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Slower access, faster chemistry: Nanoreactor design improves catalysis by balancing molecular flow

A new study by a team at Tohoku University, published in Chemical Engineering Journal, has shown that more isn’t always better when it comes to nanoscale chemical reactions. One might think that giving reactants completely unrestricted access to a speed-boosting catalyst would be the fastest way to drive a chemical reaction. Instead, it was shown that hollow nanoreactors can work more efficiently when transport into the reaction space is slightly restricted.

A nanoreactor is a porous shell that surrounds an inner space containing catalytically active nanoparticles. The inner space where reactions occur provides a special environment which opens the door for unique and highly useful chemical reactions. Finding ways to optimize reactions in these confined spaces could help to produce a myriad of everyday products more efficiently, and at a lower price.

While it might seem like flooding this inner space would get things done the fastest, researchers found that the key to optimization involved holding back a little.

A new type of optical chip cuts static power while enabling electrical reprogramming

As technology advances, and the demand for faster, higher-bandwidth, and more energy-efficient data processing continues to grow, scientists and engineers search for ways to improve electronic systems. One avenue they have been exploring is optoelectronics—the study and application of electronic devices that interface with light by detecting, emitting, or converting it into electrical signals.

Optoelectronics offers significant advantages over conventional electronics, including faster speed, higher bandwidth, lower power consumption, and improved reliability.

One particularly promising direction in optoelectronics has been the development of the photonic integrated circuit—an optical microchip that uses light (photons) instead of electricity (electrons) to sense, process, and transmit information. These optical chips are already being used in many advanced technologies today, such as high-speed fiber-optic communications, data center interconnects, sensors for autonomous vehicles, and hardware accelerators for machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Computer vision helps observers understand how iconic artworks were created

Paintings are often made up of thousands of tiny brushstrokes, each going in a certain direction, that are not easily observed by the viewer. A cross-disciplinary research team from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) and Loughborough University in England has developed an image analysis method that helps to make the underlying brushstroke structure of paintings visible, giving new insight into how artists physically created their works.

This approach offers both experts and non-experts a fresh way to observe and interpret the making of artworks. The research was recently published in the journal Patterns.

The researchers bridged art and data science to show that painting style can be quantified and visualized as flow, turning elusive qualities like “gesture” into measurable, analyzable data. They used a computational technique to examine very small patches of Impressionist paintings, determining the direction of the brushstroke in each tiny spot and connect these different directions, as if drawing lines that follow the flow.

Proton beam timing tool could check radiotherapy energy before nearly every treatment

Proton beams are not only used in sophisticated nuclear physics experiments. Today, they are becoming increasingly popular in radiotherapy, where they are an irreplaceable tool for destroying cancer cells. Doctors and physicists can enhance their precision thanks to two solutions developed at the Cyclotron Center Bronowice of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

In oncology, it is crucial to precisely eliminate cancer cells while causing as little damage as possible to healthy cells. For physicists, on the other hand, it is essential to have a precise understanding of the conditions under which they conduct their experiments. In the case of proton beams, used in radiotherapy and nuclear physics experiments, knowing the kinetic energy of the particles is key.

30,000 Facebook Accounts Hacked via Google AppSheet Phishing Campaign

A newly discovered Vietnamese-linked operation has been observed using a Google AppSheet as a “phishing relay” to distribute phishing emails with an aim to compromise Facebook accounts.

The activity has been codenamed AccountDumpling by Guardio, with the scheme selling the stolen accounts back through an illicit storefront run by the threat actors. In all, roughly 30,000 Facebook accounts are estimated to have been hacked as part of the campaign.

“What we found wasn’t a single phishing kit,” security researcher Shaked Chen wrote in a report shared with The Hacker News. “It was a living operation with real-time operator panels, advanced evasion, continuous evolution and a criminal-commercial loop that quietly feeds on the same accounts it helps steal back.”

Cybercrime Groups Using Vishing and SSO Abuse in Rapid SaaS Extortion Attacks

Cybersecurity researchers are warning of two cybercrime groups that are carrying out “rapid, high-impact attacks” operating almost within the confines of SaaS environments, while leaving minimal traces of their actions.

The clusters, Cordial Spider (aka BlackFile, CL-CRI-1116, O-UNC-045, and UNC6671) and Snarky Spider (aka O-UNC-025 and UNC6661), have been attributed to high-speed data theft and extortion campaigns that share a remarkable degree of operational similarities. Both hacking groups are assessed to be active since at least October 2025, with the latter a native English-speaking crew sharing ties to the e-crime ecosystem known as The Com.

“In most cases, these adversaries use voice phishing (vishing) to direct targeted users to malicious, SSO-themed adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) pages, where they capture authentication data and pivot directly into SSO-integrated SaaS applications,” CrowdStrike’s Counter Adversary Operations said in a report.

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