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Category: materials – Page 2

Intellexa Leaks Reveal Zero-Days and Ads-Based Vector for Predator Spyware Delivery

A human rights lawyer from Pakistan’s Balochistan province received a suspicious link on WhatsApp from an unknown number, marking the first time a civil society member in the country was targeted by Intellexa’s Predator spyware, Amnesty International said in a report.

The link, the non-profit organization said, is a “Predator attack attempt based on the technical behaviour of the infection server, and on specific characteristics of the one-time infection link which were consistent with previously observed Predator 1-click links.” Pakistan has dismissed the allegations, stating “there is not an iota of truth in it.”

The findings come from a new joint investigation published in collaboration with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Greek news site Inside Story, and Swiss tech site Inside IT. It’s based on documents and other materials leaked from the company, including internal documents, sales and marketing material, and training videos.

Moisture-driven power generator delivers stable electricity even in dry air conditions

Their findings have been published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials in an article titled “Long-Lasting Moisture Energy Scavenging in Dry Ambient Air Empowered by a Salt Concentration-Gradient Cationic Hydrogel.”

How the new MEG technology works These moisture-activated generators (or MEGs) work by creating a flow of ions—charged particles—inside a special gel, generating power naturally. But current versions face challenges: they don’t last long (less than 16 hours), have high internal resistance, and only work well in very humid conditions.

Professor Shin and his team have overcome those hurdles. They developed a salt-concentration-gradient cationic hydrogel for MEG, promising lower energy loss and higher output even in conditions of low relative humidity.

Magnetism switching in antiferromagnets: Two distinct mechanisms successfully visualized

A research team led by Ryo Shimano of the University of Tokyo has successfully visualized two distinct mechanisms through which up and down spins, inherent properties of electrons, switch in an antiferromagnet, a material in which spin alignments cancel each other out. One of the visualized mechanisms provides a working principle for developing ultrafast, non-volatile magnetic memory and logic devices, which could be much faster than today’s technologies.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Materials.

Paper slips with holes, small metal rods, vacuum tubes, and transistors: These are technologies that have been used to encode 0s and 1s, the basis of classical computation. However, the world’s ever-growing computational needs demand yet more powerful tools. Antiferromagnets are a class of materials whose magnetic properties, or lack thereof, could be leveraged to encode 0s and 1s in a novel way.

Scientists Create 7 Remarkable New Ceramic Materials by Simply Removing Oxygen

Sometimes, less truly is more. By removing oxygen during the synthesis process, a team of materials scientists at Penn State successfully created seven new high-entropy oxides (HEOs)—a class of ceramics made from five or more metals that show promise for use in energy storage, electronics, and protective coatings.

“By carefully removing oxygen from the atmosphere of the tube furnace during synthesis, we stabilized two metals, iron and manganese, into the ceramics that would not otherwise stabilize in the ambient atmosphere,” said corresponding and first author Saeed Almishal, research professor at Penn State working under Jon-Paul Maria, Dorothy Pate Enright Professor of Materials Science.

Almishal first succeeded in stabilizing a manganese-and iron-containing compound by precisely controlling oxygen levels in a material he called J52, composed of magnesium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and iron. Building on this, he used newly developed machine learning tools—an artificial intelligence technique capable of screening thousands of possible material combinations within seconds—to identify six additional metal combinations capable of forming stable HEOs.

Penn State scientists discovered seven new ceramics by simply removing oxygen—opening a path to materials once beyond reach.

During their experiments, the researchers also established a framework for designing future materials based on thermodynamic principles. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.

Smart material instantly changes colors on demand for use in textiles and consumer products

Scientists have developed a revolutionary technique for creating colors that can change on command. These are structural colors that don’t rely on dyes or pigments and can be used for display signage, adaptive camouflage and smart safety labels, among other applications.

Structural colors are not created by pigments or dyes but are colorless arrangements of physical nanostructures. When light waves hit these nanostructures, they interfere with one another. Some waves cancel each other out (they are absorbed) while the rest are reflected (or scattered) back to our eyes, giving us the color we see.

Structural color systems can be engineered to reflect multiple colors from the same colorless material. This is different from pigments, which absorb light and reflect only one color—red pigments reflect red, blue pigments reflect blue and so on.

Euclid dataset of a million galaxies proves connection between galaxy mergers and AGN

Astronomers have long debated the role of galaxy mergers in powering active supermassive black holes. Now an unprecedented dataset of a million galaxies from the Euclid telescope provides evidence that mergers play a dominant role and are even the primary trigger for the most luminous black holes.

Almost all massive galaxies harbor a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at their centers. Most of them simply lurk in the dark while quietly reeling in gas, dust and stars from their surroundings. These materials gather in the black hole’s accretion disk before their irreversible dive into the abyss, thereby emitting the only slight hint of radiation that gives away the black hole’s location.

A small fraction of galaxies possess an SMBH that shines brightly or even pushes out material from its poles. These are called active galactic nuclei (AGN). Some astronomers have hypothesized that violent collisions between galaxies may play an important role in the ignition of AGN. The resulting turbulence could cause the extra material to pile up in an SMBH’s accretion disk, where friction and compression make it hot enough to shine brightly. In the most extreme cases, the AGN are so bright that they completely outshine their host galaxies.

Zapping stem cells could boost growth of new tissues and organs

Scientists in Melbourne have discovered how tiny electrical pulses can steer stem cells as they grow, opening the door to new improved ways of creating new tissues, organs, nerves and bones.

Dr. Amy Gelmi, a senior lecturer at RMIT University’s School of Science, led the work using advanced atomic force microscopy to track how stem cells change their structure when exposed to electrical stimulation.

The study reveals, for the first time, how living stem cells physically respond to external signals in real time—reshaping themselves within minutes and setting off changes that influence what type of cell they eventually become. The paper is published in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces.

Artificial tendons give muscle-powered robots a boost

Our muscles are nature’s actuators. The sinewy tissue is what generates the forces that make our bodies move. In recent years, engineers have used real muscle tissue to actuate “biohybrid robots” made from both living tissue and synthetic parts. By pairing lab-grown muscles with synthetic skeletons, researchers are engineering a menagerie of muscle-powered crawlers, walkers, swimmers, and grippers.

But for the most part, these designs are limited in the amount of motion and power they can produce. Now, MIT engineers are aiming to give bio-bots a power lift with artificial tendons.

In a study published in the journal Advanced Science, the researchers developed artificial tendons made from tough and flexible hydrogel. They attached the rubber band-like tendons to either end of a small piece of lab-grown muscle, forming a “muscle-tendon unit.” Then they connected the ends of each artificial tendon to the fingers of a robotic gripper.

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