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Experiment sees surprising result in search for dark matter

For the better part of a century, people have been trying to understand dark matter. This invisible substance makes up roughly 85% of the mass in the universe but has never been directly detected. Determining exactly what it is remains one of the biggest questions about our world.

Now, a new analysis from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment has recorded a single particle interaction that researchers have great difficulty explaining with known background signals from normal matter. The result does not yet meet the statistical threshold required to claim a discovery but is the most compelling hint of dark matter reported by the experiment to date.

LZ is an international collaboration of 250 scientists and engineers from 39 institutions. The detector is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and operates nearly 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) below ground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota. The experiment uses 10 tonnes of ultrapure liquid xenon to search for dark matter and is optimized to look for WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles.

Watching nanoparticles form in real time uncovers ‘missing link’ in microwave-assisted manufacturing

Advanced materials power everything from batteries and electronics to clean energy technologies. For years, engineers have known that microwave-assisted synthesis can dramatically accelerate the chemical reactions used to manufacture these materials. Now, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have provided new evidence challenging a long-held assumption about why, suggesting that microwaves speed chemical reactions in a fundamentally different way than many scientists believed.

The study, led by Reeja Jayan, a professor of mechanical engineering, and CMU alumnus Morgan Chen, challenges the long-held belief that microwaves accelerate chemical reactions by lowering the amount of energy needed for those reactions to occur. Instead, the team found evidence that microwaves increase how often molecules successfully rearrange themselves into new materials.

To reach that conclusion, Jayan and Chen studied the formation of tin oxide nanoparticles, a material used in batteries, catalysts and other electronic devices. Using high-energy X-rays, they watched the nanoparticles form in real time under both conventional and microwave-assisted heating, allowing them to compare how the atomic structure evolved throughout each reaction.

Scientists Discover a “Loose Cannon” Virus Enzyme That Rewires Nearly Every Protein in a Bacterial Cell

Scientists found that phages, viruses that infect bacteria, trigger widespread protein modifications inside host cells that help them evade bacterial immune defenses.

When a phage infects a bacterium, it must overcome the cell’s defenses before those defenses can destroy the invading virus. Researchers have now uncovered an unusual strategy used by T7 phage: a single enzyme triggers a massive wave of protein modifications inside the infected bacterium, helping disable its immune systems.

Phages, viruses that infect bacteria, are locked in a constant molecular arms race with their hosts. Bacteria evolve defenses against infection, while phages develop ways to evade or suppress those defenses. The new work shows for the first time how one phage protein can initiate a cascade of molecular changes capable of disarming multiple bacterial defense mechanisms.

Brain Scans Reveal a Surprising Dopamine Difference in Autism

Autism is associated with differences across several systems in the brain, but understanding how those differences connect has been difficult. Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Odense University Hospital investigated that question in 60 adults using three forms of brain imaging.

For the first time, the researchers combined three advanced brain scanning techniques to examine the dopamine system, energy use, and communication among brain regions within the same study.

The Brain Makes New Neurons Even in Adulthood. Depression May Stop It

Depression was linked to stalled adult neurogenesis and widespread molecular changes in hippocampal memory circuits.

A small stream of new neurons continues to appear in the adult hippocampus even though most of the brain’s roughly 100 billion neurons are formed before birth. Research from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons suggests that this limited adult neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons, could play an important role in protecting against depression.

The researchers report for the first time that neurogenesis stalls in the brains of adults with major depressive disorder. They also identified molecular programs involved in controlling this process, providing potential targets for future treatments.

Scientists Discover a Hidden “Immune Organ” Inside the Skull

Researchers discovered lymph node-like immune hubs inside skull bone marrow that appear to act as rapid-response centers for the brain.

For decades, the brain was thought to operate largely apart from the immune system. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have now identified lymph node-like structures inside the skull bone marrow of mice that respond rapidly to brain cancer, before more distant lymph nodes receive signals that abnormal cells are present. They also found evidence of similar immune cells in human skull bone marrow.

The findings add to growing evidence that the brain communicates directly with the immune system and suggest that specialized immune centers are positioned unusually close to the organ they help protect.

Researchers Use Claude to Port PreAuth RCE Exploit From One PLC Model to Another

Forescout Research — Vedere Labs said it used Anthropic’s Claude to port a working pre-authentication remote code execution (RCE) exploit from one WAGO programmable logic controller (PLC) to another, executing attacker-supplied ARM shellcode on live hardware.

The exploit targets CVE-2021–31886, a stack-based buffer overflow in the Nucleus FTP server’s handling of the USER command, which carries a Siemens-assigned CVSS score of 9.8 and is accessible before authentication over TCP port 21.

CERT@VDE says no updates are available for the affected WAGO controllers, and advises owners to disable or block FTP on port 21, enforce segmentation controls, and monitor network traffic for anomalies.

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