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linuxrocks123 writes:

There have been a lot of recent stories about Google restricting sideloading to apps from developers who have registered with Google. Google has issued the very important clarification that adb will still be able to used to sideload unverified apps: https://support.google.com/android-developer-console/answer/16561738

So, if you own your phone, you can still install whatever you want on it. You just might have to install adb and enable the Developer Options menu first.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-ultra-thin-sodium-alternative-gold.html

From solar panels to next-generation medical devices, many emerging technologies rely on materials that can manipulate light with extreme precision. These materials—called plasmonic materials—are typically made from expensive metals like gold or silver. But what if a cheaper, more abundant metal could do the job just as well or better?

That's the question a team of researchers set out to explore. The challenge? While sodium is abundant and lightweight, it's also notoriously unstable and difficult to work with in the presence of air or moisture—two unavoidable parts of real-world conditions. Until now, this has kept it off the table for practical optical applications.

Researchers from Yale University, Oakland University, and Cornell University have teamed up to change that. By developing a new technique for structuring sodium into ultra-thin, precisely patterned films, they found a way to stabilize the metal and make it perform exceptionally well in light-based applications.

Their approach, published in the journal ACS Nano, involved combining thermally-assisted spin coating with phase-shift photolithography—essentially using heat and light to craft nanoscopic surface patterns that trap and guide light in powerful ways.

Even more impressively, the team used ultrafast laser spectroscopy to observe what happens when these sodium surfaces interact with light on time scales measured in trillionths of a second. The results were surprising: sodium's electrons responded in ways that differ from traditional metals, suggesting it could offer new advantages for light-based technologies like photocatalysis, sensing, and energy conversion.

More information: Conrad A. Kocoj et al, Ultrafast Plasmon Dynamics of Low-Loss Sodium Metasurfaces, ACS Nano (2025). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5c04946

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/apple-removes-ice-tracking-apps-after-pressure-by-trump-administration-2025-10-03/:

Apple said on Thursday that it had removed ICEBlock and other similar ICE-tracking apps from its App Store after it was contacted by President Donald Trump's administration, in a rare instance of apps being taken down due to a U.S. federal government demand.

Alphabet's Google also removed similar apps on Thursday for policy violations, but the company said it was not approached by the Justice Department before taking the action.

The app alerts users to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in their area, which the Justice Department says could increase the risk of assault on U.S. agents.

[...] Apple removed more than 1,700 apps from its App Store in 2024 in response to government demands, but the vast majority — more than 1,300 — came from China, followed by Russia with 171 and South Korea with 79.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

First Dark Matter Sub-Halo Found In The Milky Way:

There are plenty of theories about what dark matter is and how it might be gravitationally affecting the universe. However, proving those theories out is hard since it hardly ever interacts with anything, especially on "small" scales like galaxies. So when a research team claims to have found evidence for dark matter in our own galaxy, it's worth taking a look at how. A new paper from Dr. Surkanya Chakrabati and her lab at the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) does just that. They found evidence for a dark matter "sub-halo" in the galactic neighborhood, by looking at signals from binary pulsars.

A sub-halo is a clumping of dark matter that is brought together inside of a larger "halo" that is thought to form the core of galaxies. Since dark matter primarily interacts through gravity, going theory suggests that it should attract "baryonic" (i.e. normal) matter when it clumps together. This clumping is thought to the scaffolding that galaxies are built on.

Sub-halos are even denser groupings of dark matter that coalesce because of their gravitational attraction. Since they are relatively small compared to the big dark matter halos they are contained in, they can be difficult to detect. To do so, cosmologists would have to find a gravitational signal that deviates from what would be expected given the normal matter surrounding the sub-halo. So far, no one has been able to isolate that kind of signal, despite looking throughout our galactic neighborhood.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Instagram says it is not listening to users' microphones to serve ads:

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, has shared a video on his account to dismiss the myth that Instagram is actively listening to users, to show them relevant ads. Now, why would you say that? Unless, it was true! Right?

Jokes aside, the timing couldn't be worse. Yesterday, Meta announced that it will be updating its privacy policy by December 16. Why? Because Meta says that it will use the data collected from user interactions with its AI, to sell targeted ads across its social networks. So, how is this going to work, privacy-wise? Well, that's another story.

The story continues at https://www.ghacks.net/2025/10/02/instagram-says/

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-track-medicines-hitchhike-cholesterol.html

Researchers at The University of Queensland have developed a test that could change our understanding of cholesterol and its potential to ferry deadly cancer messages and life-saving medicines around our body.

Technology developed by Ph.D. scholar Raluca Ghebosu and Associate Professor Joy Wolfram has been designed to assess how different medicines bind to cholesterol particles in our bloodstream.

Ghebosu said mapping this cholesterol "hitchhiking" was crucial to establishing how long medicines remain active, which organs they travel to and, ultimately, how effective they are.

"The problem is that this process requires costly, complex, and time-consuming techniques," Ghebosu said.

"All are significant barriers to what could be a crucial breakthrough in medicine. Our test seeks to simplify the mapping process while also making it much cheaper to get answers."

The new test, named lipoprotein association fluorometry (LAF), was developed at UQ's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) under the mentorship of Associate Professor Wolfram from the AIBN and the UQ School of Chemical Engineering.

Ghebosu said LAF works by using a fluorescent signal to detect when a "molecular handshake" occurs between cholesterol particles and test agents such as medicines.

Crucially, each test is low cost and delivers results in an hour instead of a week.

"By predicting cholesterol binding to various synthetic nanoparticles—as well as polymers, proteins, peptides, and small molecules—we are better placed to uncover information beneficial to drug development," Ghebosu said.

upstart writes:

Forget Sparta - Leonidas wiped out all 61 drones in the demo:

Drones have become one of the most important elements of modern warfare, which is why finding effective ways of disabling them is so important. US defense technology firm Epirus has developed a countermeasure that could interest a lot of nations: a high-powered microwave (HPM) weapon that recently demonstrated how it can down 49 drones with a single blast.

[...] During the demo, Leonidas successfully disabled all 61 drones taking part. The headline feat was taking down a 49-drone swarm with a single shot.

[...] Because of how cheaply they can be procured, huge numbers of drones are being used in warfare and for reconnaissance. Leonidas' bursts of electromagnetic energy are designed to disable or destroy the electronics inside hostile drones, including swarms.

The latest second-generation of Leonidas introduces gallium nitride semiconductors. This enables a more compact, reliable, and scalable system compared to legacy microwave weapons that relied on bulkier magnetron tubes.

[...] Leonidas' software-defined architecture allows operators to adjust waveforms on the fly, tailoring effects to different targets and minimizing risks to nearby friendly systems. The modular build also means the weapon can be deployed in multiple configurations, from vehicle-mounted platforms to fixed-site defenses.

Epirus has also developed specialized versions of the weapon, such as Leonidas Expeditionary, optimized for rapid deployment by ground forces, and Leonidas H2O, designed for maritime operations capable of disabling small boat motors.

[...] The latest Leonidas weapon comes at a time when AI-powered drone swarms move closer to frontline deployment. Able to fly and fight as one coordinated force, these drones could overwhelm traditional air defenses, which is why HPM weapons are becoming increasingly important.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-graphene-reveals-dome-superconductivity-electric.html

Superconductivity is a phenomenon where certain materials can conduct electricity with zero resistance. Obviously, this has enormous technological advantages, which makes superconductivity one of the most intensely researched fields in the world.

But superconductivity is not straightforward. Take, for example, the double-dome effect. When scientists plot where superconductivity appears in material as they change how many electrons are in it, the material's superconducting regions sometimes look like two separate "domes" on a graph.

In other words, the material becomes superconducting, then stops, then becomes superconducting again as we keep changing its electron density.

Double-dome superconductivity has been seen before in some complex materials, such as graphene. Graphene is essentially a sheet of carbon atoms just one atom thick linked together in a honeycomb pattern. Still, it has transformed the field of quantum materials research because it features some really strange effects.

For example, when we stack two graphene layers and twist them at specific angles, the electrons in the graphene behave in new and unexpected ways, creating quantum phases like magnetism, electrical insulation, and, of course, superconductivity.

But there is an even more complex structure of graphene that takes this further by adding a third layer, making the system even more complex and tunable: Magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene (MATTG). With MATTG, researchers can now observe and control a double-dome pattern of superconductivity that was previously only suspected in graphene systems.

In a new study published in Nature Physics, a team led by Mitali Banerjee at EPFL, together with partners in Switzerland, the U.K., and Japan, has shown that MATTG allows direct control of the double-dome superconductivity pattern. By carefully stacking the layers and adjusting the electric field, the researchers could fine-tune the system and track where superconductivity appeared or disappeared as they varied the number of electrons.

Their experiments, supported by theory, revealed that two distinct superconducting regions—the domes—show up as they gradually changed the electron count in MATTG. The work sheds light on how unconventional superconductivity can be created and controlled in 2D materials.

AnonTechie writes:

Harvard researchers hail quantum computing breakthrough with machine that can run for two hours — atomic loss quashed by experimental design, systems that can run forever just 3 years away

A group of physicists from Harvard and MIT just built a quantum computer that ran continuously for more than two hours. Although it doesn't sound like much versus regular computers (like servers that run 24/7 for months, if not years), this is a huge breakthrough in quantum computing. As reported by The Harvard Crimson, most current quantum computers run for only a few milliseconds, with record-breaking machines only able to operate for a little over 10 seconds.

Although two hours is still a bit limited, researchers say that the concept behind this could allow future quantum computers to run for much longer, maybe even indefinitely. "There is still a way to go and scale from where we are now," says research associate Tout T. Wang, "But the roadmap is now clear based on the breakthrough experiments that we've done here at Harvard."

[Source]: The Harvard Crimson

Original Submission

AI Startup Valuations Raise Bubble Fears as Funding Surges

mrpg writes:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/ai-startup-valuations-raise-bubble-fears-funding-surges-2025-10-03/

Artificial intelligence startups are attracting record sums of venture capital, but some of the world's largest investors warned that early-stage valuations are starting to look frothy, senior investment executives said on Friday.

"There's a little bit of a hype bubble going on in the early-stage venture space," said Bryan Yeo, group chief investment officer at Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC (GIC.UL), as part of a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Asia Summit 2025 in Singapore.

"Any company startup with an AI label will be valued right up there at huge multiples of whatever the small revenue (is)," he said. "That might be fair for some companies and probably not for others."

In the first quarter of 2025, AI startups raised $73.1 billion globally, accounting for 57.9% of all venture capital funding, according to PitchBook. The surge was driven by funding rounds like OpenAI's $40 billion capital raising, as investors raced to catch the AI wave.

"Market expectations could be way ahead of what the technology could deliver," Yeo said. "We're seeing a major AI capex boom today. It is masking some of the potential weaknesses that might be going on in the economy."

Todd Sisitsky, president of alternative asset manager TPG said the fear of missing out is dangerous for investors, though he added that views were divided on whether the AI sector had formed a bubble.

Some AI firms are hitting $100 million in revenue within months, he said, while others in early-stage ventures command valuations at between $400 million and $1.2 billion per employee. He said that was "breathtaking."

And perhaps a case in point? . . .

Database Startup Supabase Notches $5 Billion Valuation in Funding Round

upstart writes:

Database startup Supabase notches $5 billion valuation in funding round - The Economic Times:

Open-source database startup Supabase said on Friday it has secured a valuation of $5 billion in its latest funding round, as investors continue to back companies riding the wave of the artificial intelligence boom.

[...] Supabase is a backend platform that helps developers build applications quickly and has benefited from the rise in AI-powered coding assistants.

The platform is built on the PostgreSQL open-source database, a system for organizing and managing information online.

The latest capital-raise comes just months after Supabase's Series D round, which reportedly valued it at $2 billion.

[...] Coding platforms such as Lovable and Bolt run on Supabase, which caters to more than four million developers. The company's customers also include enterprises such as PwC, McDonald's and Github Next.

"This new financing aims to accelerate Supabase's efforts to become the backend for everyone, from startups to some of the most demanding, data-intensive enterprise workloads," said Caryn Marooney, general partner at investment management firm Coatue.

Also see:
    • Reuters
    • MSN

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-earth-crust-pacific-northwest-necessarily.html

With unprecedented clarity, scientists have directly observed a subduction zone—the collision point where one tectonic plate dives beneath another—actively breaking apart. The discovery, reported in Science Advances, sheds new light on how Earth's surface evolves and raises fresh questions about future earthquake risks in the Pacific Northwest.

Subduction zones are the sites of Earth's most powerful tectonic events. They drive continents across the globe, unleash devastating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and recycle the planet's crust deep into the mantle.

But they don't last forever. If they did, continents would endlessly collide and stack up, erasing oceans and wiping out the record of Earth's past. The big question geologists have wrestled with is: how exactly do these mighty systems finally shut down?

"Getting a subduction zone started is like trying to push a train uphill—it takes a huge effort," said Brandon Shuck, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University and lead author of the study. "But once it's moving, it's like the train is racing downhill, impossible to stop. Ending it requires something dramatic—basically, a train wreck."

[...] Off the coast of Vancouver Island, in a region of Cascadia where the Juan de Fuca and Explorer plates slowly move beneath the North American plate, scientists have found the answer. Using a combination of seismic reflection imaging—essentially an ultrasound of Earth's subsurface—and detailed earthquake records, the team has captured a subduction zone in the process of tearing itself apart.

[...] The researchers sent sound waves from the ship into the seafloor and recorded the echoes using a 15-kilometer-long streamer of underwater listening devices. This produced high-resolution images of faults and fractures deep beneath the ocean floor, revealing places where the plate is snapping.

"This is the first time we have a clear picture of a subduction zone caught in the act of dying," said Shuck. "Rather than shutting down all at once, the plate is ripping apart piece by piece, creating smaller microplates and new boundaries. So instead of a big train wreck, it's like watching a train slowly derail, one car at a time."

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Flock's Gunshot Detection Microphones Will Start Listening for Human Voices

Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network of automated license plate readers spread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for the cities that adopt it: detection of "human distress" via audio. As part of their suite of technologies, Flock has been pushing Raven, their version of acoustic gunshot detection. These devices capture sounds in public places and use machine learning to try to identify gunshots and then alert police—but EFF has long warned that they are also high powered microphones parked above densely-populated city streets. Cities now have one more reason to follow the lead of many other municipalities and cancel their Flock contracts, before this new feature causes civil liberties harms to residents and headaches for cities.

In marketing materials, Flock has been touting new features to their Raven product—including the ability of the device to alert police based on sounds, including "distress." The online ad for the product, which allows cities to apply for early access to the technology, shows the image of police getting an alert for "screaming."

It's unclear how this technology works. For acoustic gunshot detection, generally the microphones are looking for sounds that would signify gunshots (though in practice they often mistake car backfires or fireworks for gunshots). Flock needs to come forward now with an explanation of exactly how their new technology functions. It is unclear how these devices will interact with state "eavesdropping" laws that limit listening to or recording the private conversations that often take place in public.

Flock is no stranger to causing legal challenges for the cities and states that adopt their products. In Illinois, Flock was accused of violating state law by allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal agency, access to license plate reader data taken within the state. That's not all. In 2023, a North Carolina judge halted the installation of Flock cameras statewide for operating in the state without a license. When the city of Evanston, Illinois recently canceled its contract with Flock, it ordered the company to take down their license plate readers–only for Flock to mysteriously reinstall them a few days later. This city has now sent Flock a cease and desist order and in the meantime, has put black tape over the cameras. For some, the technology isn't worth its mounting downsides. As one Illinois village trustee wrote while explaining his vote to cancel the city's contract with Flock, "According to our own Civilian Police Oversight Commission, over 99% of Flock alerts do not result in any police action."

Gunshot detection technology is dangerous enough as it is—police showing up to alerts they think are gunfire only to find children playing with fireworks is a recipe for innocent people to get hurt. This isn't hypothetical: in Chicago a child really was shot at by police who thought they were responding to a shooting thanks to a ShotSpotter alert. Introducing a new feature that allows these pre-installed Raven microphones all over cities to begin listening for human voices in distress is likely to open up a whole new can of unforeseen legal, civil liberties, and even bodily safety consequences.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flocks-gunshot-detection-microphones-will-start-listening-human-voices

Original Submission

upstart writes:

JWST Finds An Exoplanet Around A Pulsar Whose Atmosphere Is All Carbon:

Science advances through data that don't fit our current understanding. At least that was Thomas Kuhn's theory in his famous On the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. So scientists should welcome new data that challenges their understanding of how the universe works. A recent paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) might just had found some data that can do that. It looked at an exoplanet around a millisecond pulsar and found its atmosphere is made up of almost entirely pure carbon.

This type of pulsar, PSR J2322-2650, is known as a "black widow" system, as it powers its high energy outbursts by stealing material from a neighboring star. In this case, that neighboring star has likely been degraded to a "hot Jupiter" companion planet that orbits its parent neutron star every 7.8 hours. A typical "black widow" formation process has two steps - one where the neutron star (which in this case is also a pulsar) steals the material, and a second step where it blasts its companion with high energy gamma radiation, ripping off most of the companion star's outer layers and resulting in a Jupiter-sized exoplanet composed mainly of helium.

The exoplanet around PSR J2322-2650, known as PSR J2322-2650b, does fit the description of a Jupiter-sized planet that seems to have the same density as what would be expected if it was made up primarily of helium. However, its atmosphere is unlike any other black widow companion ever seen. According to the spectrographic reports from JWST, its atmosphere is composed mainly of elemental carbon, taking the form of tricarbon (C3) or dicarbon (C2).

Usually those types of elements are found in the tails of comets, or in actual flames here on Earth. Their presence in a planet's atmosphere, especially in such abundant quantities, is new to science.

Another interesting thing about the planet's atmosphere is the difference between the day and night side. On the dayside, which is always facing the pulsar since the planet is tidally locked, temperatures can reach above 2000 ℃ and there are very clear chemical signatures. However, on the night side, there were almost no features at all, suggesting that side of the planet is covered in soot or something similar that doesn't have any distinct features.

To further prove how strange this planet's atmosphere is, the researchers calculated the ratios between carbon and oxygen as well as carbon and nitrogen. The C/O ratio was over 100, while the C/N ratio was over 10,000. In comparison, the Earth has a C/O ratio of .01 and a C/N ratio of 40. Obviously, there's a lot of carbon on this planet.

And that doesn't fit well with models of how scientists thought the planet should form. As part of the "black widow" process, the outer layers of the planet should have been either siphoned up by the companion star or burned away by that star's radiation. The fact that such a rich carbon atmosphere still exists remains a mystery. There are processes that can create such an atmosphere, such as a white-dwarf merger between [two?] "carbon stars", but even that falls short of explaining how the planet's C/O ratio got so high.

See also:

• A carbon-rich atmosphere on a windy pulsar planet
• JWST Examines Planet With Never Before Seen Carbon Atmosphere

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-livestock-safe-wolves.html

Wolves had long been extinct in parts of Central Europe. Thanks to strict regulations to protect species, in recent decades they have become more widespread again. This brings new challenges: in many areas, protecting farm livestock is essential to prevent animals such as sheep, goats and cattle from being killed by hungry wolves.

An international research team at the University of Göttingen, Humboldt-University zu Berlin (HU), Dresden University of Technology in Germany and KORA in Switzerland recently conducted a survey to find out how farmers feel about measures such as wolf‐repelling electric fences or guard dogs, and whether the availability of subsidies influences this.

The survey showed that the willingness to protect livestock depends primarily on social pressure. Financial support is associated with a greater willingness to use electric fences against wolves. The study is published in the journal People and Nature.

In order to investigate perceptions and intentions regarding protecting their herds, the research team conducted an online survey in 2022 among farmers with grazing animals in Bavaria in Germany. The researchers evaluated the responses of 353 people using the "Theory of Planned Behavior."

This psychological theory maintains that whether someone does something or not depends primarily on how strongly the person is committed to it. Their intention is influenced by three factors: their own attitude ("Do I think it makes sense?"), social pressure ("What do the people around me think?"), and perceived control ("Am I able to do it?").

According to the survey results, the drivers behind farmers' willingness to protect livestock vary depending on the measures. However, social pressure plays the most important role.

More information: Friederike Riesch et al, How to reconcile pasture grazing and wolf recolonisation? Perceptions of management options by livestock farmers in Germany, People and Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1002/pan3.70141

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-bounds-seti.html

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has a data scale problem. There are just too many places to look for an interstellar signal, and even if you're looking in the right place you could be looking at the wrong frequency or at the wrong time. Several strategies have come up to narrow the search given this overabundance of data, and a new paper posted to the arXiv preprint server from Naoki Seto of Kyoto University falls nicely into that category—by using the Brightest Of All Time (BOAT) gamma ray burst, with some help from our own galaxy.

When searching for SETI signals, a civilization has to choose three important factors: where to look, what frequency signal to look for, and when to do so. The same problem is faced by the transmitting side—sending signals strong enough to reach other stars coherently in all directions is extraordinarily energy-intensive. In other words, no sane civilization would do that intentionally for long periods of time. And what if you send the wrong frequency? Or worse yet, hop between frequencies? How would a receiving civilization ever know how to find your signal?

[...] To solve these problems, Dr. Seto, who has also published a paper on anchoring events, suggests a "hybrid" strategy. Instead of using only one event, use two—a "spatial" reference and a "temporal" reference. In the paper, he suggests the spatial reference be the center of the Milky Way, while the temporal reference would be an extremely bright event somewhere outside the galaxy.

The underlying idea is to have a "search ring" centered on the event, in the case that your civilization is looking for signals, and a "transmit ring" exactly opposite the event in the case that your civilization is intending to send them. The diameter of each of these rings grows based on the time since the original burst and the distance from the location to the galactic center. Importantly, the angle between the burst and the galactic center is used to "normalize" the time delay at which a signal would be sent to a specific star system.

[...] Unfortunately, all of this spatial and temporal timing doesn't necessarily coordinate the other variable—frequency. There are some theories that a Schelling point for frequency, such as the Hydrogen Line of 1,420 MHz, where hydrogen shines when undergoing a frequency transition, could be used, but realistically, the receiving civilization would still have to search multiple frequencies over that time.

More information: Naoki Seto, Hybrid Strategy for Coordinated Interstellar Signaling: Linking the Galactic Center and Extragalactic Bursts, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2509.20718

Original Submission