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New CRISPR method makes it possible to control protein production in cells

The speed at which a cell produces proteins is a decisive factor in determining whether it divides, specializes or retains its stem cell properties. A team of researchers led by Professor Stefan H. Stricker, professor of epigenetic engineering at LMU’s Biomedical Center and research group leader at Helmholtz Munich, has worked with international partners to demonstrate directly for the first time that the amount of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) directly regulates these processes. Their results were published in the journal Science.

It has been established for some time that the amount of ribosomal RNA differs among different types of cells and is altered in a number of diseases. But it remained unclear whether these specific characteristics are the cause or merely the result of biological processes.

With the newly developed CRISPR-based method TAPIR (Targeted Activation of Protein Translation), researchers now have access to a tool that can boost the activity of ribosomal genes and, as a result, influence a cell’s protein production. “Our new study shows that targeted activation of rRNA production significantly increases protein synthesis,” explains Stricker, lead author of the publication.

Why some glasses break suddenly while others deform smoothly

If a liquid is cooled slowly to its freezing point, it becomes a crystal in which the constituent particles are arranged in an ordered pattern. In contrast, when the liquid is cooled very quickly, the particles are unable to arrange themselves in an ordered fashion, and it becomes glass. Glassy materials are all around us in everyday life. Common examples include window glass, certain metal alloys, polymers, foams, gels and even soft materials like emulsions and colloids.

These materials can behave very differently when an external force is applied to them, such as bending, stretching or compressing. Some materials change shape slowly and smoothly under strain (this property is called ductility). Some materials may resist deformation at first but then suddenly break or crack without warning (this property is called brittleness). Whether a material bends or breaks determines how safely and reliably it can be used in everyday objects and engineering applications.

Scientists broadly classify glasses into two types: strong and fragile glasses.

X-pinch plasma achieves radial proton acceleration for crisp imaging

Plasma pinches: From pursuits of nuclear fusion to an attractive point source of accelerated protons for proton radiography.

Protons accelerated in a radial direction were discovered and used for the first time from pinch plasmas—current-carrying plasma columns compressed by their own magnetic field—according to a study led by the Czech Technical University in Prague and University of Michigan Engineering.

The researchers accelerated protons to 3 mega electron volts (MeV) on relatively small-scale devices operating at a 400-kiloampere (kA) peak current. This expands access to proton radiography, a technique for imaging the ultra-fast evolution of electric and magnetic fields in plasma, once limited to sophisticated, expensive and often massive laser facilities like the OMEGA and OMEGA-EP laser systems at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

Five Billion Years into Humanity’s Future

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Accenture confirms breach after hacker offers stolen data for sale

IT services giant Accenture has confirmed it suffered a security breach after a threat actor claimed to have stolen 35 GB of source code and other data from the company.

“We are aware of this isolated matter, and we have remediated its source. There is no impact to Accenture operations and service delivery,” Accenture told BleepingComputer.

Accenture is a global professional services company that provides consulting, technology, cloud, engineering, and managed services to businesses and governments worldwide.

Steering light in a flash: New chip redirects light beams in less than a trillionth of a second

Light can carry enormous amounts of information at extreme speeds, making photonic technologies promising for the development of faster communications, more powerful computing systems and more sensitive sensors. But for light to be useful for these purposes, engineers need to be able to control where it goes and redirect it quickly. A new device built by Caltech researchers uses a beam of light to steer another to a different angle in just 74 femtoseconds (74 quadrillionths of a second). That’s about the time it takes light to travel the width of a human hair.

“Steering light with light is very challenging because light typically interacts very weakly with matter. Using optical metasurfaces (ultrathin carefully nanoengineered sheets), we can up the interaction strength to make this possible with much higher efficiency,” says Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science and the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech.

The team describes the work in a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The paper’s lead author, Claudio Hail, completed the work as a postdoctoral scholar in Atwater’s lab at Caltech and is now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley.

Detecting neutron sources by borrowing inference tools from cosmology

Neutron sources can be directly identified from measured spectra rather than proxies using inference tools adapted from cosmology, according to a University of Michigan Engineering study published in Physical Review Applied. The method can improve nuclear security by helping intercept materials at ports or borders or guide first responders during emergency response.

Directly detecting and characterizing a neutron source remains a challenge because most nuclear materials emit neutrons with energy patterns, called neutron spectra, that look similar to one another—whether from a benign industrial isotope or fissile material.

“This problem sits at the intersection of fundamental physics, statistics and real-world nuclear security. There is a very practical need to identify unknown neutron-emitting materials, but there is also a deep scientific challenge: How do you extract reliable information from signals that are weak, noisy and highly similar?” said David Breitenmoser, a postdoctoral research fellow of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences at U-M and lead author of the study.

ARToken PhaaS exposes EvilTokens’ Microsoft 365 phishing toolkit

A new phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform dubbed “ARToken” appears to operate as an affiliate of the EvilTokens phishing platform, giving researchers a glimpse into an extensive toolkit designed to compromise Microsoft 365.

Cisco Talos researchers discovered the platform while investigating phishing infrastructure used in an incident response engagement and identified a React-based management panel called “ARToken Panel” that exposed more than 80 API endpoints.

Reverse engineering the client-side JavaScript code revealed previously undocumented capabilities that extend well beyond what you would normally find in a phishing platform.

Ultrasound-based approach may reduce harmful inflammation and support joint healing

As an aging population experiences joint pain and inflammation at an all-time high, researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, have published new findings suggesting continuous low-intensity ultrasound may help shift the body’s immune response from prolonged inflammation toward tissue repair, a discovery that could eventually contribute to novel treatments for joint injuries and post-traumatic osteoarthritis.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of UAH researchers under the leadership of Dr. Anuradha Subramanian, a professor of chemical and materials engineering.

The work brought together biological experimentation conducted by Dr. Shahid Khan as part of his doctoral work with computational and statistical methods developed by Dr. Satyaki Roy, a professor of mathematical sciences, along with additional contributions from graduate student Owen Trippany.

Wet coffee grounds turned into high-grade solid fuel in just 90 seconds

A research team at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) has developed a technology that converts wet spent coffee grounds directly into high-quality biochar in just 90 seconds, with no drying or oil removal required. The breakthrough offers a fast, energy-efficient path to turning high-moisture organic waste into valuable fuel and carbon materials. The study, led by Dr. Taejun Park in collaboration with GodTech Co., Ltd., was published in the Chemical Engineering Journal, one of the world’s leading journals in chemical engineering.

Addressing a growing waste challenge Every year, global coffee consumption generates more than 10 million tons of spent coffee grounds, most of which end up in landfills or are incinerated, releasing greenhouse gases and polluting the environment.

Spent coffee grounds hold real energy potential, but their high moisture content has long been a barrier. Converting them into fuel or carbon products typically requires energy-intensive predrying, making large-scale resource recovery economically impractical.

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