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Chemistry & Physics

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 26-Oct-2026 09:16 ET (26-Oct-2026 13:16 GMT/UTC)

Adding iron to the ocean can remove CO2 – but at what cost to nature?

Technical University of Denmark
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Adding iron to the ocean can cause plankton to absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere. However, the effect depends on where in the world the method is used, and it can have far-reaching consequences for marine ecosystems and food chains, according to a new study in Nature.

Journal: Nature
Funder: U.S. Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies at the University of Maryland/ESSIC, Kavli Foundation

Physics-guided AI designs low-noise amplifiers that use 62% less power than expert designs

ELSP
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A physics-guided AI framework automatically optimizes 2.4 GHz CMOS low-noise amplifiers, reducing power consumption by 62% and improving linearity by 10.7 dB compared with an expert-designed baseline, while nearly doubling the rate of successful circuit simulations under foundry design constraints.

Nature’s original bioplastic is food for animals

Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A study by the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology shows that animals such as marine worms and earthworms possess enzymes capable of breaking down the natural bioplastic PHA. This provides new insights into the carbon cycle and the biological utilisation of microbial bioplastics.

Journal: Nature Ecology & Evolution

Towards a physics-informed network paradigm with data generation and background noise removal for different distributed acoustic sensing applications

Light Publishing Center, Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics And Physics, CAS
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A research team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University has developed a physics-informed neural network for distributed acoustic sensing. The approach generates synthetic event data and removes background noise without relying on real-world event data. Demonstrated in public datasets and belt conveyor fault monitoring, the method achieves high accuracy and generalizes across different sites, offering a scalable solution for industrial monitoring and optical sensing applications.

Journal: Light: Science & Applications
Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China

KAIST develops high-efficiency, eco-friendly hydrogen separation membrane that filters hydrogen through a molecular “network”

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

- Professor Tae-Hyun Bae’s team in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering presents a new design strategy for high-performance hydrogen-selective membranes

- A complete network of angstrom-scale transport pathways enables faster, more precise hydrogen separation

Journal: Nature Communications

Fishbone-derived catalyst turns agricultural plastic waste into olefin-rich bio-oil

Shenyang Agricultural University Collaborative Journals
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Agricultural plastic mulch helps farmers conserve water, control weeds, and improve crop productivity, but disposing of the used films creates a growing environmental challenge. Researchers have now developed a catalyst made from fishbone-derived char, phosphoric acid, and iron that converts low-density polyethylene agricultural film into bio-oil with a yield of up to 89.32 wt.% and an olefin selectivity of 84.03%.

Journal: Sustainable Carbon Materials

Astronomers witness cosmic recycling system in action

Northwestern University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Astronomers used new MOTHRA telescope in Chile to image famous eye-shaped nebula. Team found 22 glowing shock waves where stellar debris collided with interstellar gas. After colliding with gas, stellar fragments remain intact for just 10,000 years, the team estimates. Finding reveals how dying stars return material to space to form new stars and planets.

Journal: Nature

Rice researchers discover new way to tune electron flow in altermagnet material

Rice University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Rice University’s Pengcheng Dai recently published a paper in Physical Review X describing the first successful efforts to put a proposed altermagnet material into a single magnetic domain state, allowing the research team to characterize the material’s intrinsic magnetic structure.

Journal: Physical Review X

Rice’s Huang elected fellow of SPIE for contributions to optics and photonics

Rice University
Grant and Award Announcement

Shengxi Huang, associate professor in Rice University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was elected this month as a fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, in recognition of her contributions to the field and service to its scientific community.

Funder: SPIE