17 February 2026 / Kiel / Las Palmas. Yesterday, an international team of researchers from various disciplines set off aboard the German research vessel METEOR for an expedition along the west coast of Africa, led by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. The expedition focuses on two poorly understood phenomena: the Benguela upwelling system off the coasts of Angola and Namibia, which partly operates independently of the wind, and the recurring marine heatwaves known as Benguela Niños, which have a significant impact on the local climate and cause flooding in Angola and Namibia.

Rice bioengineer Jerzy Szablowski has been named a 2026 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in chemistry, one of the most competitive honors for early career scientists in the U.S. and Canada.

SAN ANTONIO — February 17, 2026 —Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI) Metering Research Facility (MRF) has received ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation for natural gas flow calibration, which confirms compliance with international testing and calibration standards. As a result, SwRI is now certified by the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA) to offer highly specialized calibration services to a broad range of energy sector clients, including natural gas pipeline operators, flow meter manufacturers and power plants.

Four New York University faculty have been awarded fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: Danique Jeurissen, an assistant professor of neural science, and Marvin Parasram, an assistant professor of chemistry, as well as Florian Schäfer and Joseph Tassarotti, assistant professors in NYU’s Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science.

Research shows that allowing natural vegetation to grow back in mountainous areas and on steep slopes and moving production to more fertile areas will both reduce climate emissions and increase biodiversity.

PPPL-led simulations have identified why far more exhaust particles strike the inner divertor target than the outer one in tokamaks, a long-observed phenomenon that previous models couldn’t fully explain. The key is combining cross-field drift effects with core plasma rotation. When researchers added both factors to their simulations, the results finally matched experimental measurements. The finding could improve exhaust system designs for future fusion power plants.

Food scraps, manure and sewage are natural byproducts of the U.S. agricultural industry. They are also rich in biogas, a mixture that contains methane and other valuable chemicals. A team of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are developing chemistry that could help capture methane from biogas and separate it from other gases so it can be put to good use.