Climate-smart agricultural practices – like no-till treatments, cover-crop utilization and residue retention – can help promote carbon sequestration in soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study that uses a combination of models – rather than just one – to provide a more realistic range of outcomes and to highlight the shortcomings of individual models.

But a recent discovery by a multi-university collaboration of researchers, led by Drexel University researcher Yury Gogotsi, PhD, and Drexel alumnus Babak Anasori, PhD, who is now an associate professor at Purdue University, that sheds light on the thermodynamics undergirding the materials’ unique structure and behavior, could be the key to supercharging the development of two-dimensaional materials with artificial intelligence technology. The discovery was recently reported in the journal Science.

Maintaining the order and stability that is vital for more widespread and predictably reliable nanomaterial applications is finicky. Researchers have succeeded in putting up to nine transition metals from the periodic table into a single 2D sheet of an ultrathin material called MXene. By completing this complicated task, they were able to evaluate the true role of entropy versus enthalpy in these high-entropy materials, which is critical to the successful design and implementation of nanomaterials in use cases.

Genetically engineered cell lines used in biomedical research have long been prone to misidentification and unauthorized use, wasting billions of dollars each year and jeopardizing critical scientific discoveries. These problems not only undermine reproducibility of research results, but also put valuable intellectual property at risk.

Now, researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas have developed a novel method to embed unique genetic identifiers in engineered cell lines, eliminating identification errors and safeguarding innovations with tamper-proof genomic tags.

Penn Engineering researchers use light-triggered tissue stiffening to uncover cellular transitions that may drive fibrosis

Engineers were able to develop materials with fine control over material properties like stiffness. For example, a prosthetic leg built with this system can stiffen to provide support while walking on a flat surface but reconfigure into a more flexible state for climbing stairs. The designers could also create adjustable metasurfaces that are used in antennas and optics.

A new class of 2D materials known as MXenes holds the key to next-generation applications, such as consumer electronics and medical devices. Now, collaborative research led by Zahra Fakhraai and Aleksandra Vojvodic of the University of Pennsylvania offers fundamental insights into the chemical and geometric mechanisms underlying the synthesis of these materials, a finding that could lead to cleaner, quicker energy conversion and storage for these devices.