Nanomaterials are emerging as a powerful tool for coastal oil spill cleanup

Oil Spill
Image Credit: Gemini 

Cleaning up after a major oil spill is a long, expensive process, and the damage to a coastal region’s ecosystem can be significant. This is especially true for the world’s Arctic region, where newly opened sea lanes will expose remote shorelines to increased risks due to an anticipated rise in sea traffic.

Current mitigation techniques even in heavily populated regions face serious limitations, including low oil absorption capacity, potential toxicity to marine life and a slow remediation process.

However, advances in nanotechnology may provide solutions that are more effective, safer and work much faster than current methods. That’s according to a new paper in Environmental Science: Nano by a Concordia-led team of researchers.

“Using nanomaterials as a response method has emerged as a promising sustainable approach,” says lead author Huifang Bi, a PhD candidate in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science.

Quantum mechanics helps with photosynthesis

First author Erika Keil and Prof. Jürgen Hauer in the lab.
Photo Credit: Andreas Heddergott / TUM

Photosynthesis - mainly carried out by plants - is based on a remarkably efficient energy conversion process. To generate chemical energy, sunlight must first be captured and transported further. This happens practically loss-free and extremely quickly. A new study by the Chair of Dynamic Spectroscopy at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) shows that quantum mechanical effects play a key role in this process. A team led by Erika Keil and Prof. Jürgen Hauer discovered this through measurements and simulations.

The efficient conversion of solar energy into storable forms of chemical energy is the dream of many engineers. Nature found a perfect solution to this problem billions of years ago. The new study shows that quantum mechanics is not just for physicists but also plays a key role in biology.

Photosynthetic organisms such as green plants use quantum mechanical processes to harness the energy of the sun, as Prof. Jürgen Hauer explains: “When light is absorbed in a leaf, for example, the electronic excitation energy is distributed over several states of each excited chlorophyll molecule; this is called a superposition of excited states. It is the first stage of an almost loss-free energy transfer within and between the molecules and makes the efficient onward transport of solar energy possible. Quantum mechanics is therefore central to understanding the first steps of energy transfer and charge separation.”

WSU researcher pioneers new study model with clues to anti-aging

Jiyue Zhu and a student work in the laboratory.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Washington State University

Washington State University scientists have created genetically-engineered mice that could help accelerate anti-aging research.

Globally, scientists are working to unlock the secrets of extending human lifespan at the cellular level, where aging occurs gradually due to the shortening of telomeres–the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that function like shoelace tips to prevent unraveling. As telomeres shorten over time, cells lose their ability to divide for healthy growth, and some eventually begin to die.

But research studying these telomeres at the cellular level has been challenging in humans.

Now, a discovery by a WSU research team published today in the journal Nature Communications has opened the door to using genetically engineered mice.

Led by WSU College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Professor Jiyue Zhu, the research team has developed mice that have human-like short telomeres, enabling the study of cellular aging as it occurs in the human body and within organs. Normally mice have telomeres that are up to 10 times longer than humans.

Novel processor uses magnons to crack complex problems

The three first authors of the paper - Noura Zenbaa (on the right), Claas Abert (on the left) and Fabian Majcen (in the middle) at the moment when the universal inverse-design magnonic device was activated to solve its first problem.
Photo Credit: Andrii Chumak, NanoMag, U of Vienna

An international team of researchers, led by physicists from the University of Vienna, has achieved a breakthrough in data processing by employing an "inverse-design" approach. This method allows algorithms to configure a system based on desired functions, bypassing manual design and complex simulations. The result is a smart "universal" device that uses spin waves ("magnons") to perform multiple data processing tasks with exceptional energy efficiency. Published in Nature Electronics, this innovation marks a transformative advance in unconventional computing, with significant potential for next-generation telecommunications, computing, and neuromorphic systems.

Modern electronics face critical challenges, including high energy consumption and increasing design complexity. In this context, magnonics — the use of magnons, or quantized spin waves in magnetic materials — offers a promising alternative. Magnons enable efficient data transport and processing with minimal energy loss. With the growing demand for innovative computing solutions, ranging from 5G and upcoming 6G networks to neuromorphic computing (mimicking functions of the brain), magnonics represents a paradigm shift that redefines how devices are designed and operated. Developing an innovative magnonic processor that enables highly adaptive and energy-efficient computing was a challenge that Andrii Chumak of the University of Vienna's Nanomagnetism and Magnonics Group and his collaborators successfully met.

Scientists Discovered the Oldest Junipers in the Arctic

Dendrochronologists determined the age of the trees by cross-dating. The photo shows a sample of juniper.
Photo Credit: Rashit Khantemirov

A group of dendrochronologists from Italy, Denmark, Germany and Russia has discovered the longest-lived woody plant in the Arctic. It was the common juniper (Juniperus communis). The oldest juniper bush, which was found in the north of Finland, is 1647 years old. In the Polar Urals, the oldest juniper bush lived half as long, yet it is the longest-living organism in the Urals. Scientists told about the long-lived junipers in an article in the journal Ecology.

"Many species in the genus Juniperus are long-lived woody plants. But there was a lack of reliable data on the most common species, the common juniper. There are legends about junipers that are two thousand years old, but there was no reliable evidence. Counting the number of annual rings, rather than estimating the age by trunk thickness, shrub size and other indirect signs, can be considered reliable evidence," explains Rashit Khantemirov, co-author of the paper, a member of the Laboratory of Natural Science Methods in Humanities at Ural Federal University and the Laboratory of Dendrochronology and IER&J of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Videos with Cold Symptoms Activate Brain Regions and Trigger Immune Response

 Study on Brain Activity and Antibody Concentration
Photo Credit: Andrea Piacquadio

People who watch videos of sneezing or sick people show increased activity in brain regions that represent an interface between the brain and the immune system and react to potential dangers. At the same time, the concentration of antibodies in their saliva increases. The findings of a study by researchers from the Department of Biology at the University of Hamburg indicate that an important part of the immune system responds even before a pathogen enters the body. The results were published in the journal Brain Behavior and Immunity.

Throughout human history, communicable diseases, especially viral respiratory infections such as SARS-CoV-2 or influenza, have been among the main factors that significantly influence human mortality. The constant threat of pathogen transmission has led to the development of various physiological mechanisms of the immune system - for example, the body releases proteins to fight pathogens in the body.

Effects of Declining Diversity Documented in the World of Microbes

Phytoplankton, seen here inside a flask in the Jackrel Lab, are proving to be a valuable system for studying host-associated microbiomes
Photo Credit: Jackrel Lab / UCSD

Across the tree of life, human activities are accelerating declines in biological species diversity, from deserts to oceans to forests. But what about the microscopic world? Scientists in UC San Diego’s School of Biological Sciences recently investigated how declining biodiversity in tiny ecological systems unseen to the naked eye can carry significant consequences for the health of organisms and ecosystems.

Postdoctoral Scholar Jonathan Dickey and recent master’s graduate Nikki Mercer from Assistant Professor Sara Jackrel’s laboratory studied the implications of declining diversity within microbiomes — communities of microorganisms, such as bacteria, which can form tight associations with their hosts, such as plants and animals. Recent studies in microbial ecology have found that microbiomes can play a key role in regulating host health, leading researchers to believe that as our world changes it is imperative to understand the implications of biodiversity loss within the host microbiome.

AI unveils: Meteoroid impacts cause Mars to shake

High-resolution CaSSIS image of one of the newly discovered impact craters in Cerberus Fossae. The so-called "blast zone", i.e. the dark rays around the crater, is clearly visible.
Image Credit: © ESA/TGO/CaSSIS
(CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

Meteoroid impacts create seismic waves that cause Mars to shake stronger and deeper than previously thought: This is shown by an investigation using artificial intelligence carried out by an international research team led by the University of Bern. Similarities were found between numerous meteoroid impacts on the surface of Mars and marsquakes recorded by NASA's Mars lander InSight. These findings open up a new perspective on the impact rate and seismic dynamics of the Red Planet.

Meteoroid impacts have a significant influence on the landscape evolution of solid planetary bodies in our solar system, including Mars. By studying craters – the visible remnants of these impacts – important properties of the planet and its surface can be determined. Satellite images help to constrain the formation time of impact craters and thus provide valuable information on impact rates.

A recently published study led by Dr. Valentin Bickel from the Center for Space and Habitability at the University of Bern presents the first comprehensive catalog of impacts on the Martian surface that took place near NASA's Mars lander during the InSight mission between December 2018 and December 2022. Bickel is also an InSight science team member. The study has just been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Plant Power: A New Method to Model How Plants Move Water Globally

Golden hour looking out on the UConn Forest.
Photo Credit: Sean Flynn/UConn Photo

Earth systems models are an important tool for studying complex processes occurring around the planet, such as those in and between the atmosphere and biosphere, and they help researchers and policymakers better understand phenomena like climate change. Incorporating more data into these simulations can improve modeling accuracy; however, sometimes, this requires the arduous task of gathering millions of data points.

Researchers, including UConn Department of Natural Resources and the Environment Assistant Professor James Knighton, Pablo Sanchez-Martinez from the University of Edinburgh, and Leander Anderegg from the University of California Santa Barbara, have developed a method to bypass the need for gathering data for over 55,000 tree species to better account for how plants influence the flow of water around the planet. Their findings are published in Nature Scientific Data.

Plants play essential roles in Earth’s processes, from capturing carbon and making oxygen available for other life forms like humans. Plants are also responsible for the movement of water, says Knighton, where an estimated 60% of all rain is returned to the atmosphere through transpiration. This huge global-scale movement of water through plants is complex and currently represented by Earth system models (ESMs) in a simplified way says Knighton, where all plants in a region may be considered as a single entity (i.e., a plant functional type),

Tiny copper ‘flowers’ bloom on artificial leaves for clean fuel production

Solar fuel generator 
Image Credit: Virgil Andrei

Tiny copper ‘nano-flowers’ have been attached to an artificial leaf to produce clean fuels and chemicals that are the backbone of modern energy and manufacturing.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley, developed a practical way to make hydrocarbons – molecules made of carbon and hydrogen – powered solely by the sun.

The device they developed combines a light absorbing ‘leaf’ made from a high-efficiency solar cell material called perovskite, with a copper nanoflower catalyst, to convert carbon dioxide into useful molecules. Unlike most metal catalysts, which can only convert CO₂ into single-carbon molecules, the copper flowers enable the formation of more complex hydrocarbons with two carbon atoms, such as ethane and ethylene — key building blocks for liquid fuels, chemicals and plastics.

Almost all hydrocarbons currently stem from fossil fuels, but the method developed by the Cambridge-Berkeley team results in clean chemicals and fuels made from CO2, water and glycerol – a common organic compound – without any additional carbon emissions. The results are reported in the journal Nature Catalysis.