Daily Archives: August 19, 2025

Physicist simulates turning nuclear waste into fusion fuel

Posted on by

[…] The American Chemical Society on Monday shared preliminary findings from Los Alamos physicist Terence Tarnowsky, who has uncovered evidence – albeit from simulations – that the waste from traditional nuclear reactors could be further refined into tritium, turning more than 90,000 metric tons of useless and deadly garbage into a valuable resource.

And by valuable, we mean valuable.

“Right now, the value of commercial tritium is about $15 million per pound [$33 million per kilogram], and the US doesn’t have any domestic capability to create it,” Tarnowsky told the ACS for the announcement of his research, which has yet to be published. According to an abstract of his paper shared with the press release, a 1 GW(th) deuterium–tritium fusion plant would require more than 55 kg of tritium per year.

[…]

According to Tarnowsky’s simulations, all one would need is a particle accelerator to “jump-start atom-splitting reactions” in the waste that would “ultimately produce tritium after a series of other nuclear reactions.”

The idea isn’t new, Tarnowsky admitted, but modern tech finally makes it practical.

According to his research – all simulated thus far, mind you – an accelerator-driven system running at about a gigawatt of thermal power could produce around 2 kilograms of tritium per year, roughly matching the annual commercial output of Canada’s CANDU reactors.

That’s all well and good, but ACS fails to mention some things in the preliminary bit of information it shared ahead of Tarnowsky’s presentation at its Fall expo this week. It’s not clear what the ratio of nuclear waste input to tritium output is, for example. ACS also didn’t mention if there are other byproducts of the process that could be harmful. The org noted in its release that efficiency calculations are the next step Tarnowsky has planned for his ongoing project, and the group didn’t respond to questions before publication.

[…]

Source: Physicist simulates turning nuclear waste into fusion fuel • The Register

US spy chief Gabbard says UK agreed to drop ‘backdoor’ mandate for Apple

Posted on by

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Monday the UK had agreed to drop its mandate for iPhone maker Apple to provide a “backdoor” that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens.

Gabbard issued the statement on X

saying she had worked for months with Britain, along with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance to arrive at a deal.

[…]

U.S. lawmakers said in May that the UK’s order to Apple to create a backdoor to its encrypted user data could be exploited by cybercriminals and authoritarian governments.
Apple, which has said it would never build such access into its encrypted services or devices, had challenged the order at the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT).
The iPhone maker withdrew its Advanced Data Protection feature for UK users in February following the UK order. Users of Apple’s iPhones, Macs and other devices can enable the feature to ensure that only they — and not even Apple — can unlock data stored on its cloud.
U.S. officials said earlier this year they were examining whether the UK broke a bilateral agreement by demanding that Apple build a backdoor allowing the British government to access backups of data in the company’s encrypted cloud storage systems.
In a letter dated February 25 to U.S. lawmakers, Gabbard said the U.S. was examining whether the UK government had violated the CLOUD Act, which bars it from issuing demands for the data of U.S. citizens and vice versa.
Cybersecurity experts told Reuters that if Apple chose to build a backdoor for a government, that backdoor would eventually be found and exploited by hackers.
[…]

Source: US spy chief Gabbard says UK agreed to drop ‘backdoor’ mandate for Apple | Reuters

Forget LASIK: Safer, cheaper vision correction could be coming soon

Posted on by

[…] In the body, the shapes of many collagen-containing tissues, including corneas, are held in place by attractions of oppositely charged components. These tissues contain a lot of water, so applying an electric potential to them lowers the tissue’s pH, making it more acidic. By altering the pH, the rigid attractions within the tissue are loosened and make the shape malleable. When the original pH is restored, the tissue is locked into the new shape.

Previously, the researchers used EMR to reshape cartilage-rich rabbit ears, as well as alter scars and skin in pigs. But one collagen-rich tissue that they were eager to explore was the cornea.

In this work, the team constructed specialized, platinum “contact lenses” that provided a template for the corrected shape of the cornea, then placed each over a rabbit eyeball in a saline solution meant to mimic natural tears. The platinum lens acted as an electrode to generate a precise pH change when the researchers applied a small electric potential to the lens. After about a minute, the cornea’s curvature conformed to the shape of the lens — about the same amount of time LASIK takes, but with fewer steps, less expensive equipment and no incisions.

They repeated this setup on 12 separate rabbit eyeballs, 10 of which were treated as if they had myopia, or nearsightedness. In all the “myopic” eyeballs, the treatment dialed in the targeted focusing power of the eye, which would correspond to improved vision. The cells in the eyeball survived the treatment, because the researchers carefully controlled the pH gradient. Additionally, in other experiments, the team demonstrated that their technique might be able to reverse some chemical-caused cloudiness to the cornea — a condition that is currently only treatable through a complete corneal transplant.

Though this initial work is promising, the researchers emphasize that it is in its very early stages. Next up is what Wong describes as, “the long march through animal studies that are detailed and precise,” including tests on a living rabbit rather than just its eyeball. They also plan to determine the types of vision correction possible with EMR, such as near- and far-sightedness and astigmatism. Though the next steps are planned, uncertainties in the team’s scientific funding have put them on hold.

[…]

Source: Forget LASIK: Safer, cheaper vision correction could be coming soon | ScienceDaily

A new mRNA cancer vaccine just wiped out tumors in mice

Posted on by

An experimental mRNA vaccine boosted the tumor-fighting effects of immunotherapy in a mouse-model study, bringing researchers one step closer to their goal of developing a universal vaccine to “wake up” the immune system against cancer.

Published recently in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the University of Florida study showed that like a one-two punch, pairing the test vaccine with common anticancer drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors triggered a strong antitumor response.

A surprising element, researchers said, was that they achieved the promising results not by attacking a specific target protein expressed in the tumor, but by simply revving up the immune system — spurring it to respond as if fighting a virus. They did this by stimulating the expression of a protein called PD-L1 inside of tumors, making them more receptive to treatment. The research was supported by multiple federal agencies and foundations, including the National Institutes of Health.

[…]

“This paper describes a very unexpected and exciting observation: that even a vaccine not specific to any particular tumor or virus — so long as it is an mRNA vaccine — could lead to tumor-specific effects,” said Sayour, principal investigator at the RNA Engineering Laboratory within UF’s Preston A. Wells Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy.

“This finding is a proof of concept that these vaccines potentially could be commercialized as universal cancer vaccines to sensitize the immune system against a patient’s individual tumor,” said Sayour, a McKnight Brain Institute investigator and co-leader of a program in immuno-oncology and microbiome research.

Until now, there have been two main ideas in cancer-vaccine development: To find a specific target expressed in many people with cancer, or to tailor a vaccine that is specific to targets expressed within a patient’s own cancer.

“This study suggests a third emerging paradigm,” said Duane Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D., a co-author of the paper. “What we found is by using a vaccine designed not to target cancer specifically but rather to stimulate a strong immunologic response, we could elicit a very strong anticancer reaction. And so this has significant potential to be broadly used across cancer patients — even possibly leading us to an off-the-shelf cancer vaccine.”

[…]

Source: A new cancer vaccine just wiped out tumors in mice | ScienceDaily

Boffins release 5G traffic sniffing tool

Posted on by

“Sni5Gect [is] a framework that sniffs messages from pre-authentication 5G communication in real-time,” the researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design explained of their work, presented this week at the 34th USENIX security bash, “and injects targeted attack payload in downlink communication towards the UE [User Equipment, i.e. a phone].”

Designed to take advantage of the period just after a device connects to a 5G network and is still in the process of handshaking and authentication – which, the team points out, can occur when entering or leaving a lift, disembarking a plane and turning aeroplane mode off, or even passing through a tunnel or parking garage – Sni5Gect takes advantage of unencrypted messaging between the base station and a target handset.

“Since messages exchanged between the gNB [Next-Generation Node B, the base station] and the UE are not encrypted before the security context is established (pre-authentication state),” the researchers wrote, “an attacker does not require knowledge of the UE’s credentials to sniff uplink/downlink [traffic] nor to inject messages without integrity protection throughout the UE connection procedure.”

That’s a flaw, and one the framework is designed to exploit. The team’s testing showed it capable of sniffing both uplink and downlink traffic with more than 80 percent accuracy, at ranges of up to 20 meters between an off-the-shelf software-defined radio and the target mobile. For packet injection, the success rate varied between 70-90 percent – and delivered, among other things, proof of a novel downgrade attack by which a ne’er-do-well equipped with Sni5Gect could downgrade a connection from 5G to 4G to reduce its security and carry out further surveillance and attacks.

As Sni5Gect works in real-time, its creators have claimed, and can inject attack payloads, including multi-stage attacks, based on protocol state, it’s suited to fingerprinting, denial-of-service attacks, and downgrading.

“To the best of our knowledge,” they wrote in their paper’s introduction [PDF], “Sni5Gect is the first framework that empowers researchers with both over-the-air sniffing and stateful injection capabilities, without requiring a rogue gNB [base station].”

[…]

Not all of the capabilities claimed in the team’s paper have been fully disclosed, however. The team has kept private “other serious exploits leveraging the framework,” in order to “avoid abusing SNI5Gect to launch attacks against people’s smartphones[s].” These exploits, it is claimed, will be made available only to “trusted institutions like universities and research institutions” upon application and verification of their legitimate interest.

[…]

More information, including a link to the open-access paper, is available on the project website.

Source: Boffins release 5G traffic sniffing tool • The Register

Find the git repository here

Gamblers Now Bet on AI Models Like Racehorses

Posted on by

Now that AI developers are getting paid like pro athletes, it’s fitting that fans are placing big bets on how well they’re doing their jobs.

On Kalshi, Polymarket and other sites where people wager “predictions” on real-world events, gamblers lay down millions each month on their picks for AI’s top model.

The AI arms race is playing out in plain sight on social media, ranking sites and obscure corners of the internet where enthusiasts hunt for clues. The constant buzz makes the topic appealing for wagers, though not every scrap of information is meaningful.

[…]

Trading volume across AI prediction markets has surged to around $20 million this month. Kalshi, the only platform currently available in the U.S., is seeing 10 times the volume on AI trades compared with the start of the year, a spokesman says.

Each bet, or “contract,” is priced in cents to reflect the odds: McCoy bought thousands of Gemini contracts at around 40 cents, meaning it had a 40% chance of winning. If the bet had settled and Gemini won, McCoy’s 40 cents would become a dollar. If Gemini lost, McCoy would lose it all.

But much of the action happens before the final outcome. As more people piled into the Gemini bet, the contract price rose. McCoy sold when it had reached 87 cents. It’s like betting on a sports match, only with the option to cash out when the odds rise in favor of your bet.

[…]

Strategies vary. Some bet on the big industry players, others buy low on less-known or soon-to-be-updated models. Some compare odds on Kalshi and Polymarket to find arbitrage opportunities in the odds.

As volume for these AI trades continues to grow, the incentive for good information will only increase, and the squeeze on casual bettors will get tighter, says Robin Hanson, a professor of economics at George Mason University.

“When you have better information in these kinds of markets, you can make better decisions,” Hanson says. “If you know a little more, you make more money.”

[…]

Source: Gamblers Now Bet on AI Models Like Racehorses