Max Planck researchers have uncovered the mechanism behind dendrite-induced short circuits in solid-state batteries, a step toward safer, longer-lasting next-generation batteries. The study was published in Nature.

New study highlights new ways to produce urea electrochemically, using electricity and waste gases.

Touch is a powerful yet underutilized sense in digital interaction. Expanding the role of mediated touch technologies could enhance remote communication, support wellbeing, and enrich educational experiences, believes Yulia Sion, who defended her doctoral thesis at Tallinn University School of Digital Technologies on April 21, 2026.

New research has shown how Australian energy companies and waste management firms can safely turn organic waste, such as food scraps, sewage and animal waste, into clean gas for homes and businesses.

Rural-residing adolescents are twice as likely to die by suicide compared to their urban-residing peers. To better support crisis care for rural youth, researchers developed Plan & Protect, a technology-guided safety planning program for youth with suicidality seeking care in rural emergency departments. Plan & Protect aims to enhance accessibility, usability, and fidelity of safety planning in resource-limited emergency departments, with a goal of supporting more effective crisis care for adolescents in rural communities. The program and findings from the study will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2026 Meeting, taking place April 24-27 in Boston.

CHANGWON, South Korea — Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS), led by President Chul-jin Choi, announced that a research team led by Juchan Yang, principal researcher at KIMS, in collaboration with Professor Ji-Wook Jang, Hankwon Lim, and Hosik Lee of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), has developed a high-efficiency electrochemical system that simultaneously produces hydrogen and value-added chemicals using glycerol, a low-cost, abundant byproduct of biodiesel production. This study is significant in that it replaces the anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER), a key bottleneck in conventional water electrolysis, thereby reducing the overall cell voltage and improving energy efficiency and expanding the scope of electrochemical conversion technologies.

For thousands of years, humans have used a variety of waterproofing materials on ships and boats, but traditionally non-wood materials used in shipbuilding have been overlooked in the research. Now, scientist analyzed the coatings of a Roman Republic shipwreck and were able to use pollen trapped in the coatings to identify the vegetation of the landscapes where the ship was constructed and repaired successively. They found several layers of coatings were applied, likely at different ports or shipyards throughout the Adriatic Sea. The team said this work helps gain a more complete understanding of the ship’s ‘life stages’ and diverse shipbuilding traditions.

Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have discovered that in perovskite solar cells, conventional passivation strategies mainly act on the film surface and struggle to reach buried interfaces, much like a superficial “external dressing” that cannot repair deep microstructural defects formed during film growth. In particular, the rapid evaporation of solvents during film formation inevitably leads to voids and nanoscale grain-boundary grooves at the bottom interface of perovskite films. These long-overlooked defects severely hinder charge transport and trigger interfacial failure during device scaling and operation, becoming a critical bottleneck for efficiency, stability, and large-area manufacturing.