New research is dismantling the long-standing myth of the "pristine" Amazon. A reconstruction of 10,000 years of Amazonian pyrogeography, based on 1,361 radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates across 303 sites - including soil charcoal and burned archaeological material - shows that fire in the rainforest is almost exclusively a human-driven phenomenon, not a natural one. Over the last two millennia, human-ignited fire has driven vegetation change on a scale comparable to major climatic shifts, such as deglaciation or the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna. The research has been published in the open-access, peer-reviewed Frontiers of Biogeography journal.

A recent study published in the National Science Review reveals that the tradition of wrapping grains in leaves may date back as far as 2,200 years ago. Leaf-wrapped plant bundles unearthed at the Wuwangdun Site—believed to have served as funerary offerings—are now considered an early precursor to zongzi, the iconic traditional Chinese food enjoyed during the Dragon Boat Festival.

Fridges, A/C systems, and datacenters consume enormous amounts of electricity and the cooling demand is constantly on the rise. A team of research from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Tsukuba in Japan is now presenting a new approach substantiated by a prototype where heat assumes the role formerly taken by an electric motor. Two ultra-thin shape-memory films interact to convert thermal energy into mechanical work in a first step and finally into measurable cold. Their work opens up new possibilities for the future use of waste heat and solar energy for solid-state cooling. The results have been published in Nature Energy. (DOI: 10.1038/s41560-026-02122-6)

 Scientists at the University of Plymouth and the British Antarctic Survey investigated how shifts in ocean salinity could affect marine species in the Antarctic

A study led by University of Michigan finds that El Niño events have become 37% stronger in the last 40 years compared to any in the 1,000 years before the industrial revolution.