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Moon dust could stop being a nuisance and start reshaping how humans may build beyond Earth

As space agencies and private companies look toward a sustained human presence on the moon, a fundamental challenge centers on how to build strong, durable infrastructure without hauling every material from Earth. New research from Rice University points to an unexpected solution—transforming one of the moon’s most stubborn obstacles, its abrasive dust, into a valuable building resource. The study demonstrates that lunar regolith simulant, a terrestrial stand-in for the moon’s fine, abrasive dust, can be used to strengthen advanced composite materials. The work, published in Advanced Engineering Materials, was also selected for the cover of the journal’s latest issue.

The research was led by Denizhan Yavas, assistant teaching professor of mechanical engineering at Rice, in collaboration with Ashraf Bastawros of Iowa State University.

“This work started with a simple but powerful question,” Yavas said. “Lunar dust is typically viewed as a major obstacle to exploration because of how abrasive and pervasive it is. We asked whether that same material could instead be used as a resource—something that could actually improve the performance of structural materials.”

AI automates quantum dot voltage tuning for scaling up quantum computing

Semiconductor spin qubits are a promising candidate for the building blocks of next-generation quantum computers due to their high potential for integration and compatibility with existing semiconductor technologies. Qubits—like the 0s and 1s of a traditional computer—serve as a basic unit of information for quantum computers. However, the practical realization of these computers requires a massive number of qubits, making the development of more efficient adjustment methods a critical challenge for the field.

A research group including Yui Muto from Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Engineering, Assistant Professor Motoya Shinozaki and Associate Professor Tomohiro Otsuka from the Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR), and their colleagues have successfully demonstrated a method that may help make this massive number of qubits much more manageable, moving us one step closer toward scaling up quantum computing. The findings are published in Scientific Reports.

AI accelerators deliver accurate models for challenging quantum chemistry calculations

The most demanding calculations in quantum chemistry can now be solved with graphics processing unit (GPU) supercomputers. A recently published study shows that software adapted to use GPU hardware can provide not just speed, but also the accuracy needed to solve complex chemistry problems. The work solved the two chemical structures often seen as too complex and expensive to tackle. The advance, published in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, could allow researchers to make meaningful progress in designing new catalysts and improve predicted behaviors of magnetic and electronic materials.

Specifically, the research team—led by computational chemists from NVIDIA, Sandbox AQ, the Wigner Research Centre in Hungary, the Institute for Advanced Study of the Technical University of Munich in Germany, and the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory—showed that NVIDIA Blackwell architecture effectively tackles complex simulations. Here, the researchers used a mixture of mathematically precise and approximated approaches to accomplish their goal.

“Our study shows that AI-oriented hardware can do more than provide speed—it can also power chemically accurate, strongly correlated quantum chemistry at the frontier of what is computationally feasible,” said Sotiris Xantheas, a computational chemist at PNNL and study author. Xantheas also serves as the principal investigator of Scalable Predictive methods for Excitations and Correlated phenomena (SPEC), a Department of Energy initiative.

Bitwarden CLI Compromised in Ongoing Checkmarx Supply Chain Campaign

When reached for comment, Bitwarden confirmed the incident and said it stemmed from the compromise of its npm distribution mechanism following the Checkmarx supply chain attack, but emphasized that no end-user data was accessed as part of the attack. The entire statement shared with The Hacker News is reproduced verbatim below

The Bitwarden security team identified and contained a malicious package that was briefly distributed through the npm delivery path for @bitwarden/[email protected] between 5:57 PM and 7:30 PM (ET) on April 22, 2026, in connection with a broader Checkmarx supply chain incident.

The investigation found no evidence that end user vault data was accessed or at risk, or that production data or production systems were compromised. Once the issue was detected, compromised access was revoked, the malicious npm release was deprecated, and remediation steps were initiated immediately.

Microsoft releases emergency patches for critical ASP.NET flaw

Microsoft has released out-of-band (OOB) security updates to patch a critical ASP.NET Core privilege escalation vulnerability.

The security flaw (tracked as CVE-2026–40372) was found in the ASP.NET Core Data Protection cryptographic APIs, and it could allow unauthenticated attackers to gain SYSTEM privileges on affected devices by forging authentication cookies.

Microsoft discovered the flaw following user reports that decryption was failing in their applications after installing the. NET 10.0.6 update release during this month’s Patch Tuesday.

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