How Secure is your Wi-Fi Network? Research uncovers major vulnerability in wireless networking technology

How secure is your Wi-Fi network? Research uncovers major vulnerability in wireless networking technology
Picture and layout of the experimental testbed. Credit: How to BREAK MU-MIMO Precoding in IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi Networks (2025)

We often take for granted just how ubiquitous Wi-Fi has become over the past two decades, explains Northeastern University electrical and computer engineering professor Francesco Restuccia, who is also a member of the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things.

Wi-Fi provides wireless connectivity to more than 20 billion devices around the globe, including smartphones, laptops, game consoles, and smart TVs. And for most people, Wi-Fi works so smoothly it almost feels magical.

“It’s one of the most pervasive technologies ever invented by mankind,” Restuccia says. “We seamlessly utilize Wi-Fi every day without even knowing we are...

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High-Resolution Simulations Explore the Physics of Star Formation

Rocking the magnetic cradle of stellar birth
The new simulations show a cross section of the star and its surrounding disk of gas. In the left image, where the young star is weakly magnetized, gas can be seen flowing freely from the surrounding disk of material to the surface of the protostar. In the right image, material flows along the magnetic field lines towards the star’s poles, in a much more defined flow. Credit: Astronomy & Astrophysics (2024). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202451842

Stars are born in clouds of gas and dust, making it difficult to observe their early development. But researchers at Chalmers have now succeeded in simulating how a star with the mass of the sun absorbs material from the surrounding disk of material—a process called accretion.

The researchers simulated four stars with the same mass but with v...

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Words Activate Hidden Brain Processes Shaping Emotions, Decisions and Behavior

Words activate hidden brain processes shaping emotions, decisions, and behavior
Emotional words evoke region- and valence-specific patterns of concurrent neuromodulator release in the human thalamus and cortex. Batten et al/Cell Reports. Credit: Batten et al/Cell Reports

In an unprecedented new study, researchers have shown neurotransmitters in the human brain are released during the processing of the emotional content of language, providing new insights into how people interpret the significance of words.

The work, conducted by an international team led by Virginia Tech scientists, offers deeper understanding into how language influences human choices and mental health.

Spearheaded by computational neuroscientist Read Montague, a professor of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and director of the institute’s Center for Human Neuroscience Resear...

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Discovery of New Class of Particles could take Quantum Mechanics One Step Further

Discovery of new of particles could take quantum mechanics one step further
Excitonic pairing and fractional quantum Hall effect in quantum Hall bilayer. Credit: Naiyuan J. Zhang et al,

Amid the many mysteries of quantum physics, subatomic particles don’t always follow the rules of the physical world. They can exist in two places at once, pass through solid barriers and even communicate across vast distances instantaneously. These behaviors may seem impossible, but in the quantum realm, scientists are exploring an array of properties once thought impossible.

In a new study, physicists at Brown University have now observed a novel class of quantum particles called fractional excitons, which behave in unexpected ways and could significantly expand scientists’ understanding of the quantum realm.

“Our findings point toward an entirely new class of quantum pa...

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