Lifeboat Foundation

Two-dimensional van der Waals materials have been the focus of work by numerous research groups for some time. Standing just a few atomic layers thick, these structures are produced in the laboratory by combining atom-thick layers of different materials (in a process referred to as “atomic Lego”). Interactions between the stacked layers allow the heterostructures to exhibit properties that the individual constituents lack.

Two-layered molybdenum disulfide is one such van der Waals material, in which electrons can be excited using a suitable experimental setup. These negatively charged particles then leave their position in the valence band, leaving behind a positively charged hole, and enter the conduction band. Given the different charges of electrons and holes, the two are attracted to one another and form what is known as a quasiparticle. The latter is also referred to as an electron-hole pair, or exciton, and can move freely within the material.

In two-layered molybdenum disulfide, excitation with light produces two different types of electron-hole pairs: intralayer pairs, in which the electron and hole are localized in the same layer of the material, and interlayer pairs, whose hole and electron are located in different layers and are therefore spatially separate from one another.

Researchers discovered a private Telegram channel-based backdoor in the information stealing malware, dubbed Prynt Stealer, which its developer added with the intention of secretly stealing a copy of victims’ exfiltrated data when used by other cybercriminals.

“While this untrustworthy behavior is nothing new in the world of cybercrime, the victims’ data end up in the hands of multiple threat actors, increasing the risks of one or more large scale attacks to follow,” Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Atinderpal Singh and Brett Stone-Gross said in a new report.

Prynt Stealer, which came to light earlier this April, comes with capabilities to log keystrokes, steal credentials from web browsers, and siphon data from Discord and Telegram. It’s sold for $100 for a one-month license and $900 for a lifetime subscription.

TikTok has denied reports of a data breach after a hacker group claimed to have gained access to information on two billion of its users.

Ransomware hackers are abusing an anti-cheat system driver for the extremely popular game Genshin Impact to disable antivirus software.

The droppers are designed to drop a new version of SharkBot, dubbed V2 by Dutch security firm ThreatFabric, which features an updated command-and-control (C2) communication mechanism, a domain generation algorithm (DGA), and a fully refactored codebase.

Fox-IT said it discovered a newer version 2.25 on August 22, 2022, that introduces a function to siphon cookies when victims log in to their bank accounts, while also removing the ability to automatically reply to incoming messages with links to the malware for propagation.

Samsung suffered a data breach that exposed some personal information from its U.S. customers.

Everything we do as living organisms is dependent, in some capacity, on time. The concept is so complex that scientists still argue whether it exists or if it is an illusion.

In this video, astrophysicist Michelle Thaller, science educator Bill Nye, author James Gleick, and neuroscientist Dean Buonomano discuss how the human brain perceives of the passage of time, the idea in theoretical physics of time as a fourth dimension, and the theory that space and time are interwoven.

Thaller illustrates Einstein’s theory of relativity, Buonomano outlines eternalism, and all the experts touch on issues of perception, definition, and experience.

Because of their unique physical, photonic, thermal, and electronic capabilities, two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures have exhibited tremendous promise in the domains of bioengineering, sensing, and energy storage.

Study: Two Dimensional Silicene Nanosheets: A New Choice of Electrode Material for High-Performance Supercapacitor. Image Credit: Quardia/Shutterstock.com.

Nonetheless, combining silicon-based nanomaterials into high-performance power storage systems remains a largely undeveloped subject because of the complex manufacturing process. New work published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces hope to address this problem by effectively integrating silicene nanosheets into a high-voltage supercapacitor.

The introduction of topology in photonic systems has attracted considerable attention not only for the elaborate molding of light but also for its practical applications in novel photonic devices. Originally, the quantum Hall effect of light was realized in photonic crystals (PCs) by introducing external electric or magnetic fields to break the time-reversal symmetry (TRS).

Instead of breaking the TRS, the quantum spin-Hall effect of light has been achieved in TRS-preserved systems where photonic pseudospins can be constructed. Recently, the valley Hall effect of light has been realized by introducing the binary valley degree of freedom (DoF) into photonic systems. One of the vital features of the valley Hall effect is the nontrivial photonic band gap, which is characterized by the nonzero valley Chern number.

Furthermore, valley-dependent edge modes are supported at the domain wall which consists of two PCs with opposite-valley Chern numbers. The valley Hall effect of light is commonly realized in a triangular-lattice PC with broken mirror symmetry or in a honeycomb-lattice PC with broken spatial inversion symmetry, and it is compatible with existing nanophotonic fabrication technique.