Lifeboat Foundation

Ferroelectrics are special materials with polarized positive and negative charges—like a magnet has north and south poles—that can be reversed when external electricity is applied. The materials will remain in these reversed states until more power is applied, making them useful for data storage and wireless communication applications.

Now, turning a non-ferroelectric material into one may be possible simply by stacking it with another ferroelectric material, according to a team led by scientists from Penn State who demonstrated the phenomenon, called proximity ferroelectricity.

The discovery offers a new way to make ferroelectric materials without modifying their chemical formulation, which commonly degrades several useful properties. This has implications for next-generation processors, optoelectronics and quantum computing, the scientists said. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature.

Glass might seem to be an ordinary material we encounter every day, but the physics at play inside are actually quite complex and still not completely understood by scientists. Some panes of glass, such as the stained-glass windows in many medieval buildings, have remained rigid for centuries, as their constituent molecules are perpetually frozen in a state of disorder.

Similarly, supercooled liquids are not quite solid, in the sense that their fundamental particles do not stick to a lattice pattern with long-range order, but they are also not ordinary liquids, because the particles also lack the energy to move freely. More research is required to reveal the physics of these complex systems.

In a study published in Nature Materials, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo have used advanced computer simulations to model the behavior of fundamental particles in a glassy supercooled liquid. Their approach was based on the concept of the Arrhenius activation energy, which is the energy barrier a process must overcome to proceed.

We systematically investigated the detection performance of Al nanostrips for single photons at various wavelengths. The Al films were deposited using magnetron sputtering, and the sophisticated nanostructures and morphology of the deposited films were revealed through high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. The fabricated Al meander nanostrips, with a thickness of 4.2 nm and a width of 178 nm, exhibited a superconducting transition temperature of 2.4 K and a critical current of approximately 5 μA at 0.85 K. While the Al nanostrips demonstrated a saturated internal quantum efficiency for 405-nm photons, the internal detection efficiency exhibited an exponential dependence on bias current without any saturation tendency for 1550-nm photons. This behavior can be attributed to the relatively large diffusion coefficient and coherence length of the Al films.

Simulations deliver hints on how the multiverse produced according to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics might be compatible with our stable, classical Universe.

Author: Agnes Chan // Editor: Erin Pallott

I believe most of you have seen that in movies life-threatening events are often depicted in slow motion. Have you ever wondered that it may be true that time is slowed down during certain events? There are several situations in which time was reported to have slowed down or things appeared to happen in slow motion. For example, people often report time slowing down during car crashes or other high-adrenaline situations. These situations are often associated with high levels of fear and danger. If time appeared to be slowing down, it implies that the speed of the internal clock increased during the event. Similar phenomena were reported in military firefights and professional players of high-speed sports reporting their opponents moving in slow motion. It can also be seen in more ordinary events like anxiously waiting for a doctor’s appointment and the passing of time felt slower.

A Mirai botnet variant has been found exploiting a newly disclosed security flaw impacting Four-Faith industrial routers since early November 2024 with the goal of conducting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

The botnet maintains approximately 15,000 daily active IP addresses, with the infections primarily scattered across China, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and the United States.

Exploiting an arsenal of over 20 known security vulnerabilities and weak Telnet credentials for initial access, the malware is known to have been active since February 2024. The botnet has been dubbed “gayfemboy” in reference to the offensive term present in the source code.

NonEuclid RAT: C# malware offering remote access, antivirus bypass, and ransomware, active since November 2024.

Cybersecurity researchers have found that bad actors are continuing to have success by spoofing sender email addresses as part of various malspam campaigns.

Faking the sender address of an email is widely seen as an attempt to make the digital missive more legitimate and get past security mechanisms that could otherwise flag it as malicious.

While there are safeguards such as DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC), and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) that can be used to prevent spammers from spoofing well-known domains, such measures have increasingly led them to leverage old, neglected domains in their operations.

The first liftoff of New Glenn is set for Jan. 10 at 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT).