Canonical patches CVE-2026–112816 in LXD and MicroCloud, a CVSS 10.0 flaw enabling trusted client impersonation without private keys.
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The Solar System Was Choosing Fire Over Ice Right From The Beginning, Study Shows
There are many contrasts between ice and fire in both real and fictional worlds – from the volcanoes of Iceland, to the Game of Thrones fantasy series.
These two elements were at play in the early, formative years of our Solar System, too.
In the region surrounding the early Sun, fire was represented by chondrules, tiny fragments of rock that had been formed through intense heat. For ice, there was matrix, a fine-grained and cold dust loaded with water ice and organic molecules.
New neural framework could make LLMs more empathetic
As more people turn to large language models (LLMs) during personal crises, the companies behind them are engineering these AI-powered models to be more personal, empathetic and understanding when prompts indicate a user is in emotional distress.
The trend is raising concern about how well prepared ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other popular LLMs are to provide appropriate emotional support.
To address this concern, Georgia Tech researchers have developed a new neural framework that examines how different training sources influence empathy and social reasoning within these AI-powered models.
Living cells inspire tiny channels that could help extract lithium for batteries
Gathering lithium, a crucial element in batteries for smartphones, electric cars and the electrical grid, is a time-consuming and energy-intensive process, but new technology could make it much easier.
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin developed a new way to separate lithium from other co-occurring elements, potentially speeding up extraction of this critical element and increasing domestic supply. They developed nanoscale, artificial channels, inspired by the natural doors that let ions and molecules in and out of living cells, that allow lithium to pass through while restricting other competing ions that typically come with it.
These channels, tiny pores that sit inside membranes, were two to five times more selective for lithium compared with other recently developed lithium transporters. The researchers say their channels are among the most selective ever created.
CAR-T cell therapy: A new dawn in the treatment of autoimmune disease
Autoimmune diseases (AIDs), including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), anti-synthetase syndrome (ASS), systemic sclerosis (SSc), and multiple sclerosis (MS), are triggered by abnormal adaptive immunity and have various clinical manifestations. In these patients, immune intolerance to antigens leads to the formation of autoreactive T and B cells, which attack their own organs1,2 (Fig. 1). Additionally, AIDs are associated with inadequate negative regulation of abnormal immune responses by regulatory T cells (Tregs) 3. AIDs affect approximately 10% of the global population and rank among the leading causes of disability and mortality. A substantial proportion of patients present with severe, complex, and rapidly progressive disease for which curative therapies are lacking, representing a long-standing clinical challenge 4. AID can be classified into systemic and organ-specific according to their cumulative range. Examples of systemic AIDs include SLE, SSc, Sjögren Syndrome (SS), and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Common organ-specific AIDs include multiple sclerosis (MS), neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD), autoimmune encephalomyelitis (AE), and autoimmune cholangitis 5.
Immunosuppressants, including corticosteroids and disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs, are commonly used to treat AIDs. They suppress the immune system by inhibiting the inflammatory cascade, reducing disease severity, and slowing its progression; however, they do not cure the disease 6. Given the critical role of B cells in the development of AIDs, B cell depletion may be a potential cure. Monoclonal antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates targeting B cell surface antigens are also currently used in AID therapy but have shown limited efficacy 7.
Conventional autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (ASCT) relies on high-dose chemotherapy ± total-body irradiation to eradicate aberrantly activated autoreactive T and B lymphocytes and force an immune-system “reset.” The reconstructed immune system may restore tolerance to autoantigens, thereby reducing or terminating autoimmune responses. ASCT may induce long-term remission or even functional cure in various refractory diseases. However, its substantial treatment-related toxicity—encompassing transplant-related mortality, severe infections, and disease relapse—coupled with rigorous patient-selection criteria, confines ASCT to a narrow, carefully chosen population 8. Chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T) were first used for the treatment of hematological malignancies. In vitro gene editing technology enables CAR-T cells to express chimeric antigen receptors (CAR).
Scientists Discover How Dead Stars Could Break One of Physics’ Most Famous Limits
New simulations suggest that powerful internal magnetic fields could allow some white dwarfs to grow far beyond a long-established stellar mass limit.
New research suggests that some white dwarfs, the incredibly dense remnants of dead stars, could grow far heavier than a fundamental limit in astrophysics predicts. Computer simulations show that powerful internal magnetic fields may allow these objects to reach about 2.4 times the Sun’s mass, well beyond the conventional limit of roughly 1.4 solar masses.
The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, offer a possible explanation for unusually bright stellar explosions and could have implications for how astronomers measure the expansion of the universe. They also demonstrate a potential evolutionary path through which these exceptionally massive stars could form.
Platelet hyperactivity drives glioblastoma progression and deep vein thrombosis
New Cleveland Clinic research published in Cancer Cell shows that people with glioblastoma have more active platelets, which are cells involved in blood clotting. Platelets also communicate with other cells and can influence immune activity. The overactive platelets in people with glioblastoma slow the activity of cancer-fighting T cells, which can contribute to tumor growth and cancer progression.
Researchers from the lab of Justin Lathia, PhD, continue to investigate the unknowns around sex differences associated with glioblastoma (GBM), including why they are more common in males and are associated with shorter survival in males than females. Led by postdoctoral fellow Anthony Sloan, PhD, the team found in preclinical models that blocking a specific receptor disrupts the decreased platelet activity – but only in females.
From these early results, the researchers believe that overactive platelets likely drive disease progression and could be an overlooked target for improving the body’s immune response to glioblastoma and other types of tumors. They also believe that hormones likely regulate these mechanisms.
New chip-scale blue laser tunes 900 MHz at 1 million cycles per second
Researchers tuned the laser across more than 900 megahertz, repeating those adjustments up to one million times per second.
One-shot design of functional protein binders with BindCraft
I read the BindCraft paper: super cool approach for using AI to design de novo protein binders with a high success rate! While RFD4 Proteina seems to have recently outdone BindCraft in a lot of ways, this was still a very interesting and educational read.
Computational protein design offers a powerful alternative, enabling the tailoring of binders to specific targets and binding sites. Physics-based methods such as Rosetta allowed early binder design by means of scaffolding and side-chain optimization2,3. However, such methods suffer from low experimental success rates (less than 0.1%) and require the sampling of many designs2,4. Moreover, they typically require the docking of predefined scaffolds onto a fixed target structure, leading to surface incompatibilities and suboptimal binding, or even precluding the targeting of certain sites.
Recent breakthroughs in deep learning have revolutionized the field of biomolecular modelling. Models such as AlphaFold2 (AF2)1 have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in accurately predicting protein structures and complex PPIs. Indeed, AF2 filtering has been shown to increase the success rates of binder design by evaluating the plausibility of predicted complexes4,5. Deep learning has also been successfully applied for de novo design of proteins and binders. The current state-of-the-art methods involve the use of RFdiffusion5 for backbone generation coupled with ProteinMPNN sequence generation6. When applied to binder design, this approach shows significantly improved success rates compared with previous methods5. However, RFdiffusion relies on sequence design over side-chain-free backbones placed at a rigid target interface, with binder selection ultimately depending on AF2-based complex prediction to identify plausible interactions. This highlights a gap between backbone generation and functional interface design that AF2 filtering helps to bridge.
Given the use of AF2 in improving binder filtering success, we proposed that we could harness it directly for the design of protein binders. We present BindCraft, a user-friendly pipeline for de novo design of protein binders that requires minimal user intervention and computational expertise. BindCraft leverages backpropagation through the AF2 network to efficiently hallucinate new binders and interfaces (Fig. 1a). We demonstrate the efficiency of our pipeline on 12 diverse, challenging and therapeutically relevant protein targets (Fig. 1b). We identify several high-affinity binders for each target without the need for high-throughput screening of hundreds to thousands of designs experimentally. This marks an important advancement in the design of protein binders on demand, and makes binder design accessible to research groups without expertise in computational design methods or access to high-throughput screening facilities.
Exercise-induced protein lactylation: From molecular mechanisms to precision health applications
Biochemistry; Human metabolism.