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Controlling polymer shapes: A new generation of shape-adaptive materials

What if a complex material could reshape itself in response to a simple chemical signal? A team of physicists from the University of Vienna and the University of Edinburgh has shown that even small changes in pH value and thus in electric charge can shift the spatial arrangement of closed ring-shaped polymers (molecular chains)—by altering the balance between twist and writhe, two distinct modes of spatial deformation.

Their findings, published in Physical Review Letters, demonstrate how electric charge can be used to reshape polymers in a reversible and controllable way—opening up new possibilities for programmable, responsive materials.

With such materials, permeability and such as elasticity, yield stress and viscosity could be better controlled and precisely “programmed.”

“Nothing Like We’ve Ever Seen” — JWST Exposes Dormant Black Holes Devouring Stars

Unlike active galaxies that endlessly devour nearby matter, these black holes remain in slumber, stirring only momentarily to consume an unlucky passing star. Astronomers from MIT, Columbia University, and other institutions have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to look through thick

Scientists Build Synthetic Cells That Tell Time

Scientists engineered synthetic cells that accurately keep time using biological clock proteins, offering new insights into how circadian rhythms resist molecular noise.

Researchers at UC Merced have successfully created tiny artificial cells capable of keeping time with remarkable precision, closely resembling the natural daily cycles observed in living organisms. This discovery offers new insight into how biological clocks maintain accurate timing, even amid the random molecular fluctuations that occur within cells.

Published in Nature Communications.

Experts Detect Multi-Layer Redirect Tactic Used to Steal Microsoft 365 Login Credentials

A third variation of these attacks impersonates Teams in emails, claiming that they have unread messages and that they can click on the “Reply in Teams” button embedded in the messages to redirect them to credential harvesting pages.

“By cloaking malicious destinations with legitimate urldefense[.]proofpoint[.]com and url[.]emailprotection URLs, these phishing campaigns’ abuse of trusted link wrapping services significantly increases the likelihood of a successful attack,” Cloudflare said.

When contacted by The Hacker News for comment, Proofpoint said it’s aware of threat actors abusing URL redirects and URL protection in ongoing phishing campaigns, and that it’s a technique the company has observed from multiple security service providers who provide similar email protection or URL rewrite solutions, such as Cisco and Sophos.

Hackers target Python devs in phishing attacks using fake PyPI site

The Python Software Foundation warned users this week that threat actors are trying to steal their credentials in phishing attacks using a fake Python Package Index (PyPI) website.

PyPI is a repository for Python packages, accessible at pypi.org, that offers a centralized platform for developers to distribute and install third-party software libraries. It hosts hundreds of thousands of packages and is the default source for Python’s package management tools.

“PyPI has not been hacked, but users are being targeted by a phishing attack that attempts to trick them into logging in to a fake PyPI site. Over the past few days, users who have published projects on PyPI with their email in package metadata may have received an email titled ‘[PyPI] Email verification’ from the email address [email protected],” the PyPI admin Mike Fiedler cautioned.