Young adults in Sweden feel significantly worse than older people in almost all areas of life. While older Swedes rank among the happiest in the world, young adults struggle with loneliness and psychological distress. These are the findings of a new large-scale study on flourishing in Sweden, published in the International Journal of Wellbeing and conducted by researchers at the Stockholm School of Economics, Lund University, Oslo Metropolitan University and Harvard University.

Most African countries have in-use steel stocks below 1 tonne per capita—less than one-twentieth of industrialised levels. Meanwhile, €10 billion in European subsidies for domestic green iron has yielded only one project reaching final investment decision. A new article in Technology Review for Carbon Neutrality argues these are not separate problems: they share a solution. Green iron produced in developing country "sweetspots" could supply European steelmakers at 27% lower cost—delivering a competitive decarbonised EU steel industry while providing the bankable anchor investment that developing countries need to build their own steel industries and infrastructure in parallel.

Many promising drug molecules fail to reach patients because they do not dissolve well enough in water, limiting their effectiveness when taken orally. Now, researchers from Japan investigated an innovative method that uses sublimation to load drugs into a mesoporous silica carrier without relying on organic solvents. Using ibuprofen as a model compound, they showed that this approach can produce formulations with significantly enhanced solubility, offering a cleaner and more sustainable strategy for drug development.

Scientists from the Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) developed a liquid-repellent particle coating that allows pico- and nanoliter liquid droplets to be handled like dry powder, enabling precise control of ultra-small liquid volumes in microfluidics applications.