Soils are among the planet's largest carbon reservoirs, yet salinity and land degradation threaten their ability to store carbon and support agriculture. Improving carbon storage in salt-affected farmland could therefore offer a dual benefit: restoring soil health while supporting climate change mitigation.

A team at the University of Pittsburgh has found a way to make computer predictions about hard-to-model metals more accurate. In tests, their approach better predicted how pairs of metal atoms behave, including the notoriously difficult case of two chromium atoms. The improved calculations could give scientists more reliable data as they work to design new materials and train machine-learning tools.

The research opens new possibilities for making biotechnological processes faster and more sustainable

Engineers are taking their innovations for producing high-performance, high-value biobased carbon fiber from batch production in a lab to commercially relevant continuous production.

Salk scientists find a receptor called SRF3 that manages cellular iron levels while simultaneously regulating the plant’s immune response. Discovery reveals previously unknown mechanism that allows plants both to absorb this essential nutrient and defend against microbes, informing future crop resilience efforts. Study also provides insights into cellular mechanisms that could be relevant in mammalian cells and key signaling proteins in cancer and beyond.

A research team led by Prof. Haruki WATANABE, Professor in the Department of Physics and the HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), in collaboration with Prof. Yukitoshi MOTOME and graduate student Sena WATANABE from the University of Tokyo, has developed a unified theory that predicts when two states of matter are genuinely distinct and when they are secretly the same. The breakthrough provides a general framework for classifying phases across magnetic systems with different spin values and resolves a long-standing debate surrounding the behavior of water ice under extreme pressure. The paper titled "Topological phase transitions and their thermodynamic fate in arbitrary-𝑆 classical pyrochlore spin ice" was published in Physical Review X.

Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) have built a computational framework that captures the full optical cycle of spin defects, including the prediction of internal conversion, a process particularly hard to model. Their results, published in Physical Review Letters, shed light on how to use the defects in the design of quantum materials and could also be applied to a different class of systems used in renewable energy conversion and storage. 

Researchers at the University of Basel have investigated how fine particles in exhaust emissions from aircraft and marine engines change in the atmosphere. Their findings show that aircraft emissions in particular become more toxic over time.