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According to the Action Program on Waste and Resources, UK households produce an estimated 4.7 million tonnes of food waste every year. However, single-use plastic packaging used to reduce food waste poses an even more insidious problem. Once discarded, the single-use plastics that cushion, seal, protect and extend the shelf life of our groceries can remain in landfills, underground, rivers and ocean beds for centuries. Increased plastic waste can destroy ecosystems, negatively impact food security by worsening animal health, and cause health problems for people. The scale of the plastic waste problem Approximately 90 billion pieces of plastic packaging are…
In a major step forward in the global fight against drug-resistant bacteria, chemists at the University of Warwick and Monash University have discovered a powerful new antibiotic that could help tackle some of the world’s deadliest infections. This compound, called premethylenenomycin C-lactone, has shown potent activity against notorious pathogens such as MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and VRE (Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus), two of the most difficult to treat nosocomial infections. The discovery, made through the Monash Warwick Alliance’s Combating Emerging Superbug Threats initiative, could be the start of a new approach to antibiotic discovery. It could breathe new life into a field…
Skywatchers will see the year’s largest and brightest full moon next week. The Beaver Moon, which will be full on Wednesday, November 5th at 8:19 a.m. ET, will be the second of three consecutive supermoons to occur in 2025.This year’s largest supermoon will be approximately 221,818 miles (356,980 kilometers) from Earth, making it the closest full moon this year, according to AstroPixels. This makes it the closest full moon since February 2019.The Beaver Moon is the name commonly given to November’s full moon in North America. According to Timeanddate, the name comes from the time of year when nocturnal beavers…
October 31, 2025Ravi LakshmananVulnerability/Threat Intelligence The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), along with international partners in Australia and Canada, have released guidance for hardening on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server instances from potential abuse. “By restricting administrative access, implementing multi-factor authentication, enforcing strict transport security configurations, and adopting Zero Trust (ZT) security model principles, organizations can significantly strengthen their defenses against potential cyberattacks,” CISA said. The agencies said malicious activity targeting Microsoft Exchange Server continues to occur, with unprotected and misconfigured instances facing the brunt of the attack. We recommend that organizations retire on-premises…
Sellafield teams have successfully removed 70 tonnes of radioactive waste from one of Sellafield’s most hazardous legacy facilities, the Magnox Chip Storage Silo. Removing radioactive waste from this legacy facility is a key step forward in one of the UK’s most difficult nuclear decommissioning operations, as it provides long-term safe interim storage for the waste. But as is often the case with nuclear decommissioning efforts, success comes with challenges. Phil Reeve, head of legacy silos at Sellafield, explained: “As we scooped the waste out of compartment 10 of the silo, we dug a seven meter crater in its centre. This…
October 31, 2025Ravi LakshmananMalware/Secure Coding The Eclipse Foundation, which manages the open source Open VSX project, said it has taken steps to revoke a small number of tokens that were leaked within a Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension published in the marketplace. This action follows a report from cloud security firm Wiz earlier this month that found that several extensions in both Microsoft’s VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX inadvertently exposed access tokens in public repositories, potentially allowing malicious parties to seize control and distribute malware, effectively contaminating the extension supply chain. “Through our investigation, we have determined that…
October 31, 2025Ravi LakshmananVulnerability/Cyber attack The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a high-severity security flaw affecting Broadcom VMware Tools and VMware Aria Operations to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog after receiving reports of it being exploited in the wild. The vulnerability in question, CVE-2025-41244 (CVSS score: 7.8), could be exploited by an attacker to gain root-level privileges on an affected system. “Broadcom VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools contain privileges with defined unsafe action vulnerabilities,” CISA said in the alert. “A malicious local attacker with non-administrative privileges who has access to a VM with…
High-performance tetrahedral materials produced in a scalable manner support the EU’s leadership in thermoelectric innovation. The START project is driving European innovation in thermoelectric (TE) materials by pioneering the use of tellurium-free tetrahedrite (TH) materials sourced from mine waste. With strong alignment with EU sustainability goals and circular economy principles, START is entering a pivotal phase, preparing to assemble its first prototype device and taking a major step towards market readiness. As already detailed in a previous article¹, this Horizon Europe project will leverage the consortium’s wide range of experience and innovation, from geology to mineral processing, compositional design and…
Thank you to everyone who made this year’s San Francisco event what it was, and to the 10,000 people who filled the halls, made connections, and walked away with more than they expected. Couldn’t you? The image below shows part of the story. Until next year. Vinod Khosla told attendees he disagreed with the argument that enhanced AI would doom efforts to tackle climate change. He said geothermal energy is just around the corner, but nuclear fusion is even further away. He also touched on areas of agreement (deregulation) and disagreements (immigration) with Trump, and said with a laugh, “One…
October 31, 2025hacker newsEndpoint security/network security A design company is editing a new campaign video on a MacBook Pro. A creative director opens a collaboration app that quietly requests microphone and camera permissions. MacOS is supposed to flag this, but the checks are lax in this case. The app gets access anyway. Another Mac in the same office has file sharing enabled over an older protocol called SMB version 1. It’s fast and convenient, but outdated and vulnerable. If the endpoint is exposed to the internet, an attacker can exploit this in minutes. Configuration oversights like this occur every day,…