The device needs to be plugged into a port inside the plane’s belly – an action that the researchers estimate would take under 60 seconds. This would require access to the aircraft either when parked at a gate or when in an airport hangar during regular maintenance. Access to these areas is controlled carefully but not always successfully, the computer scientists note in the new paper. The researchers successfully demonstrated the attack on a testbed made of actual Boeing 737 airplane parts and airplane software.

SPIE proudly announces that it is now accepting submissions for Advanced Quantum Photonics (AQP), the scholarly publisher’s newest journal. As the first peer-reviewed journal for applied quantum research, AQP fills a critical gap in the quantum research publishing landscape, enabling collaboration and further advancing this critical field. Launching AQP was a natural extension of the growing support and opportunities SPIE offers to meet the demands of this rapidly evolving field.

A team led by researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands has pioneered a new way to study how ions diffuse in solid materials, essential knowledge for technologies including batteries, electronics and chemical catalysts. The team, which included researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), created a “tracer exchange” technique similar to the isotope tracking used to follow individual atoms through chemical reactions or cellular processes. Their results were published in Nature Communications.

Buildings today typically rely on separate systems to provide electricity, heating and cooling. A research team at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has now developed a hybrid energy system that delivers all three simultaneously from the same surface by combining solar energy with the coldness of outer space. At the heart of the system is a transparent cooling layer that radiates heat into outer space as infrared radiation while allowing sunlight to pass through. The researchers successfully demonstrated the concept with a prototype under outdoor conditions and see it as a potential building block for multifunctional building envelopes. Results in Cell Reports Physical Science. (DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2026.103492)

GPS-tracked barred owls in northwestern California selected the tallest, oldest forest, putting nearly two-thirds of each home range inside mapped spotted owl habitat. Removals have freed more than 1,800 square kilometers for spotted owl recolonization.

This research explores a new wireless implantable device designed to improve photodynamic therapy (PDT) for cancer treatment, particularly bladder cancer. By delivering light directly inside the body without wires, the system helps overcome the challenge of limited light penetration in traditional PDT. The study shows that the device can successfully generate the key molecules needed to destroy cancer cells, offering a promising step toward more precise, less invasive treatments in the future. 

Adding iron to the ocean can cause plankton to absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere. However, the effect depends on where in the world the method is used, and it can have far-reaching consequences for marine ecosystems and food chains, according to a new study in Nature.