Most laser sources produce Gaussian beams that diverge as they propagate. This natural spreading limits their effectiveness in applications that require light to remain concentrated over long distances. To overcome this challenge, structured light beams have been developed, whose amplitude, phase, and polarization can be carefully controlled.

Among these are Bessel beams, which are generated by the self-interference of laser beams as they propagate through space. However, ideal Bessel beams possess complex ring structures that complicate their practical use. Additionally, existing methods for generating advanced beam shapes, such as optical bottle beams, often involve complex and expensive setups that necessitate precise alignment.

Now, researchers at Chiba University, Japan, have developed a simple and compact method to generate a laser chain beam that remains nondiffracting during free-space propagation.

Researchers have discovered that perovskite crystals can rapidly and reversibly change shape when exposed to light, revealing a unique behavior not seen in traditional semiconductors.

Acoustic waves can be guided through a narrow “tunnel” that lacks walls and thus presents no obstruction to sound traveling across its path.

Researchers have devised a “ghost tunnel”—a nearly perfect waveguide for sound that allows other sound waves to pass across its path undisturbed [1]. The tunnel is essentially invisible to external waves. The researchers expect the 2D acoustic structure to find use in situations such as complex sonar devices, where multiple signal channels must cross without interacting.

The hard walls of metal pipes and other ordinary waveguides keep sound trapped inside, but they also present obstructions that scatter external sound waves. This scattering can be a major problem in environments such as integrated acoustic circuits or sonar applications, where sound waves are propagating in multiple directions outside of waveguides. These nonguided waves can potentially suffer from signal-clarity degradation.

Representing bird flocks and insect swarms as nodes connected in a complex structure yields new insights into animal collective behavior.

UNC1069 compromised Axios 1.14.1 and 0.30.4 via social engineering, impacting 100M weekly downloads and exposing supply chains.

SparkCat resurfaces in three app store apps, scanning crypto wallet images via OCR, increasing global risk.

A new report dubbed “BrowserGate” warns that Microsoft’s LinkedIn is using hidden JavaScript scripts on its website to scan visitors’ browsers for installed extensions and collect device data.

According to a report by Fairlinked e. V., which claims to be an association of commercial LinkedIn users, Microsoft’s platform injects JavaScript into user sessions that checks for thousands of browser extensions and links the results to identifiable user profiles.

The author claims that this behavior is used to collect sensitive personal and corporate information, as LinkedIn accounts are tied to real identities, employers, and job roles.

Microsoft is investigating and working to resolve Exchange Online mailbox access issues that have intermittently affected Outlook mobile and macOS users for weeks.

When it first acknowledged this service issue (tracked under EX1256020) last week, Microsoft said it started on March 11 and that the root cause was a newly introduced virtual account. While the company flagged it as resolved on April 1, the incident has been re-added to the admin message center under a different tag (EX1268771).

“We’ve received reports from affected tenants that the impact scenario originally communicated through SHD EX1256020 is still ongoing. We’re working to restart the Notification Broker service on affected portions of Exchange Online service infrastructure to remediate impact while we continue our analysis into the underlying root cause,” Microsoft says.

A former core infrastructure engineer has pleaded guilty to locking Windows admins out of 254 servers as part of a failed extortion plot targeting his employer, an industrial company headquartered in Somerset County, New Jersey.

According to court documents, 57-year-old Daniel Rhyne from Kansas City, Missouri, remotely accessed the company’s network without authorization using an administrator account between November 9 and November 25.

Throughout this time, he allegedly scheduled tasks on the company’s Windows domain controller to delete network admin accounts and to change the passwords for 13 domain admin accounts and 301 domain user accounts to “TheFr0zenCrew!”

In a society increasingly shaped by self-checkouts, GPS navigation and touchscreen ordering kiosks, new research shows face-to-face conversation may be quietly fading. A new study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science suggests that people are losing 338 spoken words every year and have been for at least a decade and a half.

Matthias Mehl, a psychology professor at the University of Arizona, has spent his career studying how people communicate in everyday life. When he set out to replicate his landmark 2007 Science paper on gender differences in talkativeness, the results pointed to something he hadn’t gone looking for: a steady, years-long decline in how much people speak each day.

For this study, Mehl collaborated with Valeria Pfeifer, an assistant professor of psychology and counseling at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and the study’s first author. Mehl spoke with the University of Arizona News about the accidental discovery, what it means for social connection, and why losing a few hundred words per day each year matters more than it seems.