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New Android Pixnapping attack steals MFA codes pixel-by-pixel

A new side-channel attack called Pixnapping enables a malicious Android app with no permissions to extract sensitive data by stealing pixels displayed by applications or websites, and reconstructing them to derive the content.

The content may include sensitive private data like chat messages from secure communication apps like Signal, emails on Gmail, or two-factor authentication codes from Google Authenticator.

The attack, devised and demonstrated by a team of seven American university researchers, works on fully patched modern Android devices and can steal 2FA codes in less than 30 seconds.

Why Sorbonne pulled out of university ranking

France’s Sorbonne University plans to leave the Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings, adding its name to a growing number of universities rejecting lists that play one institution off against another. According to its president, most of these rankings are “black boxes” whose methods not only raise ethical questions but also fail to cover the breadth and diversity of university contributions.

“By deciding to stop sending our data to THE, we are leaving this specific ranking, but our criticism of major international university rankings is global,” Nathalie Drach-Temam, president of Sorbonne University, told Science|Business. “These rankings, built on selected quantitative indicators amalgamated into a single score, are not designed to evaluate research nor reflect the breadth and depth of the missions of research and higher education institutions.”

From the UK-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) ranking to the US News and World Report (USWR), university rankings set out to measure how well a higher education institution performs and how its performance and quality compare to its peers. Prospective students turn to them for guidance, and governments and investors base their research funding decisions on them.

Researchers pioneer ‘green’ framework for sustainable drug development

Medical drugs are expensive to make and can have an adverse effect on the environment. Researchers Stefano Cucurachi and Justin Lian have developed a framework to help the health care system assess the economic and environmental sustainability of medical compounds. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

With a growing and aging population, and more people living with chronic disease, health care costs are rising and the is expanding fast. Patients and health care professionals are also beginning to wonder about the of medicines. But information on this is lacking.

“Some sources claim 10% of all pharmaceuticals have an environmental risk, but only the smallest fraction has ever been assessed,” says Cucurachi, Associate Professor of industrial ecology.

SCP-3812: The Entity That Broke Reality | The Science of a God Who Knows It’s Fiction

What happens when awareness grows too powerful for the universe that contains it?

SCP-3812 — also known as A Voice Behind Me — is the Foundation’s ultimate paradox: a being that rewrites existence every time it tries to understand itself. This speculative science essay explores the physics, metaphysics, and philosophy behind the phenomenon. From quantum observer effects to pancomputational cosmology, from the breakdown of time to the collapse of narrative itself, we ask the ultimate question:

What if consciousness doesn’t live inside reality, but creates it?

Join us as we explore:

- The origin of Sam Howell and post-mortem evolution of awareness.
- The science of unreality and the hierarchy of dimensions.
- Schizophrenia as multiversal cognition.
- Supersession, recursion, and the limits of containment.
- The final collapse of reality into pure perception.

If you love speculative science, existential philosophy, or cosmic horror wrapped in logic, this video will change the way you think about reality.

Tron: Ares | Official Trailer

Watch the brand-new trailer for Tron: Ares and experience it in theaters, filmed for IMAX, October 10.

Tron: Ares follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings. The feature film is directed by Joachim Rønning and stars Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan, with Gillian Anderson, and Jeff Bridges. Sean Bailey, Jeffrey Silver, Justin Springer, Jared Leto, Emma Ludbrook and Steven Lisberger are the producers, with Russell Allen serving as executive producer.

Grammy®-award winning rock band Nine Inch Nails composed the score for “Tron: Ares,” and today, the band dropped \.

“I Became a GMO to Fight Aging” | Liz Parrish at Transvision Madrid 2025

Liz Parrish, founder and CEO of BioViva, delivers a compelling keynote on the revolutionary potential of gene therapy for human longevity and rejuvenation.

As one of the boldest voices in the longevity field and the first person to undergo experimental gene therapy for aging, Parrish shares her insights into how genetic interventions are ready to extend human healthspan.

Parrish challenges the status quo of medical research and advocates for faster translations of scientific advances, arguing that delayed access is costing millions of lives.

Direct evidence of universal anyon tunneling in a chiral Luttinger liquid revealed in edge-mode experiment

Electrons in two-dimensional (2D) systems placed under strong magnetic fields often behave in unique ways, prompting the emergence of so-called fractional quantum Hall liquids. These are exotic states of matter in which electrons behave collectively and form new quasiparticles carrying only a fraction of an electron’s charge and obeying unusual quantum statistics.

In the 1990s, physicists introduced a theory known as the chiral Luttinger liquid theory, which describes the collective movements of these fractional excitations moving in 1D channels along the boundary of 2D fractional quantum Hall states. Nonetheless, past experimental findings were not always aligned with theoretical predictions.

Researchers at Purdue University recently carried out a study aimed at further testing some of the predictions of chiral Luttinger liquid theory by measuring tunneling between 1D edge modes in a device in which a fractional quantum Hall liquid state emerges. Their paper, published in Nature Physics, offers direct experimental evidence of universal anyon tunneling for the n=1/3 fractional quantum Hall state, confirming theoretical predictions made by X.-G. Wen and collaborators in the early 1990s.

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