Evaluating defensive performance in soccer remains challenging, as effective defending is often expressed not through visible on-ball actions such as interceptions and tackles, but through preventing dangerous opportunities before they arise. Existing approaches have largely focused on valuing on-ball actions, leaving much of defenders' true impact unmeasured. To address this gap, we propose DEFCON (DEFensive CONtribution evaluator), a comprehensive framework that quantifies player-level defensive contributions for every attacking situation in soccer. Leveraging Graph Attention Networks, DEFCON estimates the success probability and expected value of each attacking option, along with each defender's responsibility for stopping it. These components yield an Expected Possession Value (EPV) for the attacking team before and after each action, and DEFCON assigns positive or negative credits to defenders according to whether they reduced or increased the opponent's EPV. Trained on 2023-24 and evaluated on 2024-25 Eredivisie event and tracking data, DEFCON's aggregated player credits exhibit strong positive correlations with market valuations. Finally, we showcase several practical applic
The rapid proliferation of Model Context Protocol (MCP)-based agentic systems has introduced a new category of security threats that existing frameworks are inadequately equipped to address. We present MCPThreatHive, an open-source platform that automates the end-to-end lifecycle of MCP threat intelligence: from continuous, multi-source data collection through AI-driven threat extraction and classification, to structured knowledge graph storage and interactive visualization. The platform operationalizes the MCP-38 threat taxonomy, a curated set of 38 MCP-specific threat patterns mapped to STRIDE, OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications, and OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications. A composite risk scoring model provides quantitative prioritization. Through a comparative analysis of representative existing MCP security tools, we identify three critical coverage gaps that MCPThreatHive addresses: incomplete compositional attack modeling, absence of continuous threat intelligence, and lack of unified multi-framework classification.
Security conferences are important venues for information sharing, where academics and practitioners share knowledge about new attacks and state-of-the-art defenses. Despite their importance, researchers have not systematically examined who shares information and which security topics are discussed. To address this gap, our paper characterizes the speakers, sponsors, and topics presented at prestigious academic and industry security conferences. We compile a longitudinal dataset containing 9,728 abstracts and 1,686 sponsors across four academic and six industry conferences. Our findings show limited information sharing between industry and academia. Conferences vary significantly in how equitably talks and authorship are distributed across individuals. The topics of academic and industry abstracts display consistent coverage of techniques within the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Top-tier academic conferences, as well as DEFCON and Black Hat, address the governance, response, and recovery functions of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework inconsistently. Commercial information security and insurance conferences (RSA, Gartner, Advisen and NetDiligence) more consistently cover the framework.
Cosmic expansion allows distant galaxies to move away faster than light, while still letting us see ancient light they emitted when they were much closer。 Eventually, accelerating expansion will push nearly every galaxy beyond our Local Group out of sight, making the Universe appear almost empty
A newly discovered turning point in the Sun’s 11-year cycle could allow scientists to predict future solar activity years earlier than before。 At this “switch-off” point, the most violent space weather abruptly ends, and the remaining number of sunspots offers clues about the next cycle’s strength。 Early projections suggest Solar Cycle 26 may be mo
A quantum problem once described as impossible for classical computers has now been solved using relatively modest hardware。 Researchers used tensor networks to compress the overwhelming wave function created by hundreds of entangled qubits, allowing some calculations to run on a laptop。 Their results matched both theoretical predictions and simula
Autonomous vehicle giant disturbs residents' sleep
Engineers have transformed a notoriously brittle cobalt-aluminum compound into a material that is both extremely strong and capable of bending without breaking。 Their nanoscale design produced a yield strength about six to 10 times greater than high-strength structural steel while sustaining substantial deformation at room temperature。 The approach
The AI chatbot was more effective at creating “exploitable trust” than the humans
A person’s sleeping brain may reveal warning signs of dementia long before memory problems begin。 Researchers used machine learning to analyze EEG recordings from about 7,000 adults and found that an older-than-expected “brain age” was tied to a sharply higher dementia risk。 Every additional 10 years of brain aging raised that risk by nearly 40%
Ultrafast X-rays revealed how a molecule converts absorbed light into motion in just trillionths of a second。 Individual atoms recorded different stages of the process, opening a powerful new window into light-driven chemistry
Physicists have uncovered a surprising limit to electrical resistance caused by particles colliding。 Using ultracold potassium atoms trapped in a grid of light, researchers created a highly controlled stand-in for electrons moving through a solid。 As collisions became more frequent and intense, resistance initially rose, but eventually hit a ceilin
Researchers have created cosmic dust from scratch by recreating space-like conditions inside glass tubes。 The dust contains complex carbon-rich molecules built from elements essential to life and produces infrared signals similar to real material found in space。 By studying these laboratory samples, scientists can explore how organic chemistry unfo
Some group with no modern descendants contributed a lot to our genomes
A black hole observed during a dramatic 2023 eruption did not simply devour gas from its nearby companion star。 It also expelled large amounts of material through powerful jets and winds, even after the outburst had nearly faded。 The results suggest black holes may continue reshaping their surroundings long after their brightest fireworks end