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Aza Raskin a inventé le défilement infini. Aujourd’hui, il regrette son impact sur les humains, et encore plus avec la progression fulgurante de l’IA sur les réseaux sociaux.

L'Australie célèbre l'interdiction des médias sociaux pour les moins de 16 ans. Mais il s'agit là d'un boomerang qui pousse les jeunes dans des zones d'ombre. Cela crée ainsi une dangereuse illusion de sécurité : les contenus nuisibles continuent d'être partagés... là où l'algorithme est aveugle !

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Xiaomi redouble d'efforts pour implémenter Android 16 grâce à HyperOS 3.0. Ainsi, les anciens modèles de smartphones Xiaomi font enfin partie du mouvement. Avons-nous là le cycle de mise à jour Android le plus ambitieux de l'entreprise à ce jour ?

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A total of 14 physics-based firms in sectors from quantum and energy to healthcare and aerospace have won 2025 Business Awards from the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World. The awards were presented at a reception in the Palace of Westminster yesterday attended by senior parliamentarians and policymakers as well as investors, funders and industry leaders.

The IOP Business Awards, which have been running since 2012, recognise the role that physics and physicists play in the economy, creating jobs and growth “by powering innovation to meet the challenges facing us today, ranging from climate change to better healthcare and food production”. More than 100 firms have now won Business Awards, with around 90% of those companies still commercially active.

The parliamentary event honouring the 2025 winners were hosted by Dave Robertson, the Labour MP for Lichfield, who spent 10 years as a physics teacher in Birmingham before working for teaching unions. There was also a speech from Baron Sharma, who studied applied physics before moving into finance and later becoming a Conservative MP, Cabinet minister and president of the COP-26 climate summit.

Seven firms were awarded 2025 IOP Business Innovation Awards, which recognize companies that have “delivered significant economic and/or societal impact through the application of physics”. They include Oxford-based Tokamak Energy, which has developed “compact, powerful, robust, quench-resilient” high-temperature superconducting magnets for commercial fusion energy and for  propulsion systems, accelerators and scientific instruments.

Oxford Instruments was honoured for developing a novel analytical technique for scanning electron microscopes, enabling new capabilities and accelerating time to results by at least an order of magnitude. Ionoptika, meanwhile, was recognized for developing Q-One, which is a new generation of focused ion-beam instrumentation, providing single atom through to high-dose nanoscale advanced materials engineering for photonic and quantum technologies.

The other four winners were: electronics firm FlexEnable for their organic transistor materials; Lynkeos Technology for the development of muonography in the nuclear industry; the renewable energy company Sunamp for their thermal storage system; and the defence and security giant Thales UK for the development of a solid-state laser for laser rangefinders.

Business potential

Six other companies have won an IOP Start-up Award, which celebrates young companies “with a great business idea founded on a physics invention, with the potential for business growth and significant societal impact”. They include Astron Systems for developing “long-lifetime turbomachinery to enable multi-reuse small rocket engines and bring about fully reusable small launch vehicles”, along with MirZyme Therapeutics for “pioneering diagnostics and therapeutics to eliminate preeclampsia and transform maternal health”.

The other four winners were: Celtic Terahertz Technology for a metamaterial filter technology; Nellie Technologies for a algae-based carbon removal technology; Quantum Science for their development of short-wave infrared quantum dot technology; and Wayland Additive for the development and commercialisation of charge-neutralised electron beam metal additive manufacturing.

James McKenzie, a former vice-president for business at the IOP, who was involved in judging the awards, says that all awardees are “worthy winners”. “It’s the passion, skill and enthusiasm that always impresses me,” McKenzie told Physics World.

iFAST Diagnostics were also awarded the IOP Lee Lucas Award that recognises early-stage companies taking innovative products into the medical and healthcare sector. The firm, which was spun out of the University of Southampton, develops blood tests that can test the treatment of bacterial infections in a matter of hours rather than days. They are expecting to have approval for testing next year.

“Especially inspiring was the team behind iFAST,” adds McKenzie, “who developed a method to test very rapid tests cutting time from 48 hours to three hours, so patients can be given the right antibiotics.”

“The award-winning businesses are all outstanding examples of what can be achieved when we build upon the strengths we have, and drive innovation off the back of our world-leading discovery science,” noted Tom Grinyer, IOP chief executive officer. “In the coming years, physics will continue to shape our lives, and we have some great strengths to build upon here in the UK, not only in specific sectors such as quantum, semiconductors and the green economy, but in our strong academic research and innovation base, our growing pipeline of spin-out and early-stage companies, our international collaborations and our growing venture capital community.”

For the full list of winners, see here.

The post Institute of Physics celebrates 2025 Business Award winners at parliamentary event appeared first on Physics World.

As series go, Thief boasts quite the checkered history. Originally born of Looking Glass Studios, the first two entries are celebrated as helping pioneer the Immersive Sim genre. The latter was also Looking Glass' swansong. Then the next two entries were the fairly divisive Thief: Deadly Shadows (also Ion Storm's swansong) and Eidos Montreal's THIEF (2014), which left things uncertain if we'd ever see a return to Garrett's gloomy, snarkily charming world of steampunk thievery. Yet here we are with Maze Theory's Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow.

And incredibly – they pulled it off! Mostly. It wouldn't be a Thief game without some jank, and we'll get to that shortly. Regardless, I'm truly astonished at how well Legacy of Shadow weaves the old world with the new. Whether this is your first time with the series or you've been following along since the Y2K days, there's reason to strap your headset on for this one.

Now a little additional context is in order. You see, it was always hinted that THIEF (2014) wasn't actually a hard reboot. There are nods to the world of the first three games as ancient history. If anything, there are some hints to suggest that Garrett's hometown possibly operates on Legend of Zelda reincarnation rules. And without getting into spoilers... I like the way Maze Theory finally addresses this. Set in the centuries between the third and fourth games, there's just enough connective tissue to make things work.

I believe Maze Theory knew they were dealing with a fanbase that pays attention to these details. The nods made here aren't simply for show, but elaborate on the early years of the Northcrest family's dogmatic, tyrannical reign over The City. In turn, the dialogue between new protagonist Magpie and Garrett (voiced perfectly as always by Stephen Russell from the original trilogy), is sharply written. There's no profound takeaways here, but what's delivered is satisfying.

That's well and good, but all the loving appreciation for a setting wouldn't be worth a guard's coin purse if the game played poorly. Fortunately, Legacy of Shadow is superb – when it's working properly. The goal is simple: grab everything not nailed down worth any coin, accomplish whatever primary objectives are set before you, and maybe tackle a few secondary goals if you're up for more of a challenge. It feels far more like free-form puzzle solving than an archery game, which is a relief because that's how Thief should feel.

Seeing as Magpie is still a rather young thief, she stumbles more often and has far fewer resources. She has to skulk around in the shadows carefully. Direct confrontations are best avoided entirely, as even in a best-case scenario, you'll take more hits than it's worth. Instead, to ensure they stay hidden, you can whip out a bow with a limited arsenal of arrows, a nightstick for knocking out most (but not all types of) enemies, activate a special vision mode that highlights tactically advantageous things, and surprisingly... you can wield your voice.

I was dubious at first of that final option, remembering how ill-fated other attempts in gaming's past have failed at incorporating voice input. And yet, Legacy of Shadow makes great use of it. You can limit it to just being able to blow, which lets you summon a friendly bird for some extra coin or lure guards, and blow out candles. With the fully immersive setting on, any talking is translated into a noise in-game that can tip enemies off to your presence. Cursing under your breath can actually lead to you jumping when someone suddenly and audibly responds to it – a welcome inclusion. That said, it's probably best to turn it off if you've got family talking in the background.

The special vision mode is a returning feature from THIEF (2014), though in a very different form. In the prior game, it's essentially a super-thief mode moderated by a limited use meter that has to be refilled manually. It could also be upgraded. That's not how it works in Legacy of Shadow. Here it's infinitely usable, but overheats if used for too long, and is demonstrably less powerful. It's most effective at identifying lootable items you may have missed and tracing electrical circuits to disable some security tech. No super speed pick-pocketing. Sometimes it can reveal hints left by a mysterious new organization reminiscent of the Keepers of the original Thief trilogy.

Magpie's bow is a bit more of a mixed bag. The biggest issue is it starts off so limited that you'll barely use it. Unlike in most Thief games, you can't use your coin from prior missions to buy what you need – instead, you have to complete Reward Objectives, which grant you a choice of one of three perks. Some of these perks are absolutely useless, like having slightly more health in a game where combat is the last thing you should engage in. Others are darn near necessities, like starting every mission with three rope arrows in your quiver, minimized fall damage, and moving unconscious bodies faster. As such, the bow is something you're likely to only use for key objectives and replaying missions.

What doesn't help matters while playing is how the two perks relating to health would always appear first. It's like they were impatiently waiting for me to pick them, so I'm being drip-fed one worthwhile upgrade each time I earn a reward. It'd be better if the perks offered each time were randomized. At least it gives you something to work for when replaying missions, since you can vary your approach with every perk. Still, for most players, the nightstick and ghosting about should be their go-to. Swipe a guard's legs, then conk them on the head to be dragged off out of sight. Easy, relatively reliable, and it guarantees you'll get the pacifist stat every single mission.

The real highlights are the thrill of grabbing everything in sight without getting caught. At one point, I'm weaving between writing desks, plucking items from out of view while a guard was looming overhead. It's not even a setpiece, and completely optional, but it has me engaged like it's some key moment in a heist movie. A little white dot appears when there's loot to grab, an effective stand-in for a sense of touch, though there's also some nice kinetic feedback from your controllers. Even patting your other palm with your nightstick elicits a slight sensation. Thief VR's attention to detail is quite welcome.

That same tactile approach is taken when keying hidden compartments behind bookshelves and paintings, as well as rotating your controllers to pick locks. It's all well integrated and flows smoothly. There's a few key moments that require environmental observation as well, with the potential to either alarm guards or feel like the smartest person in the world if you pull off a heist properly.

On a personal note, I love how versatile guards' helmets are. You can find them strewn about levels, and they're actually quite useful. You can wear them, toss them as a distraction, or even knock some guards out with them! Is the game at Immersive Sim levels of depth? No, but it is marvelously fun sneaking around, using every tool in your arsenal.

The only aspect that makes things less exciting is how your opponents are not clever. Most guards are easily fooled, and checkpoint resets are generously well placed for when the guards are actually a threat, particularly the nightstick-invulnerable heavy guards. From what I can discern, it's only possible to eliminate them by going lethal, which costs precious fire arrows.

Speaking of disappointments, let's rip off the band-aid: In my time with the game, there have been some peculiar issues. Sometimes objects fail to load in properly, like a treasure chest going transparent whenever I face it from the front – or an entire basement visually deloading momentarily if I walk too close to an adjoining wall. Nothing that breaks gameplay, but obviously has a negative impact on immersion. You can pick the lock of an invisible chest as easily as a visible one, but it's less than ideal for maintaining atmosphere.

That said, the ragdoll physics for unconscious enemies can be peculiar as well. The most astonishing instance of this was when, while dragging a guard who curled over himself unconscious, his ragdoll somehow sent me up through the floor to the second story of Northcrest Manor. If you're reading this after a few more patches - we've seen two already - you might be getting something a little more stable and immersive.

While I'm also not one to be too flummoxed by graphical limitations, there certainly are clear compromises on Quest 3. It's nothing horrendous and still looks good, though Thief VR's resolution and texture quality take an understandable hit on Quest systems. PC VR offers a notable visual upgrade, though I can't personally speak for how the PlayStation VR2 edition compares.

I cleared Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow in roughly five and a half hours and that's with thorough exploration. A few levels are repeated, though with updated layouts and objectives in each that help them stand out enough to feel distinct. There's novelty to be found in the remixed locations. Your prior knowledge is an asset, rather than a frustration. I can absolutely see someone blazing through Legacy of Shadow in a weekend. Replaying levels to either ghost or blitz through can be enjoyable, though some additional difficulty modifiers or a challenge mode map like in THIEF (2014) would be welcome.

Thief VR Review - Final Verdict

Crucially, Legacy of Shadow is all about encouraging the player to try for a little bit more. Between secondary objectives, bonus markers like completing a mission without alerts or finding every bit of gold lying around, and reward objectives that grant new perks? There's some meat on the bone, even if it's still lean meat. I'll always take good but short instead of longer but worse. These levels are wonderfully detailed despite their small scope, yet a more exploration-inclined player such as myself is likely to see most of each in their first run.

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow may be a bit modest and rough around the edges, but it's also impressive in the right ways. It melds modern sensibilities with a retro mindset, welcoming new players to the series. Magpie is a charmingly impish lead aided greatly by Garrett's ghostly reprisal. The foundations set here can deliver a proper fresh start for this classic series. I can see Magpie's story continuing, though time will tell if that's the case. Either way, Maze Theory pleasantly surprises with the next generation of Thief.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.

Dying is a process and in a person’s final hours and days, Nickie and her Threshold Choir are there to accompany people on their way and bring comfort. Through specially composed songs, akin to lullabies, the choir cultivates an environment of love and safety around those on their deathbed. For the volunteer choir members, it is also an opportunity to channel their own experiences of grief and together open up conversations about death

With thanks to onscreen contributor, Lindsey, who died since the making of this film

Full interview with Nickie Aven, available here

More molecules and compounds vital to the origin of life have been detected in asteroid samples delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. The discovery strengthens the case that not only did life’s building blocks originate in space, but that the ingredients of RNA, and perhaps RNA itself, were brought to our planet by asteroids.

Two new papers in Nature Geoscience and Nature Astronomy describe the discovery of the sugars ribose and glucose in the 120 g of samples returned from the near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu, as well as an unusual carbonaceous “gum” that holds important compounds for life. The findings complement the earlier discovery of amino acids and the nucleobases of RNA and DNA in the Bennu samples.

A third new paper, in Nature Astronomy, addresses the abundance of pre-solar grains, which is dust that originated from before the birth of our Solar System, such as dust from supernovae. Scientists led by Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center found six times more dust direct from supernova explosions than is found, on average, in meteorites and other sampled asteroids. This could suggest differences in the concentration of different pre-solar dust grains in the disc of gas and dust that formed the Solar System.

Space gum

It’s the discovery of organic materials useful for life that steals the headlines, though. For example, the discovery of the space gum, which is essentially a hodgepodge chain of polymers, represents something never found in space before.

Scott Sandford of NASA’s Ames Research Center, co-lead author of the Nature Astronomy paper describing the gum discovery, tells Physics World: “The material we see in our samples is a bit of a molecular jumble. It’s carbonaceous, but much richer in nitrogen and, to a lesser extent, oxygen, than most of the organic compounds found in extraterrestrial materials.”

Sandford refers to the material as gum because of its pliability, bending and dimpling when pressure is applied, rather like chewing gum. And while much of its chemical functionality is replicated in similar materials on our planet, “I doubt it matches exactly with anything seen on Earth,” he says.

Initially, Sandford found the gum using an infrared microscope, nicknaming the dust grains containing the gum “Lasagna” and “Neapolitan” because the grains are layered. To extract them from the rock in the sample, Sandford went to Zack Gainsforth of the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in analysing and extracting materials from samples like this.

Platinum scaffolding

Having welded a tungsten needle to the Neapolitan sample in order to lift it, the pair quickly realised that the grain was very delicate.

“When we tried to lift the sample it began to deform,” Gainsforth says. “Scott and I practically jumped out of our chairs and brainstormed what to do. After some discussion, we decided that we should add straps to give it enough mechanical rigidity to survive the lift.”

By straps, Gainsforth is referring to micro-scale platinum scaffolding applied to the grain to reinforce its structure while they cut it away with an ion beam. Platinum is often used as a radiation shield to protect samples from an ion beam, “but how we used it was anything but standard,” says Gainsforth. “Scott and I made an on-the-fly decision to reinforce the samples based on how they were reacting to our machinations.”

With the sample extracted and reinforced, they used the ion beam cutter to shave it down until it was a thousand times thinner than a human hair, at which point it could be studied by electron microscopy and X-ray spectrometry. “It was a joy to watch Zack ‘micro-manipulate’ [the sample],” says Sandford.

The nitrogen in the gum was found to be in nitrogen heterocycles, which are the building blocks of nucleobases in DNA and RNA. This brings us to the other new discovery, reported in Nature Geoscience, of the sugars ribose and glucose in the Bennu samples, by a team led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Japan.

The ingredients of RNA

Glucose is the primary source of energy for life, while ribose is a key component of the sugar-phosphate backbone that connects the information-carrying nucleobases in RNA molecules. Furthermore, the discovery of ribose now means that everything required to assemble RNA molecules is present in the Bennu sample.

Notable by its absence, however, was deoxyribose, which is ribose minus one oxygen atom. Deoxyribose in DNA performs the same job as ribose in RNA, and Furukawa believes that its absence supports a popular hypothesis about the origin of life on Earth called RNA world. This describes how the first life could have used RNA instead of DNA to carry genetic information, catalyse biochemical reactions and self-replicate.

Intriguingly, the presence of all RNA’s ingredients on Bennu raises the possibility that RNA could have formed in space before being brought to Earth.

“Formation of RNA from its building blocks requires a dehydration reaction, which we can expect to have occurred both in ancient Bennu and on primordial Earth,” Furukawa tells Physics World.

However, RNA would be very hard to detect because of its expected low abundance in the samples, making identifying it very difficult. So until there’s information to the contrary, “the present finding means that the ingredients of RNA were delivered from space to the Earth,” says Furukawa.

Nevertheless, these discoveries are major milestones in the quest of astrobiologists and space chemists to understand the origin of life on Earth. Thanks to Bennu and the asteroid 162173 Ryugu, from which a sample was returned by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission Hayabusa2, scientists are increasingly confident that the building blocks of life on Earth came from space.

The post Components of RNA among life’s building blocks found in NASA asteroid sample appeared first on Physics World.

The “leftover” gamma radiation produced when the beam of an electron accelerator strikes its target is usually discarded. Now, however, physicists have found a new use for it: generating radioactive isotopes for diagnosing and treating cancer. The technique, which piggybacks on an already-running experiment, uses bremsstrahlung from an accelerator facility to trigger nuclear reactions in a layer of zinc foil. The products of these reactions include copper isotopes that are hard to make using conventional techniques, meaning that the technique could reduce their costs and expand access to treatments.

Radioactive nuclides are commonly used to treat cancer, and so-called theranostic pairs are especially promising. These pairs occur when one isotope of an element provides diagnostic imaging while another delivers therapeutic radiation – a combination that enables precision tumour targeting to improve treatment outcomes.

One such pair is ⁶⁴Cu and ⁶⁷Cu: the former emits positrons that can identify tumours in PET scans while the latter produces beta particles that can destroy cancerous cells. They also have a further clinical advantage in that copper binds to antibodies and other biomolecules, allowing the isotopes to be delivered directly into cells. Indeed, these isotopes have already been used to treat cancer in mice, and early clinical studies in humans are underway.

“Wasted” photons might be harnessed

Researchers led by Mamad Eslami of the University of York, UK have now put forward a new way to make both isotopes. Their method exploits the fact that gamma rays generated by the intense electron beams in particle accelerator experiments interact only weakly with matter (relative to electrons or neutrons, at least). This means that many of them pass right through their primary target and into a beam dump. These “wasted” photons still carry enough energy to drive further nuclear reactions, though, and Eslami and colleagues realized that they could be harnessed to produce ⁶⁴Cu and ⁶⁷Cu.

Eslami and colleagues tested their idea at the Mainz Microtron, an electron accelerator at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany. “We wanted to see whether GeV-scale bremsstrahlung, already available at the electron accelerator, could be used in a truly parasitic configuration,” Eslami says. The real test, he adds, was whether they could produce ⁶⁷Cu alongside the primary experiment, which was using the same electron beam and photon field to study hadron physics, without disturbing it or degrading the beam conditions.

The answer turned out to be “yes”. What’s more, the researchers found that their approach could produce enough ⁶⁷Cu for medical applications in about five days – roughly equal to the time required for a nuclear reactor to produce the equivalent amount of another important medical radionuclide, lutetium-177.

Improving nuclear medicine treatments and reducing costs

“Our results indicate that, under suitable conditions, high-energy electron and photon facilities that were originally built for nuclear or particle physics experiments could also be used to produce ⁶⁷Cu and other useful radionuclides,” Eslami tells Physics World. In practice, however, Eslami adds that this will be only realistic at sites with a strong, well-characterized bremsstrahlung fields. High-power multi-GeV electron facilities such as the planned Electron-Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US, or a high-repetition laser-plasma electron source, are two possibilities.

Even with this restriction, team member Mikhail Bashkanov is excited about the advantages. “If we could do away with the necessity of using nuclear reactors to produce medical isotopes and solely generate them with high-energy photon beams from laser-plasma accelerators, we could significantly improve nuclear medicine treatments and reduce their costs,” Bashkanov says.

The researchers, who detail their work in Physical Review C, now plan to test their method at other electron accelerators, especially those with higher beam power and GeV-scale beams, to quantify the ⁶⁷Cu yields they can expect to achieve in realistic target and beam-dump configurations. In parallel, Eslami adds, they want to explore parasitic operation at emerging laser-plasma-driven electron sources that are being developed for muon tomography. They would also like to link their irradiation studies to target design, radiochemistry and timing constraints to see whether the method can deliver clinically useful activities of ⁶⁷Cu and other useful isotopes in a reliable and cost-effective way.

The post Leftover gamma rays produce medically important radioisotopes appeared first on Physics World.

Une équipe de l’UQTR a interrogé 1200 élèves de 15 à 17 ans de la Mauricie et de la Capitale-Nationale.

Comme nous le faisons chaque année, nous allons suivre les jeux PC qui sont offerts durant cette seconde moitié du mois de décembre 2025, et déborder un peu sur le début 2026. C'est bien sûr l'Epic Games Store qui nous motive cette année encore à faire ce Bon plan "fil rouge" puisque la plateforme v...