Lithium-ion batteries and plastics—two of the most consumed products in modern society—are becoming increasingly problematic when they reach the end of their lives. While batteries pose risks due to toxic components and resource waste, plastics challenge global recycling systems with their sheer volume and chemical durability.

Now, researchers from Soochow University and Harbin Engineering University have jointly developed a novel, dual-waste recycling strategy that addresses both problems simultaneously. In a study recently published in Science China Chemistry, they report a breakthrough in repurposing spent lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery materials and graphite anodes into highly efficient photothermal catalysts capable of upgrading waste polyester plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

A joint team from Singapore and Spain has uncovered an intrinsic link between optical vortices and optical skyrmions. By restoring the longitudinal electromagnetic field at a phase singularity, they reveal a perfectly formed Gauss–Stokes skyrmion—a full Poincaré-sphere texture—without any beam superposition. The finding unifies phase, polarization and topology in a single scalar mode and offers an ultracompact route to on-chip topological photonics.

Scientists at La Trobe University have produced a new, powerful electricity-conducting material, in research which could revolutionise smartphones and wearable technologies like medical devices.  

An international team led by QUT researchers continues to challenge a long-held assumption in photochemistry with potential applications in fields ranging from medicine to manufacturing.

What happens when things combine? This question lies at the heart of the Borell-Brascamp-Lieb inequality (BBL), a mathematical relation widely applied across many fields of mathematics, science and beyond. Now, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), University of Tokyo and University of Florence have provided a new proof for this powerful inequality, taking an unconventional approach based on heat and diffusion equations.

We all remember the advice frequently repeated during the COVID pandemic: maintain six feet of distance from every other human when waiting in a line to avoid transmitting the virus. While reasonable, the advice did not take into account the complicated fluid dynamics governing how the airborne particles actually travel through the air if people are also walking and stopping. Now, a team of researchers led by two undergraduate physics majors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has modeled how aerosol plumes spread when people are waiting and walking in a line.

Analysis of ocean sediments has surfaced geochemical clues in line with the possibility that an encounter with a disintegrating comet 12,800 years ago in the Northern Hemisphere triggered rapid cooling of Earth’s air and ocean. Christopher Moore of the University of South Carolina, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on August 6, 2025.