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Maine breach portal abused to publish fake data breach disclosures

In an unusual misinformation campaign, fraudulent data breach disclosures were submitted to Maine’s official breach portal and publicly posted before their legitimacy could be verified, prompting companies to deny the claims.

A notice allegedly filed by multiplayer social virtual reality platform VRChat is the most recent entry in the state Attorney General’s breach disclosure database.

However, a company representative told BleepingComputer that the breach notification is fake and has been filed using the name of a fictitious employee.

Oracle mitigates PeopleSoft zero-day exploited in data theft attacks

Oracle is warning about a critical PeopleSoft Suite zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026–35273 that allows unauthenticated remote code execution, with the flaw actively exploited in ShinyHunter data theft attacks.

The flaw is within Oracle PeopleSoft PeopleTools and has a CVSS base score of 9.8.

“This Security Alert addresses vulnerability CVE-2026–35273 in Oracle PeopleSoft PeopleTools. Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Applications customers may also be affected by this vulnerability,” reads a new Oracle advisory.

I watched the new Halo remake gameplay, then replayed the original to nitpick the differences

I’m going into Campaign Evolved with an open mind—expecting different, but not necessarily better. Halo Studios’ official playthrough of mission five, Assault on the Control Room, is so far confirming that impression. I watched the 28-minute video in full and then played the original mission through the MCC to refresh my memory. What follows are some notable differences and observations:

“These lights seem to be responding to our proximity and guiding us to the exit,” a new Cortana voice line says as Chief enters the first of many hexagonal control rooms. It could be a little confusing to find your way around these rooms in the originals, but l always found the flashing white arrows on the ground pointing forward to be sufficient visual guidance. Now, Cortana barks that tip into your ear so you can’t possibly miss it.

Not that you actually need to look for arrows on the ground when Campaign Evolved has added HUD waypoints that are visible at all times. This is one of several ways that Halo Studios’ is applying a modern hand-holdy lens to Combat Evolved.

Scientists discover collagen, the human body’s most abundant protein, is liquid-like inside cells

Collagen, the protein that builds skin, bones, tendons and organs, exists inside cells as a liquidlike droplet rather than the long, rigid rod seen in textbooks over the last half-century, according to a new study from the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona.

The finding, published in the Journal of Cell Biology, is the first direct observation of how the most abundant protein in the human body, which accounts for around a third of total protein mass, exists naturally inside living cells.

“Inside a cell, collagens are not rigid molecules as one had assumed. They are in fact very pliable, taking a liquid condensate form much like oil in a drop of water,” explains ICREA Research Professor Vivek Malhotra, senior author of the study at the CRG in Barcelona.

CO₂ injection reveals hidden cement chemistry behind 13% stronger early strength

One September day, it started to snow inside MIT’s Pierce Laboratory. Researchers depressurized a tank of liquid carbon dioxide (CO2), instantly freezing it and releasing solid flakes. These were blended into cement paste and pressed into disks roughly the size of a dime, each sealed with a thin layer of vegetable oil to keep water in and air out. The team trained lasers on each one, observing for the first time the transient chemical reaction that might explain why CO2-injected cement paste gains strength faster.

Injecting CO2 into cement products like concrete is one way to store it and keep it out of the atmosphere. The process has attracted commercial interest, with a growing number of companies offering CO2-injected concrete mixes. But until now, the underlying cement chemistry hadn’t been directly visualized.

A new paper in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society —led by associate professor Admir Masic and first-authored by graduate student Marcin Hajduczek, both of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub and MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering—describes the chemical sequence that unfolds after CO2 meets fresh cement paste. Co-authors include MIT colleagues Santiago El Awad and Franz-Josef Ulm, alongside researchers from IIT Jodhpur and CarbonCure Technologies.

The Host Immune Response to Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71): From Viral Immune Evasion to Immunopathology and Prognostic Biomarkers of Severe Disease—A Narrative Review

Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71) is a critical global pathogen, primarily causing Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease (HFMD) but frequently leading to severe neurological complications, including fatal neurogenic pulmonary edema (PE). This review elucidates the complex interplay between viral pathogenesis and the host immune response. EV-A71 utilizes receptors like SCARB2 and PSGL-1 for entry, while its proteases (2Apro, 3Cpro) efficiently evade innate immunity by cleaving key signaling adaptors (MAVS, TRIF), suppressing Type I IFN response. Critical to disease progression is the age-dependent vulnerability in infants and the subsequent shift toward immunopathology. Severe disease is driven by a systemic cytokine storm and T cell dysregulation, characterized by a loss of control from Treg cells and a profound Th17/Treg imbalance, resulting in high levels of pathogenic cytokines (e.g., IL-17A, IFN-γ).

Scientists built a battery-free device that turns sunlight into fuel

Scientists have developed an artificial photosynthesis system that essentially regulates itself, eliminating the need for batteries used in many current designs. The key innovation is an electrolyzer that automatically adapts to changing sunlight by altering its electrical properties as it heats up. This keeps solar fuel production more stable while reducing cost and complexity.

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