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New research has identified various flaws in the security of Wi-Fi connections. Attackers could take advantages of these weaknesses to get access to private data. It is likely that the flaws affected all Wi-Fi appliances. Mathy Vanhoef (Department of Computer Science) worked closely with the world’s large IT companies to solve the issues through new updates that were already announced. Vanhoef, who is affiliated with KU Leuven and New York University Abu Dhabi, found three vulnerabilities in the Wi-Fi security protocol....

Gas giant planets are primarily made out of hydrogen and helium, and are at least 4 times the diameter of Earth. Gas giant planets that orbit scorchingly close to their host stars are known as “hot Jupiters.” These planets have masses similar to Jupiter and Saturn, but tend to be much larger – some are puffed up to sizes even larger than the smallest stars. The unusually large sizes of these planets are likely related to heat flowing in and out of their atmospheres, and several theories have been developed to explain this process....

A new mechanism to stabilize the lithium metal electrode and electrolyte in lithium metal batteries has been discovered by a team of researchers. This new mechanism does not depend on the traditional kinetic approach. It has the potential to substantially improve battery energy density — the amount of energy stored relative to the weight or volume. The team published their findings today (October 27) in the journal Nature Energy. Lithium metal batteries are a promising technology with the potential to meet the demands for high-energy-density storage systems....

While the public health consequences of the pandemic have been among the most acute, the novel coronavirus has left no domain untouched: The arts have pivoted to virtual performances and programs, religious communities have found new ways to offer services, and lawyers have had to think differently about the government’s role in mitigating the crisis. Below, nine University of Chicago scholars and experts discuss what they’ve learned from a year of COVID-19, examining how the pandemic has impacted everyday life and transformed how work is conducted in their own disciplines....

Anderson was born on December 13, 1923, in Indianapolis, Indiana, and grew up in Urbana, Illinois, where his father was a member of the faculty of the University of Illinois. He entered Harvard University for his undergraduate work and, after a short wartime stint at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to build antennas, earned his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1949 under the guidance of John Hasbrouck van Vleck. Upon graduation, he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he contributed to the understanding of ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism and thereby to the emerging understanding of spontaneously broken symmetries across physics....

Using a technique known as “nucleic acid origami,” chemical engineers have built tiny particles made out of DNA and RNA that can deliver snippets of RNA directly to tumors, turning off genes expressed in cancer cells. To achieve this type of gene shutdown, known as RNA interference, many researchers have tried — with some success — to deliver RNA with particles made from polymers or lipids. However, those materials can pose safety risks and are difficult to target, says Daniel Anderson, an associate professor of health sciences and technology and chemical engineering, and a member of the David H....

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, hundreds of cosmic rays have pummeled through our bodies. Cosmic rays are mostly made of protons and electrons, with the smallest fraction made of X-rays and gamma rays. These jets of high-energy particles not only make up a sizable portion of radiation astronauts and airplane pilots receive, but they also can reach the ends of the galaxy. Scientists have found that cosmic rays can come from places like supernova remnants, neutron stars, or solar flares from the sun....

Operation IceBridge, NASA’s longest-running aerial survey of polar ice, flew over the northern Antarctic Peninsula on October 16, 2018. During the survey, designed to assess changes in the ice height of several glaciers draining into the Larsen A, B, and C embayments, IceBridge senior support scientist Jeremy Harbeck spotted a very sharp-angled, tabular iceberg floating among sea ice just off of the Larsen C ice shelf. A photo of the iceberg (seen at right) was widely shared after it was posted on social media....

Researchers from Finland and Taiwan have discovered how graphene, a single-atom-thin layer of carbon, can be forged into three-dimensional objects by using laser light. A striking illustration was provided when the researchers fabricated a pyramid with a height of 60 nm, which is about 200 times larger than the thickness of a graphene sheet. The pyramid was so small that it would easily fit on a single strand of hair....

A team of researchers from the University of Rochester, led by John Nichol, an Associate Professor of Physics, has published a paper in Nature Physics outlining a novel approach for manipulating electron spin in silicon quantum dots—tiny, nanoscale semiconductors with remarkable properties—as a way to manipulate information in a quantum system. “The results of the study provide a promising new mechanism for coherent control of qubits based on electron spin in semiconductor quantum dots, which could pave the way for the development of a practical silicon-based quantum computer,” Nichol says....

Physicians who received gifts from pharmaceutical companies related to opioid medications were more likely to prescribe opioids to their patients the following year, compared to physicians who did not receive such gifts, according to a new analysis led by health policy scientists at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. The research, published today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, is the first to apply robust statistical analysis methods in examining the relationship between gift-giving and opioid prescribing by medical specialty, as well as by pharmaceutical company....

For the first time, scientists have developed a quantum experiment that allows them to study the dynamics, or behavior, of a special kind of theoretical wormhole. The experiment allows researchers to probe connections between theoretical wormholes and quantum physics, a prediction of so-called quantum gravity. Quantum gravity refers to a set of theories that seek to connect gravity with quantum physics, two fundamental and well-studied descriptions of nature that appear inherently incompatible with each other....

Physicists at the University of Bath have discovered how to manipulate and control individual molecules for a millionth of a billionth of a second, after being intrigued by some seemingly odd results. Their new technique is the most sensitive way of controlling a chemical reaction on some of the smallest scales scientists can work – at the single molecule level. An experiment at the extreme limit of nanoscience called “STM (scanning tunneling microscope) molecular manipulation” is often used to observe how individual molecules react when excited by adding a single electron....

Barton Smith, an engineering professor at Utah State University, discussed how the seams of baseball influence its trajectory and speed toward home plate at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics 72nd Annual Meeting in Seattle on Sunday, November 24, 2019. The session, “The Baseball Seam: Clever and Capable Passive Flow Control,” will take place at the Washington State Convention Center as part of the talk on drag reduction....

The DART mission employed an asteroid-deflection technique known as a “kinetic impactor,” which in simplest terms means smashing a thing into another thing — in this case, a spacecraft into an asteroid. From the data, the DART investigation team, led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, found that a kinetic impactor mission like DART can be effective in changing the trajectory of an asteroid, a big step toward the goal of preventing future asteroid strikes on Earth....

Clinicians should carefully monitor patients treated with chloroquine therapy, particularly elderly women and others at higher risk for heart rhythm abnormalities, investigators caution in the journal Heart Rhythm. A patient who met many of the published safety guidelines for chloroquine therapy against COVID-19 was observed to have a very abnormal ECG pattern after treatment began, leading to multiple episodes of torsade de pointes (TdP), a life-threatening arrhythmia in which the lower chambers of the heart beat out of sync with the upper chambers....

The loss of eyesight, often caused by retinal degeneration, is a life-altering health issue for many people, especially as they age. But a new development toward a prosthetic retina could help counter conditions that result from problems with this crucial part of the eye. Scientists published their research on a new device, which they tested on tissue from laboratory animals, in the ACS journal Nano Letters. Yael Hanein and colleagues point out that a growing range of medical devices has become available to treat conditions, including visual impairment, that involve sending sensory signals to the brain....

How do animals that help their brethren manage to prioritize those most in need? A study publishing March 24, 2020, in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Karin Schneeberger and colleagues of the Universities of Bern in Switzerland and Potsdam in Germany, shows that rats can use odor cues alone to determine how urgently to provide food assistance to other rats in need. Reciprocal cooperation among unrelated individuals is widespread in the animal kingdom....

Hi, I’m Samantha Jones, I have a PhD in biomedical science, and today we’re going to be looking at some cartoon chemistry. [SPONGEBOB] Patrick, banana peel, don’t! [SAM] Ah yes, Spongebob. My sister and I watched so much Spongebob growing up. Sorry mom and dad. Slipping on a banana peel is definitely something that you see in a lot of cartoons. How legit is that, could you really wipe out by stepping on a banana peel?...

Home to some of Earth’s most diverse ecosystems, kelp forests worldwide face threats from climate change and human activities. These threats vary depending on distinct regional factors. However, kelp forests in remote locations are understudied, limiting the availability of knowledge to inform conservation efforts. Now, Friedlander and colleagues have revisited kelp forests in Tierra del Fuego that had not been evaluated in detail since 1973. Observational data collected by scuba divers revealed that this remote ecosystem has not changed significantly, with populations of kelp, sea urchins, and sea stars remaining similar to those observed by divers in 1973....