Deep-sea mining waste threatens life and food webs in ocean’s dim “twilight zone”

Illustration showing midwater impacts of deep sea mining operations. Image credit: Dowd et al 2025 (Nature Communications)
Illustration Credit: Amanda Merritt

Scientific Frontline: "At a Glance" Summary: Deep-Sea Mining Waste Disrupts Midwater Food Webs

• Main Discovery: Waste discharged from deep-sea polymetallic nodule mining operations in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone directly threatens midwater twilight zone ecosystems by replacing nutritious natural particles with nutrient-poor sediment.
• Methodology: Researchers collected and evaluated water samples and suspended particles from a 2022 deep-sea mining trial, specifically analyzing the amino acid concentrations to determine the nutritional viability of the discharged waste plumes.
• Key Data: The discharged mining waste would negatively impact 53 percent of all zooplankton and 60 percent of micronekton, as the plumes contained significantly lower concentrations of amino acids compared to natural marine detritus.
• Significance: Introducing empty-calorie sediment into the finely tuned twilight zone dilutes the fundamental food supply, posing severe risks of cascading disruptions throughout the entire marine food web, including commercially vital Pacific tuna populations.
• Future Application: These findings deliver essential empirical data to guide the International Seabed Authority and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in establishing stringent environmental safeguards and discharge depth regulations prior to commercial mining.
• Branch of Science: Marine Biology, Oceanography, and Ecology.

Researchers create simple method for viewing microscopic fibers

Computational scattered light imaging shows the orientation and organization of tissue fibers at micrometer resolution. The colors represent different fiber orientations.
Image Credit: Marios Georgiadis

Every tissue in the human body contains a network of microscopic fibers. Muscle fibers direct mechanical forces, intestinal fibers are involved in gut mobility, and brain fibers transmit signals and form the communication network to drive cognition. Together, these fibers shape how organs function and help maintain their structure.

Likewise, almost all diseases involve some form of degeneration or disruption of these fiber networks. In the brain, this translates to disturbances in neural connectivity that are found in all neurological disorders.

Despite their biological importance, these microscopic fibers have been difficult to study, as scientists have struggled to visualize their orientations within tissues.

Now, Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues have developed a simple, low-cost approach that makes those hidden structures visible in remarkable detail.

Detection of air-filled anomalies in Menkaure Pyramid could indicate new entrance

Researchers have identified two air-filled voids in the Menkaure Pyramid
Photo Credit: ScanPyramids project  

Researchers from Cairo University and TUM, as part of the ScanPyramids research project, have identified two hidden air-filled anomalies in the third-largest pyramid of Giza. The hypothesis of a possible entrance at this point on the eastern side of the Menkaure pyramid had existed for some time. The investigations using radar, ultrasound, and ERT prove the existence of two air-filled voids underneath the eastern facade, providing initial evidence to support the hypothesis.

For some time now, the structure of the granite blocks on the eastern side of the more than 60-meter-high Menkaure pyramid has puzzled researchers. The stones are remarkably polished over an area around four meters high and six meters wide. Such smooth stones are otherwise only found at what is currently the only entrance to the pyramid, on the north side. Researcher Stijn van den Hoven hypothesized a possible additional entrance for the first time in 2019.

Newly Discovered Host Mechanism in Coronaviruses

Cell culture cells expressing a kinase activity reporter (green) after infection with the human coronavirus HCoV-229E (red). Cell nuclei are stained blue.
Image Credit: © Molekulare und medizinische Virologie

The discovery could serve as a starting point for antiviral strategies.

A research team at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, has identified a previously unknown cellular mechanism crucial to the replication of coronaviruses: c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) is activated during infection with human coronavirus HCoV-229E and mediates the phosphorylation of the viral nucleocapsid (N) protein, an integral step in the virus cycle. These results aid in better understanding virus-host interactions and may open new approaches to exploring antiviral strategies in the long term. The team led by Dr. Yannick Brüggemann and Professor Eike Steinmann reports its findings in the journal npj Viruses.

UrFU Scientists Have Developed Ceramic Material that Protects Against Radiation

The material created by UrFU specialists is made from natural clay and recycled glass waste.
Photo Credit: Anna Marinovich

Scientists at Ural Federal University, in collaboration with colleagues from Iraq and Saudi Arabia, have developed a durable, inexpensive, and environmentally friendly ceramic material that protects against radiation. The new material is made from natural clay and recycled glass waste. 

Researchers believe this ceramic can be used in radiation-hazardous facilities, X-ray rooms, and laboratories to protect medical, scientific, and industrial personnel. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Science: Advanced Materials and Devices.

“We mixed clay imported from Iraq with glass production waste and a small amount of boric acid. This allowed us to create durable and inexpensive ceramics that effectively protect against gamma radiation. The addition of glass increases the strength of the tile. This method allows for the disposal of glass waste in building materials, including it, which is particularly important for the construction of radiation-hazardous facilities and X-ray rooms where the use of lead is undesirable,” said Karem Makhmud, Head Specialist of the Department of Nuclear Power Plants and Renewable Energy Sources.

Physicists observe key evidence of unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle graphene

MIT researchers observed clear signatures of unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene (MATTG). The image illustrates pairs of superconducting electrons (yellow spheres) traveling through MATTG, as the team’s new method (represented by magnifying glass) probes the material’s unconventional superconducting gap (represented by the V-shaped beam).
Image Credit: Sampson Wilcox and Emily Theobald, MIT RLE

Superconductors are like the express trains in a metro system. Any electricity that “boards” a superconducting material can zip through it without stopping and losing energy along the way. As such, superconductors are extremely energy efficient, and are used today to power a variety of applications, from MRI machines to particle accelerators.

But these “conventional” superconductors are somewhat limited in terms of uses because they must be brought down to ultra-low temperatures using elaborate cooling systems to keep them in their superconducting state. If superconductors could work at higher, room-like temperatures, they would enable a new world of technologies, from zero-energy-loss power cables and electricity grids to practical quantum computing systems. And so scientists at MIT and elsewhere are studying “unconventional” superconductors — materials that exhibit superconductivity in ways that are different from, and potentially more promising than, today’s superconductors.

In a promising breakthrough, MIT physicists have today reported their observation of new key evidence of unconventional superconductivity in “magic-angle” twisted tri-layer graphene (MATTG) — a material that is made by stacking three atomically-thin sheets of graphene at a specific angle, or twist, that then allows exotic properties to emerge.

Dry grass: Research project explores the effect of multi-year drought on grasslands

As a dry spell stretches from months to years, grasslands can adapt — to a point.
Photo Credit: Scientific Frontline / Heidi-Ann Fourkiller

A recent paper in the journal Science, “Drought intensity and duration interact to magnify losses in primary productivity,” explores how moderate and extreme droughts affect grasslands around the world. The paper has more than 180 international co-authors, with Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Science Amber Churchill among them.

Known as a distributed network, research projects of this type call upon collaborators to perform the same experiments locally, Churchill explained.

“The idea is that everyone uses the same methodology, but each local site is independently responsible for the maintenance of their site, data collection and ongoing measurements,” she said. “Often, individual sites will collect data in addition to the core project’s data.”

The experiment measured productivity, or how much plant biomass grows in a year. Less rain typically means less productivity, but the long-term picture is complicated by a number of factors. For one, not all grasslands are created equal; they come in a variety of types, with varying precipitation levels. Removing 10% of rainfall in an arid grassland is the equivalent of removing 40% of the precipitation in a wetter ecosystem, according to the research.

Three new toad species skip the tadpole phase and give birth to live toadlets

One of the newly described toad species, Nectophrynoides luhomeroensis.
Photo credit: John Lyarkurwa

An international team of researchers have identified three new species of enchanting, pustular, tree-dwelling toads from Africa. Their solution for having offspring away from water? Skipping the tadpole phase altogether, and giving birth to live toadlets. The study is published today in the open access scientific journal Vertebrate Zoology.

Most textbooks will tell you only one story of frog reproduction: Eggs to tadpoles to froglets to adults. But for three newly discovered species found in Tanzania this is not the case. The three new species of frogs belong to an unusual group of African toads in the genus Nectophrynoides — commonly called “Tree Toads.”

Instead of laying eggs that hatch into tadpoles, the female Tree Toads carry their offspring inside their bodies and give birth to fully formed, tiny toads. This makes them among the very few amphibians in the world capable of internal fertilization and true live birth.

Physicists discover new state of matter in electrons, platform to study quantum phenomena

From left, researchers Cyprian Lewandowski, Aman Kumar and Hitesh Changlani.
Photo Credit: Devin Bittner/FSU College of Arts and Sciences

Electricity powers our lives, including our cars, phones, computers and more, through the movement of electrons within a circuit. While we can’t see these electrons, electric currents moving through a conductor flow like water through a pipe to produce electricity.

Certain materials, however, allow that electron flow to “freeze” into crystallized shapes, triggering a transition in the state of matter that the electrons collectively form. This turns the material from a conductor to an insulator, stopping the flow of electrons and providing a unique window into their complex behavior. This phenomenon makes possible new technologies in quantum computing, advanced superconductivity for energy and medical imaging, lighting, and highly precise atomic clocks. 

A team of Florida State University-based physicists, including National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Dirac Postdoctoral Fellow Aman Kumar, Associate Professor Hitesh Changlani and Assistant Professor Cyprian Lewandowski, have shown the conditions necessary to stabilize a phase of matter in which electrons exist in a solid crystalline lattice but can “melt” into a liquid state, known as a generalized Wigner crystal. Their work was published in npj Quantum Materials, a Nature publication. 

Plant protection products change the behavior of non-target organisms

The honeybee (Apis mellifera) served as the model organism for pollinating insects.   
Photo Credit: André Künzelmann / UFZ

Plant protection products protect crops from pests, diseases and weeds. However, many of the fungicides, herbicides and insecticides also have a negative effect on terrestrial and aquatic organisms such as pollinators or fish that are not the primary target of their use. How their behavior changes after exposure to plant protection products is now the focus of a cross-habitat study by scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). The behavioral changes found in the animal models were significant and are an indication of the effect of plant protection products on non-target organisms in the wild. The work indicates that more complex and relevant behavioural tests should be included in the risk assessment of plant protection products in the future. The study was published in the journal Environment International.

The application of plant protection products in agriculture is subject to strict regulations. Nevertheless, organisms that are not the primary target of their use, so-called non-target organisms, inevitably come into contact with these substances and can potentially be harmed by them. "Wild bees and other pollinators can come into contact with quite high concentrations shortly after spraying. But animals in aquatic habitats are also at risk," says UFZ biologist Prof. Martin von Bergen, one of the two joint principal investigators. "Rainfall gradually washes plant protection products into the surrounding waters. They don't simply remain and only affect the area where they are applied."