Sixty-million-year-old rock samples from deep under the ocean have revealed how huge amounts of carbon dioxide are stored for millennia in piles of lava rubble that accumulate on the seafloor.

An international study published today in Communications Biology has used unique coral reefs in Papua New Guinea to determine the likely impact of ocean acidification on coral reefs in the face of climate change.

Oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and that acid will dissolve coral limestone. But it’s hard to predict what impact this will have on whole ecosystems from studies using aquariums and models.

The research team, led by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), studied entire coral reefs, locally enriched with CO₂ that is seeping from the sea floor, near some of Papua New Guinea’s remote shallow submarine volcanoes.

Dr. Katharina Fabricius, a coral researcher at AIMS in Townsville and senior author on the paper, says the research has revealed which species can thrive under lifelong exposure to elevated CO₂.

“These unique natural laboratories are like a time machine,” said Dr Fabricius.  

“The CO₂ seeps have allowed us to study the reefs’ tolerance limits and make predictions. How will coral reefs cope if emissions are in line with the Paris Agreement level emissions? How will they respond to higher CO₂ emissions scenarios?”

Ultrawide bandgap semiconductor optoelectronic synapses can perform high-parallel computing with low false alarm rate, making them ideal for building deep-ultraviolet (DUV) neuromorphic visual system (NVS). Scientists in China developed a breakthrough DUV optoelectronic synapse using Ga₂O₃-based cascade heterojunctions. The device mimics biological vision with 4,096 conductance states and ultrahigh linearity, enabling high-accuracy fingerprint recognition and fault-tolerant logic operations. This innovation paves the way for energy-efficient neuromorphic vision systems in military, environmental monitoring, and secure communications.

There’s always a touch of melancholy when a chapter that has absorbed years of work comes to an end. In the case of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), those years amount to nearly twenty — and now the telescope has completed its mission. Yet some endings are also important beginnings, opening new paths for the entire scientific community.

The three papers just published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP) by the ACT Collaboration describe and contextualize in detail the sixth and final major ACT data release — perhaps the most important one — marking significant advances in our understanding of the Universe’s evolution and its current state.

ACT’s data clarify several key points: the measurement of the Hubble constant (the number that indicates the current rate of cosmic expansion — the Universe’s “speedometer”) obtained from observations at very large cosmological distances is confirmed, and it remains markedly different from the value derived from the nearby Universe. This is both a problem and a remarkable discovery: it confirms the so-called “Hubble tension,” which challenges the model we use to describe the cosmos.

ACT’s observations also rule out many of the so-called extended models — theoretical alternatives to the standard cosmological model. That’s another “problem,” since it narrows the range of possibilities, but it also represents a new, cleaner starting point: time to stop pursuing these models and look elsewhere.

Last but not least, ACT provides new polarization maps of the cosmic microwave background — the Universe’s “fossil light” — which complement Planck’s temperature maps, but with much higher resolution. “When we compare them, it’s a bit like cleaning your glasses,” says Erminia Calabrese, cosmologist at Cardiff University, ACT collaboration member and coordinator of one of the three papers.

Scientists in Korea developed a photopatterning approach for emissive layer (EML) patterns using prepatterned photoresist based on a molecular crosslinking strategy. This approach enables ultra-high resolution up to 3000 ppi—fulfilling AR display requirements—without direct exposure of EML to etchants or UV irradiation, unlike conventional photolithography. The simple method offers a promising route for high-resolution OLEDs for VR/AR applications

Overcoming fundamental power limitations in single-frequency fiber lasers—long constrained by stimulated Brillouin scattering effect (SBS) and transverse mode instability effect (TMI)—Chinese researchers combined optic-acoustic-thermodynamic multi-physics comprehensive analysis and innovatively proposed the insight of using a regionally refractive index design to suppress SBS and TMI. Their ‘bat-type’ refractive-index fiber achieved the first kilowatt breakthrough in single-frequency fiber lasers internationally, which could provide a novel laser source for next-generation advanced detection and sensing systems.

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have revealed how a catalyst in a promising chemical reaction for industry helps make ammonia, a major ingredient in fertilizer. Copper oxide is a key catalyst in the electrochemical nitrate reduction reaction, a greener alternative to the existing Haber-Bosch process. They discovered that copper particles are created mid-reaction, helping convert nitrite ions to ammonia. This insight into the underlying mechanisms promises leaps forward in developing new industrial chemistry.