. Contributors include Ramez Naam, Brian Wang, PJ Manney,

For decades, loops of genetic material known as circular RNA were considered a kind of genetic accident. But scientists have given them new attention in recent years, and a set of papers published this month suggests some of them actually give rise to proteins, just like their more familiar, linear counterparts, messenger RNA. The new research reveals that, despite their unusual structure, circular RNAs can communicate with ribosomes, the cell’s protein making machinery. And several proteins in fly, mouse, and human cells appear to be translated from circular RNAs. Researchers haven’t yet shown that these new proteins have an important function, many suspect they are a previously unrecognized way that cells control gene expression.

Spacex has around 500 job openings on its careers site.