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Worse Than We Thought: “Forever Chemicals” Are Far More Acidic Than Previously Believed

New and more precise acidity measurements may help make PFAS easier to track. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are nicknamed “forever chemicals” in part because their acidity helps them linger in the environment. Many of these toxic chemicals are strongly acidic, so they readily shed p

Billion-Ton Waste Problem: Harvard Finds a Way To Recycle Hair Without Harsh Chemicals

A new sustainable method has been developed to break down keratins, transforming leftover wool and feathers into useful products. Every year, textile and meat-processing operations generate billions of tons of feathers, wool, and hair. These materials are rich in keratin, the tough, fibrous prote

Physicists Measured The Pulse of an Atom’s Magnetic Heart in Real Time

The pulse of an atom’s magnetic heart as it ticks back and forth between quantum states has been timed in a laboratory.

Physicists used a scanning tunneling microscope to observe electrons as they moved in sync with the nucleus of an atom of titanium-49, allowing them to estimate the duration of the core’s magnetic beat in isolation.

“These findings,” they write in their paper, “give an atomic-scale insight into the nature of nuclear spin relaxation and are relevant for the development of atomically assembled qubit platforms.”

Couples Are More Likely to Share Psychiatric Disorders, But Why?

For those partnered up in a long-term relationship, studies have shown that different health characteristics can sometimes be shared across the couple – and that extends to psychiatric disorders, according to new research.

Based on an analysis of more than 6 million couples across Taiwan, Denmark, and Sweden, an international team of researchers found that people were significantly more likely to have the same psychiatric conditions as their partners than would be expected by chance.

Those conditions included schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, autism, anxiety, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), substance abuse, and anorexia nervosa.

U.S. sanctions cyber scammers who stole billions from Americans

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned several large networks of cyber scam operations in Southeast Asia, which stole over $10 billion from Americans last year.

These operations, mainly those in Burma and Cambodia, are notorious for using forced labor, human trafficking, and physical violence, essentially operating as modern slavery farms that conduct online fraud.

The scams vary from “romance baiting” to fake cryptocurrency investing opportunities.

Hackers hide behind Tor in exposed Docker API breaches

A threat actor targeting exposed Docker APIs has updated its malicious tooling with more dangerous functionality that could lay the foundation for a complex botnet.

The activity was first reported in June by cybersecurity company Trend Micro. whose researchers analyzed scripts and malicious code that dropped a cryptominer and relied on the Tor network to hide their identity.

Akamai researchers discovered new tooling that does not deploy a miner but a more complex payload that can block access to compromised Docker APIs.

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