Over the past two years, in cooperation with the global food corporation Mars and several rice farmers in Arkansas, researchers with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station's Rice Processing Program have dug into the problem with declining head rice yields, or the total weight of unbroken rice kernels after milling. The research team will present related findings at this year’s Rice Processing Program Industry Alliance Meeting, May 19, at the Don Tyson Center for Agricultural Sciences in Fayetteville.

Membranes with nanometer-sized pores can filter the herbicide glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA out of water. The success of the process not only depends on the size and charge of the molecules, but also on their hydration: The thicker their hydration shell, the harder it is for them to pass through the membrane. These findings made by researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) will help further improve nanofiltration in order to provide people worldwide with clean water. The results of their study have been published in Nature Communications. (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-71492-y).

Silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) is an excellent candidate for engineering ceramics; however, its toughness and hardness are fundamentally limited by the inherent incompatibility between the hard α-phase and the tough β-phase. Si₃N₄ ceramics with a columnar-cluster microstructure are reported, achieving combination of toughness of 10.2 ± 0.3 MPa·m^1/2and 20.1 ± 0.3 GPa hardness. Those values represent the state-of-the-art among Si₃N₄ ceramics fabricated via liquid-phase sintering reported to date. The formation of the columnar clusters is driven by a high-pressure-induced coarsening process. The metastable growth mechanism may open a new pathway for preparing a new generation of Si₃N₄ ceramics with superior performance.

Passive radiative cooling (PRC) represents a pivotal zero-energy solution for addressing global cooling demands, the energy crisis, and carbon emission challenges. While traditional Mg₂Al₄Si₅O₁₈ ceramics possess significant theoretical potential owing to their wide bandgap and abundant phonon modes, their practical performance is severely constrained by phonon-polariton resonance, which compromises infrared emissivity. To surmount this bottleneck, a novel strategy combining phonon engineering and bandgap engineering is proposed. A series of Y³⁺-doped Mg₂Al₄Si₅O₁₈ ceramics were rationally designed and synthesized to effectively suppress phonon-polariton resonance and widen the bandgap, thereby significantly enhancing both atmospheric window emissivity and solar reflectivity. The optimized material exhibits exceptional daytime cooling performance, achieving a maximum temperature reduction of 16.5 °C and an average net cooling power of 113.1 W·m^-2. This study presents a low-cost, eco-friendly, and highly stable inorganic ceramic solution for large-scale PRC applications, paving a new avenue for the development of next-generation sustainable cooling materials.

A review paper by scientists at Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Science presented a comprehensive overview of the construction, control, and application of cyborg animals composed of biological and electromechanical systems.

The review paper, published on Mar 26, 2026 in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems.