Biorobotics researchers from UQ have transformed North Queensland giant burrowing cockroaches (Macropanesthia rhinoceros) into minature cyborg paramedics. 

The warming climate is reshaping populations of the snail that transmits schistosomiasis in China. Now, researchers show that 92% of studied snail populations had positive temperature sensitivity, while body size and land use shaped survival and density. Projections suggest that more than 20% of populations could increase under future warming, highlighting regions and habitats where climate-adaptive surveillance and targeted snail control should be strengthened to sustain progress toward schistosomiasis elimination and protect communities nationwide.

Complex mathematical problems, such as combinatorial optimization problems, have wide-ranging industrial applications and require extensive computational resources to solve. Slime molds represent a promising avenue for developing new, efficient computing paradigms to mitigate this issue. However, their physical implementation is still challenging. Now, researchers have developed a new, simpler amoeba-inspired computing model that enables physical implementation across diverse materials and physical phenomena, without compromising optimization performance.

Lithium metal batteries (LMBs), that use pure lithium (Li) for their negative electrodes, are attracting significant attention due to their extremely high theoretical capacity. However, their practical applications are limited by low cycling stability and safety issues, arising from dendrite formation, electrolyte breakdown and uneven solid-electrolyte interface formation.

As countries invest in green hydrogen to decarbonize heavy industry, transportation, and energy systems, researchers are seeking faster ways to accelerate the development of hydrogen technologies. Solid oxide electrolysis cells are among the most efficient systems for producing green hydrogen from steam, but identifying their optimal operating conditions requires thousands of computationally intensive simulations, slowing innovation and increasing development costs.

In its CZS Nexus program, the Carl Zeiss Foundation has awarded grants to two young scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The researchers will each receive EUR 1.5 million to establish their own interdisciplinary working groups at KIT. Dr. Laura Marie Helleckes investigates how biotechnology processes can be transferred from the laboratory to industrial production. Dr. Bianca Schacherl uses modern X-ray techniques to gain new insights for cancer treatment by analyzing radioactive materials in biological samples.