A new review traces the development of carbohydrate-based medicines originating from marine organisms, from early bioactivity studies to approved products and current clinical trials. It links structural features such as sulfation, molecular weight and branching with therapeutic use, and outlines the production, quality-control, mechanistic and pharmacokinetic challenges that still limit clinical translation.

Four years of monitoring after the 2019 Brumadinho tailings dam collapse show that Brazil's Paraopeba River has not returned to a stable state. Bottom-dwelling invertebrate communities were reshuffled continuously at every site, and the reaches that received tailings show no sign of settling. Tributaries held most of the species, including many found nowhere else, and act as reservoirs that resupply the damaged channel. Protecting them is now the priority for restoring the basin.

In a major step forward in wearable technology, researchers have used machine learning to reveal how stretching flexible materials impacts their electrical performance. The study shows that pulling a material in one direction can boost conductivity by over 50%, while pulling it in another can hinder it, providing a crucial design guide for future electronic skin and sensors.

A review of over 200 studies reveals that bacteria—especially when partnered with plants—can effectively break down herbicide and petroleum hydrocarbon pollution. The research highlights promising new techniques including rhizoremediation, metagenomics, and CRISPR, while showing that herbicides are generally easier for bacteria to degrade than petroleum hydrocarbons.

In a paper published in Earth and Planetary Physics,a research team of seismologists explores strong earthquake hazards along major active faults on the western Ordos margin using multiple seismological methods. The sparse earthquake segments overlapping low b-value anomalies mark stress-loaded locked fault patches, interpreted as potential seismogenic asperities. Theoretical magnitudes estimated from the spatial extents of these sparse segments along the faults are broadly consistent with the magnitude range of historical strong earthquakes.