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Biodegradable bubble moves away from lactic acid without a motor—a step toward artificial cells

A tiny biodegradable bubble can move away from a chemical on its own, without a motor. Living cells need complex molecular machinery to do this. This discovery by researchers led by chemist Daniela Wilson at Radboud University, together with colleagues at Durham University, is a step toward artificial cells with lifelike behavior and could, in the long term, provide an interesting approach for self-steering particles in targeted drug delivery.

Living cells’ ability to “smell” chemicals around them and move toward food or away from toxins is called chemotaxis. Wilson says, “Cells do this with elaborate machinery: Receptors in their membrane detect the signal, after which an internal skeleton reshapes the cell to make it move. Researchers have been trying for years to build artificial particles that do the same. So far, almost all of them need extra parts, such as enzymes or catalysts attached to the surface that act like a small engine.”

In their research, published in Nature Chemistry, Wilson and her colleagues discovered that a very simple artificial “bubble” can move on its own, without a motor.

Centaurus A in the spotlight: Plasma simulations reproduce black hole jets’ mysterious bright edges

Around 12 million light-years away, the supermassive black hole of the galaxy Centaurus A is hurling two enormous plasma jets into space at nearly the speed of light. These so-called jets are brighter at their edges than at their center. The reason for this was previously unclear but has now been explained by a team from the Chair of Astronomy at the University of Würzburg. The research is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Centaurus A is the closest active galaxy to Earth, and its black hole is about 60 million times as massive as our sun. Precisely because it is so close, astrophysicists can observe its jets in exceptional detail. The galaxy thus serves as a unique laboratory for studying the most extreme conditions in the universe.

NASA Warns a Monster El Niño Could Surpass the Historic 1997 Event

An El Niño that could beat 1997’s record is taking shape in the Pacific, leaving scientists watching for its next move.

El Niño is part of a natural climate pattern that returns roughly every two to seven years. Its most recent very strong events, in 1997–98 and 2015–16, disrupted weather worldwide. Consequences included fires in Indonesia and the Amazon, crop failures caused by drought in southern Africa, and heavy rain and coastal flooding in Southern California.

Satellite measurements show that the current El Niño resembles the 1997–98 event, with warm water stretching across the equatorial Pacific to South America. But that oceanic resemblance does not guarantee the same weather during winter 2026–27, as the outcome also depends on how the atmosphere responds.

Scientists Just Found a Key Ingredient for Superconductivity at Room Temperature

Researchers have discovered that a key requirement for superconductivity can persist even at room temperature.

Scientists searching for a superconductor that works at room temperature have identified a potential way forward. New research from Utrecht, Leiden, and Munich shows that electrons can form the pairs needed for superconductivity even at room temperature. The findings, published in Science, suggest that a different requirement may be preventing these materials from conducting electricity without resistance.

The key appears to be how paired electrons behave collectively. Although the pairs can survive at much higher temperatures than previously understood, they must also act in a coordinated way for superconductivity to emerge.

EMudhra revokes 8 more CA certificates after private key mishap

Certificate authority eMudhra has revoked eight additional intermediate CA certificates after an investigation into its recent certificate security incident found improper handling of private keys during the certificate-generation process.

The new revocations bring the total number of affected intermediate CA certificates to 16, including eight previously compromised certificates whose private keys were so weak that anyone could recover them almost instantly.

In a new incident report published Tuesday, eMudhra said that both sets of certificates were affected by a custom Python script used to transfer private keys between hardware security modules (HSMs) in April 2025.

Notion says Fireworks breach exposed customer AI chat transcripts

Notion, the digital workspace platform, disclosed that a security breach at its AI infrastructure provider, Fireworks AI, exposed Notion AI chat transcripts in a small number of workspaces.

The disclosure comes shortly after Fireworks AI confirmed that an attacker accessed its development environment via a third-party cloud provider on October 23 and compromised resource metadata, billing information, model weights, and datasets for some customers.

Fireworks AI experienced another breach in early October, when hackers accessed environment variables containing API keys and tokens stored as secrets for a limited number of accounts.

ScreenConnect Attacks Target at Least 288 Endpoints Across 48 Organizations With Rogue Clients

Cybersecurity company Huntress, which is also tracking the activity, said it has observed attackers using access to cloud-hosted ScreenConnect panels to push Run commands with an aim to install rogue ScreenConnect clients on at least 288 managed endpoints across 48 organizations. The activity was first detected on November 11, 2026, at around 5:47 p.m. UTC.

Huntress told The Hacker News that it has not seen evidence of a new vulnerability, but noted the exact method through which the attacker got panel access remains unclear. Current telemetry points to compromised credentials or hijacked operator sessions to gain initial access, it said.

Over 35,000 Grok-Built Apps Exposed Online, Some Leaking Confidential Data and Passwords

No app goes public until its creator clicks Publish. In the paid account the researchers used, the next step offered 3 access settings: “Anyone with the link”, “Invited users” and “Only you”. “Anyone with the link” was already selected.

The setting matters because an app’s address does not stay secret, the researchers say. Opening an app makes the visitor’s computer look up its subdomain in DNS. Passive DNS services record such lookups, and anyone with an account can search those records by pattern.

Grok suggests 4 random words as each app’s name, and about half of the names the researchers found followed that pattern. Such names are hard to guess, but that does not protect an app whose name already sits in a searchable list.