Longtime Slashdot reader cristiroma shares a report from New Atlas: Wouldn't it be great if the plants in your home could do more than just sit there looking pretty? Researchers at South China Agricultural University in the city of Guangzhou have found a way to upgrade them into soft glowing night lights in a range of hues, with the use of nanoparticles. The team developed a light-emitting phosphor compound that enabled succulents with fleshy leaves to charge in sunlight or indoor LED light in just a couple of minutes, and then emit a soft uniform glow that lasts up to two hours. The afterglow phosphor compound -- which is similar to those found in glow-in-the-dark toys -- is inexpensive, biocompatible, and negates the need for more complex methods of infusing bioluminescence in plants, like genetic modification. It simply gets injected into the leaves.

[...] Beyond modifying a commercial compound for this project, the team also had to figure out the right size for the phosphor particles so they'd work as intended inside plants. Shuting Liu, first author on the study that appeared in Matter this week, noted, "Smaller, nano-sized particles move easily within the plant but are dimmer. Larger particles glowed brighter but couldn't travel far inside the plant." Through extensive testing, the researchers arrived at an optimal size of around 7 micrometers, about the width of a red blood cell. They also determined through experimentation that the particles worked best in succulents, rather than plants with thinner leaves like bok choy.

Once they'd landed on the right particle size, loading concentration, and plant type, the team found that the phosphor material diffused into succulent leaves almost instantly, and uniformly lit up entire leaves -- enough to illuminate nearby objects. The scientists were also able to create modified phosphors that glowed in colors like green, red, and blue. That could make for novel indoor or garden decor, as well as pathway lighting. These luminous plants also don't cost much -- according to Liu, "Each plant takes about 10 minutes to prepare and costs a little over 10 yuan (about $1.4), not including labor." Over the course of 10 days, the injected plants didn't show any signs of damage, yellowing, structural integrity, or even reduced levels of chlorophyll.

A U.S.-China research team has developed the world's first one-step process to convert mixed plastic waste into gasoline and hydrochloric acid with up to 95-99% efficiency, all at room temperature and ambient pressure. InterestingEngineering reports: As the authors put it, "The method supports a circular economy by converting diverse plastic waste into valuable products in a single step." To carry out the conversion, the team combines plastic waste with light isoalkanes, hydrocarbon byproducts available from refinery processes. According to the paper, the process yields "gasoline range" hydrocarbons, mainly molecules with six to 12 carbons, which are the primary component of gasoline. The recovered hydrochloric acid can be safely neutralized and reused as a raw material, potentially displacing several high-temperature, energy-intensive production routes described in the paper. "We present here a strategy for upgrading discarded PVC into chlorine-free fuel range hydrocarbons and [hydrochloric acid] in a single-stage process," the researchers said. Reported conversion efficiencies underscore the potential for real-world use. At 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), the process reached 95 percent conversion for soft PVC pipes and 99 percent for rigid PVC pipes and PVC wires.

In tests that mixed PVC materials with polyolefin waste, the method achieved a 96 percent solid conversion efficiency at 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit). The team describes the approach as applicable beyond laboratory-clean samples. "The process is suitable for handling real-world mixed and contaminated PVC and polyolefin waste streams," the paper states. SCMP points to an ECNU social media post citing the study, which characterized the achievement as a first, efficiently converting difficult-to-degrade mixed plastic waste into premium petrol at ambient temperature and pressure in a single step.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: A genetically modified pig lung transplanted into a brain-dead human patient functioned for nine days in a new achievement that reveals both the promise and significant challenges of xenotransplantation. Over the course of the experiment, the patient showed increasing signs of organ rejection before scientists at the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University in China terminated the experiment, allowing the recipient to pass away. It's the first time a pig lung has been transplanted into a human patient, demonstrating a significant step forward, and giving scientists new problems to solve as they develop this emerging medical technique further. [...]

The goal of the experiment was not to achieve a successful transplantation on the first try -- that would have been pretty incredible, but not a realistic expectation. Rather, the researchers wanted to observe how the patient's immune system responded to the transplanted organ. The patient was a 39-year-old man who was declared brain-dead by four separate clinical assessments after undergoing a brain hemorrhage. His family provided written informed consent for the experiment. The donor pig is what is known as a six-gene-edited pig, a Bama miniature pig with six CRISPR gene edits, housed in an isolated facility with rigorous disinfection protocols. These edits are all focused on minimizing the immune and inflammatory responses of the patient.

In a careful surgical procedure, the pig's left lung was placed into the patient's chest cavity, and connected to their airways, arteries, and veins. The paper does not explain the fate of the pig, but donor pigs do not typically survive the removal of a major organ. The patient was also treated with a number of immunosuppressants that the researchers adjusted according to changes observed in the patient's body over time. Initially, all seemed well, with none of the immediate signs of hyperacute rejection in the critical few hours following the procedure. However, by 24 hours after the transplant had taken place, severe swelling (edema) was observed, possibly as a result of blood flow being restored to the area of the transplant. Antibody-mediated rejection damaged the tissue further on days three and six of the experiment. The result of the damage was primary graft dysfunction, a type of severe lung injury occurring within 72 hours of a transplant, and the leading cause of death in lung transplant patients. Some recovery was taking place by day nine, but the experiment had run its course. The research has been published in Nature Medicine.

Intel said Monday that converting $8.87 billion in federal chip subsidies into a 10% equity stake creates unprecedented complications and potential "adverse reactions" for a company deriving 76% of revenue internationally. The arrangement transforms Biden-era CHIPS Act grants into share purchases at $20.74 -- a discount to Friday's $24.80 close -- with the Department of Commerce receiving up to 433 million shares by Tuesday's expected closing.

Foreign governments may impose additional regulations on Intel due to US government ownership, the company warned in securities filings, while the precedent could discourage other nations from offering grants if they expect similar equity conversions. China alone represents 29% of Intel's revenue. The deal also restricts Intel's strategic flexibility, requiring government votes align with board recommendations except on matters affecting federal interests.

Years of aggressive capacity expansion have driven China's solar manufacturing sector into deep losses. Panel prices have hit their lowest levels since 2011 even as the country's installations more than doubled. Shanghai-listed Tongwei reported a 4.96 billion yuan ($693 million) net loss for the first half of 2025, widening from 3.13 billion yuan a year earlier, while Trina Solar swung to a 2.92 billion yuan loss from a prior-year profit.

Panel prices touched 8.7 cents per watt in July, forcing manufacturers to write down inventory values across the polysilicon-to-module supply chain. China installed 212.2 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity through June, bringing total installations to 1.1 terawatts, yet supply continues outpacing demand after seven major manufacturers posted their first combined annual loss in 2024. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology convened leading producers last week to urge shutdowns of outdated capacity, while the China Photovoltaic Industry Association pledged to tackle what it termed "involution-style" competition through strengthened self-discipline measures.

The U.S. government's 10% stake in Intel "is a mistake," writes the Washington Post's editorial board, calling Intel "an aging also-ran in critical markets" that "has spent recent years stumbling on execution and missing one strategic opportunity after another."

But TechCrunch points out that the U.S. government "does not appear to be committing new funds. Instead, it's simply making good on what Intel described as 'grants previously awarded, but not yet paid, to Intel.'" Specifically, the $8.9 billion is supposed to come from $5.7 billion awarded-but-not-paid to Intel under the Biden administration's CHIPS Act, as well as $3.2 billion also awarded by the Biden administration through the Secure Enclave program. In a post on his social network Truth Social, Trump wrote, "The United States paid nothing for these shares..." Trump has been critical of the CHIPS Act, calling it a "horrible, horrible thing" and calling on House Speaker Mike Johnson to "get rid" of it...

According to The New York Times, some bankers and lawyers believe the CHIPS Act may not allow the government to convert its grants to equity, opening this deal to potential legal challenges.
Reuters writes that the money "will not be enough for its contract-chipmaking business to flourish, analysts said. Intel still needs external customers for its cutting-edge 14A manufacturing process to go to production, says Summit Insights analyst Kinngai Chan, "to make its foundry arm economically viable." "We don't think any government investment will change the fate of its foundry arm if they cannot secure enough customers..."

Reuters has reported that Intel's current 18A process — less advanced than 14A — is facing problems with yield, the measure of how many chips printed are good enough to make available to customers. Large chip factories including TSMC swallow the cost of poor yields during the first iterations of the process when working with customers like Apple. For Intel, which reported net losses for six straight quarters, that's hard to do and still turn a profit. "If the yield is bad then new customers won't use Intel Foundry, so it really won't fix the technical aspect of the company," said Ryuta Makino, analyst at Gabelli Funds, which holds Intel stock.

Makino, who believes that Intel can ultimately produce chips at optimal yields, views the deal as a net negative for Intel compared with just receiving the funding under the CHIPS Act as originally promised under the Biden Administration. "This isn't free money," he said. The federal government will not take a seat on Intel's board and has agreed to vote with the company's board on matters that need shareholder approval, Intel said. But this voting agreement comes with "limited exceptions" and the government is getting Intel's shares at a 17.5% discount to their closing price on Friday. The stake will make the U.S. government Intel's biggest shareholder, though neither Trump nor Intel disclosed when the transaction would happen...

Some analysts say Intel could benefit from the government's support, including in building out factories. Intel has said it is investing more than $100 billion to expand its U.S. factories and expects to begin high-volume chip production later this year at its Arizona plant. "To have access to capital and a new partial owner that wants to see you succeed are both important," said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel.

The Washington Post looks at the rise of low-effort, high-volume "AI slop" videos: The major social media platforms, scared of driving viewers away, have tried to crack down on slop accounts, using AI tools of their own to detect and flag videos they believe were synthetically made. YouTube last month said it would demonetize creators for "inauthentic" and "mass-produced" content. But the systems are imperfect, and the creators can easily spin up new accounts — or just push their AI tools to pump out videos similar to the banned ones, dodging attempts to snuff them out.
One place where they're coming from... Jiaru Tang, a researcher at the Queensland University of Technology who recently interviewed creators in China, said AI video has become one of the hottest new income opportunities there for workers in the internet's underbelly, who previously made money writing fake news articles or running spam accounts. Many university students, stay-at-home moms and the recently unemployed now see AI video as a kind of gig work, like driving an Uber. The average small creator she interviewed did their day jobs and then, at night, "spent two to three hours making AI-slop money," she said. A few she spoke with made $2,000 to $3,000 a month at it.
But the article provides other examples of the "wild cottage industry of AI-video makers, enticed by the possibility of infinite creation for minimal work"

• A 31-year-old loan officer in eastern Idaho first went viral in June "with an AI-generated video on TikTok in which a fake but lifelike old man talked about soiling himself. Within two weeks, he had used AI to pump out 91 more, mostly showing fake street interviews and jokes about fat people to an audience that has surged past 180,000 followers..." (He told the Post the videos earn him about $5,000 a month through TikTok's creator program.)

• "To stand out, some creators have built AI-generated influencers with lives a viewer can follow along. 'Why does everybody think I'm AI? ... I'm a human being, just like you guys,' says the AI woman in one since-removed TikTok video, which was watched more than 1 million times."

• One AI-generated video a dog biting a woman's face off (revealing a salad) received a quarter of a billion views.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Microsoft has reportedly stopped giving Chinese companies proof-of-concept exploit code for soon-to-be-disclosed vulnerabilities following last month's SharePoint zero-day attacks, which appear to be related to a leak in Redmond's early-bug-notification program. The software behemoth gives some software vendors early bug disclosures under its Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP), which typically delivers info two weeks before Patch Tuesday. MAPP participants sign a non-disclosure agreement, and in exchange get vulnerability details so that they can provide updated protections to customers more quickly.

According to Microsoft spokesperson David Cuddy, who spoke with Bloomberg about changes to the program, MAPP has begun limiting access to companies in "countries where they're required to report vulnerabilities to their governments," including China. Companies in these countries will no longer receive "proof of concept" exploit code, but instead will see "a more general written description" that Microsoft sends at the same time as patches, Cuddy told the news outlet. "A leak happened here somewhere," Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), told The Register in July. "And now you've got a zero-day exploit in the wild, and worse than that, you've got a zero-day exploit in the wild that bypasses the patch, which came out the next day."

Childs said the MAPP change "is a positive change, if a bit late. Anything Microsoft can do to help prevent leaks while still offering MAPP guidance is welcome."

"In the past, MAPP leaks were associated with companies out of China, so restricting information from flowing to these companies should help," Childs said. "The MAPP program remains a valuable resource for network defenders. Hopefully, Microsoft can squelch the leaks while sending out the needed information to companies that have proven their ability (and desire) to protect end users."

Clean-energy growth helped China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fall by 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, extending a declining trend that started in March 2024. From a report: The CO2 output of the nation's power sector -- its dominant source of emissions -- fell by 3% in the first half of the year, as growth in solar power alone matched the rise in electricity demand. The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that record solar capacity additions are putting China's CO2 emissions on track to fall across 2025 as a whole.

Other key findings include:

The growth in clean power generation, some 270 terawatt hours (TWh) excluding hydro, significantly outpaced demand growth of 170TWh in the first half of the year.
Solar capacity additions set new records due to a rush before a June policy change, with 212 gigawatts (GW) added in the first half of the year.
This rush means solar is likely to set an annual record for growth in 2025, becoming China's single-largest source of clean power generation in the process.
Coal-power capacity could surge by as much as 80-100GW this year, potentially setting a new annual record, even as coal-fired electricity generation declines.
The use of coal to make synthetic fuels and chemicals is growing rapidly, climbing 20% in the first half of the year and helping add 3% to China's CO2 since 2020.
The coal-chemical industry is planning further expansion, which could add another 2% to China's CO2 by 2029, making the 2030 deadline for peaking harder to meet.

Europe's share of global economic output has fallen from 33% to 23% since 2005 while its space launch capacity has nearly collapsed, launching just four rockets this year compared to over 100 for the United States and 40 for China. The continent's economic stagnation spans 15 years -- likely the longest streak since the Industrial Revolution according to Deutsche Bank calculations -- with Germany's economy growing just 1% since late 2017 versus 19% US growth.

Per capita GDP gaps have widened dramatically: $86,000 annually in the US versus $56,000 in Germany and $53,000 in the UK. Industrial electricity costs have become prohibitive, running three times higher in Germany and four times higher in the UK than American rates. "America innovates, China imitates, Europe regulates," Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni observed. The continent's largest company by market value, SAP, now ranks just 28th globally.

Further reading: The Technology Revolution is Leaving Europe Behind.

President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America. Reuters: The development follows a meeting between CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Trump earlier this month that was sparked by Trump's demand for the Intel chief's resignation over his ties to Chinese firms.

A complete shutdown of encrypted web traffic isolated China from the global internet for 74 minutes Wednesday morning, blocking citizens from accessing foreign websites and disrupting international business operations that depend on secure connections to offshore servers. The Great Firewall began injecting forged TCP RST+ACK packets to terminate all connections on port 443 at 00:34 Beijing time on August 20, according to activist group Great Firewall Report.

The standard HTTPS port carries most modern web traffic, meaning Chinese users lost access to virtually all foreign-hosted websites while companies including Apple and Tesla couldn't connect to servers powering their basic services. The blocking device didn't match known Great Firewall hardware fingerprints, suggesting Beijing either deployed new censorship equipment or experienced a configuration error. Pakistan's internet traffic dropped significantly hours before China's incident, potentially connected through shared firewall technology.

A 22-year-old Oregon man has been charged with operating one of the most powerful botnets ever recorded. The network, known as Rapper Bot, launched over 370,000 DDoS attacks worldwide, including against X, DeepSeek, U.S. tech firms, and even Defense Department systems. It was allegedly operated by Ethan Foltz of Eugene, Oregon. The Wall Street Journal reports: Foltz faces a maximum of 10 years in prison on a charge of abetting computer intrusions, the Justice Department said in a news release. Rapper Bot was made up of tens of thousands of hacked devices and was capable of flooding victims' websites with enough junk internet traffic to knock them offline, an attack known as a distributed denial of service, or DDoS.

In February, the networking company Nokia measured a Rapper Bot attack against a gaming platform at 6.5 trillion bits per second, well above the several hundred million bits a second of the average high-speed internet connection. "This would place Rapper Bot among the most powerful DDoS botnets to have ever existed," said a criminal complaint that the prosecutors filed Tuesday in a federal court in Alaska. Investigators said Rapper Bot's attacks were so powerful that they were able to overwhelm all but the most robust networks.

Foltz allegedly rented out Rapper Bot to paying customers, including gambling website operators who would use the network in extortion attempts, according to the complaint. The botnet was used to launch more than 370,000 attacks in 80 countries, including China, Japan and the U.S., prosecutors said. It launched its attacks from hacked routers, digital video recorders and cameras, not from computers. [...] "At its height, it mobilized tens of thousands of devices, many with no prior role in DDoS," said Jerome Meyer, a researcher with Nokia's Deepfield network-analysis division. "Taking it down removes a major source of the largest attacks we see."

AI-powered salespeople are outperforming their human counterparts on Chinese e-commerce platforms, working around the clock without fatigue to sell products ranging from printers to wet wipes. Shanghai marketing firm PLTFRM has deployed 30 virtual avatars across Taobao and Pinduoduo using Baidu video models and DeepSeek language models. Brother's AI avatar generated $2,500 in printer sales within two hours and increased livestream revenue 30 percent. The company now checks overnight AI sales data each morning as routine.

Livestreaming drives over one-third of China's e-commerce sales, with half the population shopping via broadcast in 2024. Baidu's June livestream featuring an AI version of influencer Luo Yonghao drew 13 million views and generated $7.7 million in sales. American and European companies have expressed interest, Wired reports, after PLTFRM successfully tested English-language avatars on YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.

India Dispatch: The strongest case for India is not merely that it is young, but that it still has time, and it may be the only continental-scale economy that still has it in abundance. India won't cross the demographic threshold for an "old" country -- a median age of 41 -- until the late 2050s, while China reaches that point now. India requires 10.4% sustained GDP growth over 35 years to become rich before aging, compared to China's needed 32% annual growth rate. India's working-age population will increase from 67.5% in 2021 to 69.2% by 2031, with the median age remaining at 34.5 in 2036. The report adds: China's compressed dilemma mirrors what is gripping the developed world, where Europe's share of population over 65 is on track to hit 30% by 2050, up from 8% in 1950. Raising retirement ages -- what economists describe as the closest thing to a silver bullet -- faces older voting blocs, who now make up roughly 40% of those who turn up at the polls in European elections. In the U.S., what J.P. Morgan analysts term a "Social Security cliff" looms by 2033, when the system's trust funds are projected to be exhausted, and hopes that productivity miracles (powered by, hopefully AI) will quietly square this circle look optimistic, leaving much of the rich world and North Asia out of time.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is manufacturing more of its iPhone 17 phones for the US in India instead of in China, and for the first time, the full lineup of new models will ship from India at launch, according to Bloomberg. The company is also working on a successor to the iPhone 16E that it plans to make in India, Bloomberg says.

Apple has increasingly been moving iPhone production to India to reduce its dependence on manufacturing in China. The company already expects to pay $1.1 billion in tariffs for the current quarter, but Bloomberg reports that currently, Apple's exports of iPhones to the US from India are exempted from tariffs. That's despite the Trump administration's 50 percent tariff on many imports from India, and while analyst Patrick Moorhead says the move "does dodge some tariffs," he noted that iPhone subassemblies are still mostly produced in China then shipped to India for final assembly.

Global fertility rates have fallen from five children per woman in the mid-twentieth century to 2.2 today, with approximately half of countries now below the 2.1 replacement threshold, according to data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

Mexico's rate dropped from seven children in 1970 to 1.6 in 2023. South Korea recorded 0.75 in 2024, down from 4.5 in 1970. The IHME projects over three-quarters of countries will fall below replacement level by 2050. A UN survey of 14,000 people across 14 countries found 39% cited financial limitations as a primary reason for not having children. China's population peaked around 2022 at 1.4 billion, while the U.S. Census Bureau predicts America's population will peak in 2080 at 370 million.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Tom's Hardware: According to German news outlet Heise, notable progress has been made regarding the counterfeit Seagate hard drive case. Just like something out of an action movie, security teams from Seagate's Singapore and Malaysian offices, in conjunction with local Malaysian authorities, conducted a raid on a warehouse in May that was engaged in cooking up counterfeit Seagate hard drives, situated outside Kuala Lumpur.

During the raid, authorities reportedly uncovered approximately 700 counterfeit Seagate hard drives, with SMART values that had been reset to facilitate their sale as new... However, Seagate-branded drives were not the only items involved, as authorities also discovered drives from Kioxia and Western Digital. Seagate suspects that the used hard drives originated from China during the Chia [cryptocurrency] boom. Following the cryptocurrency's downfall, numerous miners sold these used drives to workshops where many were illicitly repurposed to appear new. This bust may represent only the tip of the iceberg, as Heise estimates that at least one million of these Chia drives are circulating, although the exact number that have been recycled remains uncertain.

The clandestine workshop, likely one of many establishments in operation, reportedly employed six workers. Their responsibilities included resetting the hard drives' SMART values, cleaning, relabeling, and repackaging them for distribution and sale via local e-commerce platforms.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The United States' practice of installing location trackers in chip shipments at risk of diversion to China reflects the "instincts of a surveillance empire," China's state-run media outlet Xinhua said in a commentary published on Friday. Reuters reported earlier this week that U.S. authorities had secretly placed location tracking devices in targeted shipments of advanced chips to detect diversions to China, which is under U.S. curbs for advanced chip exports. The Xinhua commentary, titled "America turns chip trade into a surveillance game," cited "reports" that Washington had embedded such trackers, accusing the United States of running "the world's most sprawling intelligence apparatus." [...] In its commentary, Xinhua accused the U.S. government of seeing its trading partners as "rivals to be tripped up or taken down," adding that "if U.S. chips are seen as Trojan horses for surveillance, customers will look elsewhere." Further reading: China Urges Firms To Avoid Nvidia H20 Chips After Trump Resumes Sales

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CleanTechnica: In a sharp rebuke to the anti-electrification agenda in the US, global EV sales are up 27% over last year, with some legacy automakers -- but not all -- indicating the potential for a successful transition to electric mobility. CleanTechnica has spilled much ink on the pace of plug-in hybrid and full EV adoption, and the latest report from the UK firm Rho Motion (a branch of the price reporting agency Benchmark Mineral Intelligence) adds some fresh insights.

Covering the first seven months of 2025, earlier today Rho Motion totaled up more than 10.7 million EVs sold for a "robust" 27% increase over the same period last year, with China leading the pack by a wide margin. Europe also contributed to the overall robustness. Germany and the UK racked up impressive gains and Italy also turning in a mentionable performance. "The European EV market has grown by 30% year-to-date, with strong momentum in both battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), up 30% and 32% respectively," Rho Motion summarized.

"In contrast, North America's growth has been muted so far in 2025, with the US facing policy headwinds and Canada seeing a slowdown," Rho Motion Data Manager Charles Lester observed. "We expect a short-term lift in US demand ahead of the IRA consumer tax credit deadline in September, followed by a likely dip," Lester added. That short-term lift won't help North America catch up to Europe [...] Rho Motion's EV sales snapshot shows the recent gains:

Global: 10.7 million, +27%
China: 6.5 million, +29%
Europe: 2.3 million, +30%
North America: 1.0 million, +2%
Rest of World: 0.9 million, +42%