New University of South Florida-led research published in MIS Quarterly finds that on-the-spot phishing training can trigger defensiveness and limit learning — making employees less likely to absorb lessons that prevent future attacks.

How much do undergraduate computer science students trust chatbots powered by large language models like GitHub CoPilot and ChatGPT? And how should computer science educators modify their teaching based on these levels of trust?  These were the questions that a group of U.S. computer scientists set out to answer in a study that will be presented at the Koli Calling conference Nov. 11 to 16 in Finland. In the course of the study’s few weeks, researchers found that trust in generative AI tools increased in the short run for a majority of students. But in the long run, students said they realized they needed to be competent programmers without the help of AI tools.

At Columbia Engineering, chemical engineer Dan Esposito and his team are developing an alternative to Nafion. Their work, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and in collaboration with industrial partners Nel Hydrogen and Forge Nano, aims to replace the Nafion membranes used in conventional electrolyzers with ultra-thin, PFAS-free oxide membranes. Replacing this component eliminates upwards of 99% of the PFAS contained in an electrolyzer.

Air pollution is a major environmental challenge of this century. In a recent Journal of Environmental Sciences review paper, scientists from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have highlighted potential technologies for direct purification of air pollutants in the environment, including photocatalysis and ambient non-photocatalytic approaches. They also propose the novel concept of an ‘Environmental Catalytic City.’

In an effort to create simpler next-generation lighting solutions, researchers from the University of Turku in Finland have developed a colour-tunable white OLED. It is a top light-emitting device that produces white light from a single organic layer and two standard aluminum electrodes, eliminating the need for scarce indium tin oxide. This streamlined design replaces the need for complex organic stacks with smart optics, which promises to lower manufacturing costs and reduce reliance on scarce materials.