A new Android malware named NoVoice was found on Google Play, hidden in more than 50 apps that were downloaded at least 2.3 million times.
The apps carrying the malicious payload included cleaners, image galleries, and games. They required no suspicious permissions and provided the promised functionality.
After launching an infected app, the malware tried to obtain root access on the device by exploiting old Android vulnerabilities that received patches between 2016 and 2021.
Monash University researchers have captured the exact atomic movements that write data to next-generation memory devices, which could pave the way for smaller, faster and more energy-efficient electronics. Published in Nature Communications, the study was led by Dr. Kousuke Ooe, a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellow in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University who is first author of the paper, in collaboration with Australian Laureate Professor Joanne Etheridge and researchers from the Japan Fine Ceramics Center, Kyoto University, and the University of Osaka.
Using advanced electron microscopy at the Monash Center for Electron Microscopy (MCEM), the team captured atomic-scale movements inside promising memory materials, known as fluorite-type ferroelectrics, that could overcome current limits to how small and efficient memory devices can become.
Everyday technologies, such as smartphones, medical devices, wearable electronics and contactless IC cards used in public transport, store data as billions of digital 1s and 0s. In these materials, the physical position of an atom acts like a “switch”—and moving an atom just a fraction of a nanometer is what flips a data bit from a 0 to a 1.
Amid hot discussion on screen time, social media use and the impact of digital devices on our well-being, a seven-month study from Aalto University in Finland sheds new light on what overwhelms users the most—and the results aren’t what you might think.
“Screen time does matter, but the heaviest users aren’t the most overloaded,” says doctoral researcher Henrik Lassila. “Those who feel most overwhelmed are the ones who return to their phone again and again for brief moments and then put it down shortly after.”
The seven-month study followed the digital behavior of nearly 300 adults in Germany across smartphones and computers. Participants completed repeated surveys about information overload, while all apps and websites used were logged, creating a rich longitudinal dataset of real world device use.
Scientists in the Riccio College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of California Santa Barbara have demonstrated key laser and ion trap components necessary to help drastically shrink the size of quantum computers, an achievement aligned with the shrinking of integrated microprocessors in the 1970s, 80s and 90s that allowed computers to move from room-sized behemoths to today’s ultrathin smartphones.
The current state-of-the-art technology for quantum computing is too large and complex to scale and too sensitive and bulky to be portable. The largest and most sensitive components of these quantum systems are the optics, which include multiple lasers and vibration-isolated, temperature-controlled vacuum chambers that contain ultrastable optical cavities. These cavities stabilize the lasers to extremely high precision in order to control trapped ions for quantum computing and optical clocks.
The world cannot have enough of the third element on the periodic table. From smartphones and laptops to state-of-the-art EVs, all are powered by lithium batteries. The demand for metal is only going to rise, and projected values suggest nearly a triple increase in demand by 2030. The traditional process of lithium mining is both water and energy-hungry. One such step is the dissolution of lithium salts from other competing minerals during the separation process.
In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers present a clever way to harness the deliquescence of lithium chloride hydrate (LHT)—a unique ability to naturally pull moisture from the air to dissolve itself—to extract and concentrate lithium from mining waste while leaving behind unwanted minerals.
The method achieved up to 97% lithium recovery with an increase in the lithium purity by 1,500 times, producing a liquid concentrate with lithium levels reaching 97,000 parts per million, which was more than twice as concentrated as the standard solutions used in battery processing.
Think about how easily you recognize a friend in a dimly lit room. Your eyes capture light, while your brain filters out background noise, retrieves stored visual information, and processes the image to make a match. It all happens in a fraction of a second and uses remarkably little energy. Unfortunately, artificial vision systems in smartphones, cameras, and autonomous machines operate more like an assembly line. In our recent paper published in Nature Electronics, we describe how we addressed this challenge by enabling sensing, memory, and processing within the same device, pointing to a possible route toward more efficient machine vision.
The iGaN Laboratory led by Professor Haiding Sun at the School of Microelectronics, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), in collaboration with multiple institutions, developed the multifunctional semiconductor diode with integrated photosensing, memory, and processing capabilities.
To understand the challenge, it helps to look at the basic building block of modern digital cameras: the semiconductor p-n diode. These tiny junctions act as the light-sensing pixels in imaging systems. However, a conventional diode is usually limited to a single function. It converts light into an electrical signal, and the captured data must then be transferred to separate memory and processing units. Moving this data back and forth consumes time, power, and chip area.
https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI192928 Here, Xue-Zhong Yu & team identify Pim2 as a key negative regulator of CD8 T-cell antitumor immunity and validate it as a potential therapeutic target for enhancing cancer immunotherapy.
Electron microscopy images show visible autophagosomes in activated WT T cells, but not in Pim2-KO cells, supporting a model in which the PIM2 promotes T cell autophagy.
Address correspondence to: Xue-Zhong Yu or Yongxia Wu, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8,701 Watertown Plank Road, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 53,226, USA. Phone: 414.955.8187; Email: [email protected] (XZY). Phone: 414.955.8148; Email: [email protected] (YW).
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers have developed an ultrasound wristband that precisely tracks hand movements in real-time for robotics and virtual reality control.
The next time you’re scrolling your phone, take a moment to appreciate the feat: The seemingly mundane act is possible thanks to the coordination of 34 muscles, 27 joints, and over 100 tendons and ligaments in your hand. Indeed, our hands are the most nimble parts of our bodies. Mimicking their many nuanced gestures has been a longstanding challenge in robotics and virtual reality.
Now, MIT engineers have designed an ultrasound wristband that precisely tracks a wearer’s hand movements in real-time. The wristband produces ultrasound images of the wrist’s muscles, tendons, and ligaments as the hand moves, and is paired with an artificial intelligence algorithm that continuously translates the images into the corresponding positions of the five fingers and palm.
