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A gene that keeps intestinal stem cells stable offers insight into how tissues repair themselves

Years before he conducted the research that would earn him a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, Shinya Yamanaka, MD, Ph.D., was a postdoctoral scientist at Gladstone Institutes, studying genes. There, he helped discover a gene (now called eIF4G2) that’s essential for early embryonic development.

Then, the story pauses. Without the technology needed to develop an animal model to further investigate the gene, Yamanaka moved on to develop induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells—adult cells that have been reprogrammed into an embryonic state. That work earned him the Nobel Prize, but he never forgot his first gene.

Now, 30 years since his postdoc, Yamanaka has circled back to eIF4G2.

LED light unlocks 3D optical fingerprints inside materials without lasers

Researchers have developed, for the first time in the world, incoherent dielectric tensor tomography (iDTT), a technology that can read complex three-dimensional optical fingerprints inside materials using only everyday LED illumination.

The study is published in Nature Photonics, and the research team was led by Professor YongKeun Park of the Department of Physics, in collaboration with Professor Seung-Mo Hong’s team at Asan Medical Center and Professor Seokwoo Jeon’s team at Korea University.

Some materials possess an inherent property called optical anisotropy, in which the refractive index changes depending on the direction in which light passes through. This is a decisive optical fingerprint that reveals the internal structure and molecular arrangement of the material.

Photonics advance could enable compact, high-performance lidar sensors

Lidar systems use pulses of infrared light to measure distance and map a 3D scene with high resolution, allowing autonomous vehicles to rapidly react to obstacles that appear in their path. But traditional lidar sensors are expensive, bulky systems with many moving parts that degrade over time, limiting how the sensors can be deployed.

A new study from MIT researchers could help to enable next-generation lidar sensors that are compact, durable, and have no moving parts. The key advance is a novel design for a silicon-photonics chip, which is a semiconductor device that manipulates light rather than electricity.

Typically, such silicon-photonics chip-based systems have a restricted field of view, so a silicon-photonics-based lidar would not be able to scan angles in the periphery. Existing workarounds to this problem increase noise and hamper precision.

Team steers electron spin ballistically in graphene

Researchers at The University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute have shown that electrons in ultra-clean graphene can be steered with high precision while keeping their spin information intact, a key requirement for future low-power electronics and quantum devices.

In a new study published in Physical Review X, the team demonstrates how electrons can travel ballistically, i.e. without experiencing any scattering or resistance, over micrometer distances in graphene at low temperature and maintain spin coherence all the way up to room temperature.

By using a technique known as transverse magnetic focusing (TMF), they were able to bend electron trajectories like light rays traversing a lens and show that these curved paths carry a clear spin signature.

This Tiny World in the Outer Solar System Should Be Airless, but It Has an Atmosphere

A tiny world in our Solar System has an atmosphere it shouldn’t—hinting something dramatic happened there recently.

A group of Japanese astronomers, including both professionals and amateur observers, has found signs of a thin atmosphere surrounding a small object far beyond Neptune. The discovery is surprising because the object is so small that it should not be able to hold onto gas for long. This raises new questions about when the atmosphere formed and what is keeping it there. Additional observations will be needed to better understand this unusual finding.

Why most trans-neptunian objects are airless.

Canvas login portals hacked in mass ShinyHunters extortion campaign

The ShinyHunters extortion gang has breached education technology giant Instructure again, this time exploiting a vulnerability to deface Canvas login portals for hundreds of colleges and universities.

The defacements, which were visible for roughly 30 minutes before being taken offline, displayed a message from ShinyHunters claiming responsibility for the earlier Instructure breach and threatening to leak stolen data if a ransom is not paid.

The message warns that Instructure and schools have until May 12 to contact them to negotiate a ransom, or students’ data will be leaked.

New TCLBanker malware self-spreads over WhatsApp and Outlook

A new trojan named TCLBanker, which targets 59 banking, fintech, and cryptocurrency platforms, uses a trojanized MSI installer for Logitech AI Prompt Builder to infect systems.

Additionally, the malware includes self-spreading worm modules for WhatsApp and Outlook that automatically infect new victims.

The new banking trojan was discovered by Elastic Security Labs, whose researchers believe it’s a major evolution of the older Maverick/Sorvepotel malware family.

Webinar: Why modern attacks require both security and recovery

Modern cyberattacks are designed to bypass traditional security controls, with phishing and business email compromise campaigns becoming increasingly personalized and difficult to detect.

However, the challenge for MSPs does not end once an attacker gains access. Many organizations lack the recovery planning and backup strategies needed to quickly restore operations after ransomware, SaaS compromise, or destructive attacks.

This webinar will examine where traditional MSP security strategies fall short after initial compromise, and why cyber resilience now depends on combining strong defenses with rapid recovery capabilities.

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