Image: Getty Images/Jung Getty

Software engineers at car maker Volvo have detailed why they are fans of the Rust programming language and argue that Rust is actually "good for your car".

It seems everyone loves Rust, from Microsoft's Windows and Azure teams, to Linux kernel maintainers, Amazon Web Services, Meta, the Android Open Source Project and more. And now it seems it's time to add software engineers at Volvo to that list.

Julius Gustavsson, a technical expert and system architect at Volvo Cars Corporation, explains "Why Rust is actually good for your car" in an interview on Medium with fellow Volvo software engineer, Johannes Foufas.

Rust is a relatively young language that helps developers avoid memory related bugs that C and C++ do not automatically, hence Rust's growing popularity in systems programming. Memory related bugs are the most common severe security issues, according to Microsoft and Google's Chrome team.

Gustavsson brings a perspective from embedded systems development to the debate.

Volvo, along with the auto Industry in general, is looking towards "software-defined cars" to customize, differentiate and improve vehicles after they leave the car yard.

The main benefits he sees from Rust include: not having to think about race conditions and memory corruption, and memory safety in general. "You know, just writing correct and robust code from the start," he said.

Gustavsson says he started bringing Rust into Volvo with the Low Power node of the core computer.

Gustavsson sees a bright future for Rust in Volvo but that doesn't mean using it to replace already working code that's been adequately tested. He notes that new Rust code can co-exist with "almost arbitrary granularity" with existing C and C++ and that it could make sense to cherry pick parts to rewrite Rust if that component needs cybersecurity.

"We want to expand Rust here at Volvo Cars to enable it on more nodes and to do that, we need to get compiler support for certain hardware targets and OS support for other targets. There is no point in replacing already developed and well-tested code, but code developed from scratch should definitely be developed in Rust, if at all feasible.

"That is not to say that Rust is a panacea. Rust has some rough edges still and it requires you to make certain trade-offs that may not always be the best course of action. But overall, I think Rust has huge potential to allow us to produce higher quality code up front at a lower cost which in turn would reduce our warranty costs, so it's a win-win for the bottom line," he said.

Volvo isn't the only automaker interested in Rust. Autosar, an automotive standards group whose members include Ford, GM, BMW, Bosch, Volkswagen, Toyota, Volvo and many more in Aprilannounceda new subgroup within its Working Group for Functional Safety (WG-SAF) to explore how Rust could be used in one of its reference platforms. SAE International alsoset up a task forceto look at Rust in the automotive industry for safety-related systems.

Rust has also been in the news with Mark Russinovich, the chief technology officer of Microsoft Azure, saying that developers should avoid using C or C++ programming languages in new projects and instead use Rust.

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Rust programming language: Driving innovation in unexpected places - ZDNet

Today, for the first time in more than half a century, President Biden is hosting the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health to catalyze action for the millions of Americans struggling with food insecurity and diet-related diseases like diabetes, obesity, and hypertension. The Conference will lay out a transformational vision for ending hunger and reducing diet-related disease by 2030 all while closing disparities among the communities that are impacted most.

Achieving our goals will require more than just the resources of the federal government. Thats why, this summer, the White House launched a nationwide call to action to meet the ambitious goals laid out by the President. Across the whole of society, Americans responded and advanced more than $8 billion in private- and public-sector commitments. These range from bold philanthropic contributions and in-kind donations to community-based organizations, to catalytic investments in new businesses and new ways of screening for and integrating nutrition into health care delivery. At least $2.5 billion will be invested in start-up companies that are pioneering solutions to hunger and food insecurity. Over $4 billion will be dedicated toward philanthropy that improves access to nutritious food, promotes healthy choices, and increases physical activity.

Today, the White House announces a historic package of new actions that business, civic, academic, and philanthropic leaders will take to end hunger and to reduce diet-related disease.

Pillar 1 Improve Food Access and Affordability

Pillar 2 Integrate Nutrition and Health

Pillar 3 Empower Consumers to Make and Have Access to Healthy Choices

Pillar 4 Support Physical Activity for All

Pillar 5 Enhance Nutrition and Food Security Research

Each of these commitments demonstrates the tremendous impact that is possible when all sectors of society come together in service of a common goal. The Biden-Harris Administration looks forward to working with all of these extraordinary leaders and to the many more that will come forward to end hunger and reduce diet-related disease by 2030.

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FACT SHEET: The Biden-Harris Administration Announces More Than $8 Billion in New Commitments as Part of Call to Action for White House Conference on...

Security News Jay Fitzgerald September 28, 2022, 02:37 PM EDT

One of the most important things that we can help our customers with is just bringing them the right intelligence, the right content, says CEO Bryan Palma.

Introducing a new partner program and product initiatives arent the only things Trellix has been unveiling of late.

The cybersecurity giant announced just prior to this weeks Trellix Expand 2022 conference that it was creating a new advanced research center within the company to enhance its global threat intelligence capabilities.

One of the most important things that we can help our customers with is just bringing them the right intelligence, the right content, said Bryan Palma, chief executive of the San Jose, Calif.-based Trellix, the major provider of XDR offerings.

[RELATED STORY: Trellix Channel Chief Shares How to Build a Services Practice with XDR]

Palma told CRN that creating the new center entailed pulling together units from the old FireEye and McAfee Enterprise entities that were combined earlier this year to create Trellix, which is owned by private equity firm Symphony Technology Group.

Weve got some of the most talented researchers and investigators in the business, Palma said. With the amount of installed technology we have, we see a lot of telemetry which helps us create the necessary intelligence to power our systems and specifically to power our XDR platform.

The Advanced Research Center is the coming together of multiple research and product research capabilities within Trellix, Aparna Rayasan, chief products officer at Trellix, told CRN.

She said the new center, which employs nearly 300 employees, is built on five pillars of focus: product research and development, threat intelligence, adversarial resilience and advocacy, research engineering, and data science.

Each pillar contributes to better intelligence gathering and analysis, as well as better products and services in general, she said.

It is creating efficiencies, she said. Its creating the differentiator in our products. And its also helping us mine vast data. Its definitely covering much more surface areas than we would have otherwise.

Rayasan, who is currently conducting a search for a permanent director of the new center, said she absolutely sees the center expanding in the future.

In particular, she praised the threat-intelligence unit and said its actively hiring highly experienced personnel. She noted that many of Trellixs threat-intel employees hail from previous positions within the U.S. military and government agencies.

The center has already identified one cybersecurity threat thats garnered some attention over the past week a 15-year-old vulnerability in the open source Python programming language thats still lurking in existing codes and that theoretically puts at risk 350,000 open-source coding projects.

Douglas McKee, director of vulnerability research at Trellix, said his team found no recent malicious use of the Python vulnerability. But the vulnerability, if left unpatched, could still be used to launch supply-side attacks, even if it was created in 2007, he said.

McKee, whose team is now part of Trellixs new advanced research center, said hes hoping and expecting further intelligence

Im really excited to see Trellix put together this advanced threat center, he said. (It) helps combine a bunch of elite researchers towards a common goal. I think its really going to be a positive impact for the company and the industry moving forward.

Jay Fitzgerald is a senior editor covering cybersecurity for CRN.Jay previously freelanced for the Boston Globe, Boston Business Journal, Boston magazine, Banker & Tradesman, MassterList.com, Harvard Business Schools Working Knowledge, the National Bureau of Economic Research and other entities. He can be reached at jfitzgerald@thechannelcompany.com.

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Trellix Forms Advanced Research Center To Boost Intelligence And Product Capabilities - CRN

The following section describes a series of morphological measurements of B. subtilis macrocolonies response to one-sided CHX exposure. The first subsection details changes related to macrocolony growth and expansion, followed by a second subsection which focuses on GFP signal intensity and additional phenomena.

Macrocolony growth and expansion. (a) Fluorescent images of B. subtilis macrocolony development over a period of 3days. CHX droplet is located horizontally to the right of the macrocolonies in each image, at a distance of 1cm from the macrocolony center. (b) Total coverage area ((upmu)m(^2)) of macrocolonies.

Figure1a shows the original macrocolony images, as obtained by fluorescent microscopy 24, 48 and 72h after initial seeding. On a macro-scale, Fig.1b demonstrates that there is an inverse relationship between the distance of CHX from the seeding point to the expansion rate of the macrocolony. Macrocolonies that were seeded with CHX at 1cm (closest) distance exhibited statistically significant reductions in expansion over all 3days. In contrast, macrocolonies with CHX at 1.5cm were smaller in a statistically significant manner only on day 3, while 2cm macrocolonies did not differ from control on any of the days. Table1 summarizes the relevant p-values (two-sided t-Test).

The morphological changes that occur as a result of CHX proximity can be seen on day 2 and 3-colony periphery on the exposed (i.e., right-hand) side of the macrocolony is notably thinner than that on the unexposed (i.e., left-hand) side (Fig.1a). In order to quantify the morphological changes that occur in B. subtilis macrocolonies as a result of proximity to CHX source during maturation, a series of computational measurements were applied to the images (Fig.2a): firstly, the macrocolony was segmented into an exposed and unexposed sides by a vertical cut through the macrocolony that directly passes through the colony center (i.e., seeding point)the separating line is shown in yellow. For each macrocolony, a binary image was obtained using Otsus thresholding method. For each macrocolony, an outer contour surrounding the entire macrocolony was determined using a border following algorithm applied on binary images from the previous stepthe resulting contour is shown in red. For both the exposed and unexposed sides, a half-contour was mirrored around the separating line. The resulting mirrored contours can be seen in Fig.2a, middle column-top image shows the unexposed side contour, as it was mirrored onto the exposed side, while the bottom image does the same for the contour of the exposed side. Each one of the two contours is then fitted to an ellipse, shown in whiteFig.2a, rightmost column. The semi-major and semi-minor axes of the fitted ellipses were measured.

Illustration of inhibition measurement at the periphery. (a) The macrocolony is divided vertically into unexposed (left) and exposed (right) halves. The CHX spot is horizontal to the right of the macrocolony in each image. Each macrocolony half is separately mirrored and the resulting contour fitted to an ellipse. Red background in leftmost image reflects the Euclidean distance of each pixel from the CHX source. Outer contours are shown in bright red. (b) Colony periphery deformation analysis. At each distance from CHX source (control and 1/1.5/2cm) the ratio between horizontal (left) and vertical (right) radii between the unexposed and exposed halves is shown.

Figure2b demonstrates the differences in morphology that occur between the exposed and unexposed sides, both in the horizontal (left) and vertical (right) planes. The loss of symmetry that occurs in macrocolonies as a result of CHX proximity on day 3 is statistically significant in the horizontal and vertical planes only in macrocolonies with CHX placed at a distance of 1cm. Thus, changes in morphology are directly correlated to the distance from the CHX source. Table2 summarizes the relevant p-values (two-sided t-Test).

Illustration of inhibition measurement at the core. (a) Illustration of inner core segmentation with mirroring and fitting to ellipse. (b) Colony core deformation analysis. At each distance from CHX source (control and 1/1.5/2cm) the ratio between horizontal (left) and vertical (right) radii between the unexposed and exposed halves is shown.

Figure3a illustrates the same image processing pipeline, applied to the colony core, rather than the periphery. Figure3b demonstrates that no comparable changes in morphology occur at the colony core, whether in the horizontal (left) or vertical (right) planes. Indeed, no statistically significant loss of symmetry was observed at the colony core, regardless of distance from CHX source.

Figure3b shows that on day 3, macrocolony core did not differ in a statistically significant manner from the control, regardless of CHX proximity. The colony core is therefore more preserved in structure than colony periphery (or more resistant to CHX). Table3 summarizes the relevant p-values (two-sided t-Test).

Figure 4a illustrates the relevant regions of the macrocolony - the exposed and unexposed (control) periphery and core. Figure4b demonstrates how pixel intensity is affected by proximity to CHX source: average pixel intensity at the exposed/control areas is shown for both periphery (orange) and core (blue) regions on day 3. In other words, for each macrocolony, the ratio between average pixel intensity of the exposed and unexposed halves was calculated and compared at the periphery and core regions. Statistically significant differences in values were found in periphery of macrocolonies that were grown at distance 1cm from CHX, as well as core of macrocolonies that were grown at distance 1.5cm from CHX. Thus, at these distances, the macrocolony is affected both by morphological deformation as well as changes in GFP intensity.

Pixel intensity calculation. (a) Image illustrating the different areas within the macrocolony. CHX source lies directly horizontally to the right. (b) Ratio of intensity average between unexposed and exposed sides of the macrocolony is shown separately for the periphery (orange) and the core (blue). For control images, unexposed and exposed sides were determined via data augmentation as average ratio of left vs. right halves, top vs. bottom halves and a combination of upper left and bottom right quadrants vs. upper right and bottom left quadrants. The shorthand ns indicates non-significant p-value (>0.05).

Figure5a illustrates how distance from CHX is determined for each pixel in the macrocolony. Euclidean distance was used for the calculations. In Fig. 5b, bacterial cells at the leading edge of the macrocolonies are those that are located at the outermost layer of the macrocolony periphery. Due to the curvature of the macrocolony, points along the leading edge are located at varying distances from the CHX source (Fig.5b). In order to characterize the nature of relationship between pixel intensity and distance to CHX, pixel intensities along the leading edge were plotted in Fig.5b: red dots represent pixels along the leading edge of the exposed side of a macrocolony grown at 1cm from CHX, while blue dots represent pixels along the leading edge of the exposed side of a macrocolony grown at 2cm from CHX. Given both sets of pixel intensity values, a linear regression model was applied to bothas can be seen in Fig.5b, there is a linear correlative relationship between Euclidean distances and pixel intensities. This relationship is stronger when CHX is located closer to the macrocolony centerfor example, in the images that are shown in Fig.5b, linear approximation revealed that 1cm macrocolonies are characterized by a slope that is significantly higher (red) than that of the 2cm macrocolonies (blue). This finding signifies the linear relationship between GFP signal intensity of cells located at the leading edge of the macrocolony to their distance from the CHX source.

Linear regression model for pixel intensity at the leading edge as function of Euclidean distance from CHX source. (a) Illustration demonstrating the distance calculation between the CHX source (red dot) to each pixel within the macrocolony. (b) (Top) B. subtilis macrocolonies on day 3 at 1cm (left) and 2cm (right) distances from CHX source. (bottom) Intensities of pixels located at the leading edge (highlighted 20 pixels-wide section from the outer rim) of the exposed half of the macrocolony: red pixels originate from 1cm macrocolony, blue pixels originate from 2cm macrocolony. Linear regression lines demonstrate that at 1cm, pixel intensity is correlated to the distance from CHX source, while no such effect is seen at 2cm macrocolony.

Crescent-shaped morphology occurring at CHX distances of 0.5cm. (a) Top row illustrates the macrocolony morphology over a period of 3daysthe change in morphology appears in the form of crescent-shaped colonies. (b) Expansion comparison with control macrocolonies. (c) Illustration depicting several relevant distances when CHX is placed at 0.5cm-average radius of a mature B. subtilis macrocolony on day 1, average radius of a CHX droplet. (d) Representative image of macrocolony on day 1, with CHX (color corrected for visual clarity) shown to the right.

Bright field images of expanding macrocolonies. (a) Bright field images of expanding B. subtilis macrocolonies grown in proximity to CHX at 1/1.5/2cm. CHX droplet is seen to the right of the macrocolonies. (b) Cross-section of agar substrate seeded with a macrocolony and CHX droplet.

As CHX is placed closer to the macrocolony, it exerts greater inhibitory effect, resulting in increasing deformation of the macrocolony on the side closer to the antimicrobial source. However, in the case when CHX is placed at 0.5cm from the initial point of seeding the macrocolony only develops towards the unexposed sideFig.6a shows the growth of a sample macrocolony over a period of 3days (left-to-right). Starting from day 1, the macrocolony appears to grow only on the side opposite CHX location. On average, control macrocolonies expand on day 1 to a radius of 0.3cm. CHX droplet is on average 0.2cm in radius. Hence, even when CHX is placed at a distance of 0.5cm, the macrocolonies have enough potential space to expand to 0.3cm. However, Fig.6d demonstrates that despite the fact that there is sufficient unoccupied space in front of the macrocolony to expand into (indeed, equal to that required by control macrocolonies which are uninhibited by CHX), the macrocolony does not expand towards the exposed side at all. Rather, it expands towards the opposite side and consequently assumes a unique crescent shape starting from day 1 onwards.

Figure7a shows bright field images of B. subtilis macrocolonies, with CHX droplets seen to their right. This visualization reveals a bright formation in the agar substrate, between macrocolony and CHX, undetected in the fluorescent images. This structure is embedded into the agar throughout its entire width, as seen in Fig.7b. Over a period of 3days, its shape changes from concave to convex, with it seemingly engulfing the CHX droplet. More interestingly, the appearance of the agar at both sides of the formation is uneven, best visualized in Fig.7b, where the agar on the CHX side appears muddy , unlike the one on the macrocolony side.

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An open-source computational tool for measuring bacterial biofilm morphology and growth kinetics upon one-sided exposure to an antimicrobial source |...