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Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 11-Jun-2026 07:16 ET (11-Jun-2026 11:16 GMT/UTC)

Study confirms Arctic peatlands are expanding

University of Exeter
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New research confirms Arctic peatlands are expanding as temperatures continue to rise

Journal: Global Change Biology

Study creates most precise map yet of agricultural emissions, charts path to reduce hotspots

Cornell University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

To lower agricultural emissions, policymakers and communities first need to pinpoint the sources. Not just by country but crop by crop, field by field. In a Cornell Unviersity study published Feb. 13 in Nature Climate Change, researchers have synthesized data from multiple ground sources and models to map global cropland emissions at high resolution – down to about 10 kilometers – while breaking down emissions by crop and source and identifying regions for more precise mitigation.

Journal: Nature Climate Change
Funder: Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Land & Carbon Lab

Shaping carbon fiber with electricity

Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Controlled manipulation of the fibers that are as thin as or even thinner than human hair is a real challenge. Despite the technology development, the precise and reversible change of the microfibers' orientation, like the tweezers, is not easy. The interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, has recently developed a way to control the shape of microfibers with electricity. This brings us closer to a novel technical solution in micromechanics and soft robotics. Their recent work, published in the Nature Communications journal, demonstrates the first proof-of-concept results on the motion of pristine carbon fibers caused by asymmetric electrochemical processes occurring in the material.

Journal: Nature Communications

HKU astrophysicists contribute to interpreting a possible first-ever Einstein probe observation of a black hole tearing apart a white dwarf

The University of Hong Kong
Peer-Reviewed Publication

On 2 July, 2025, the China-led Einstein Probe (EP) space telescope detected an exceptionally bright X-ray source whose brightness varied rapidly during a routine sky survey. Its unusual signal immediately set it apart from ordinary cosmic sources, triggering rapid follow-up observations by telescopes worldwide.

This research was coordinated by the EP Science Center of the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), with participation from multiple research institutions in China and abroad. Astrophysicists from the Department of Physics at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), who are integral members of the EP scientific team, worked together with the broader collaboration to interpret the event, proposing that it may mark the moment when an intermediate-mass black hole tears apart and consumes a white dwarf star. If confirmed, this would be the first observational evidence of such an extreme black hole “feeding” process. The findings have been published as a cover article in Science Bulletin.

Journal: Science Bulletin

HKU scientists uncover force-induced inter-protofilament gaps can pave the way for life in microtubule research

The University of Hong Kong
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Constructed with tubulin heterodimers connected into a hollow cylinder, the microtubule, an essential component of the cytoskeleton, plays a vital role in various intracellular processes. In a groundbreaking study, a cross-disciplinary research team led by Professor Yuan Lin from the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, and Professor Jeff Ti from the School of Biomedical Sciences in the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has revealed how the biological function of microtubules is achieved through mechanical regulation at the tubulin level.

Journal: Nature Physics

How the human exposome will unlock better health and medicine:

Exposome Moonshot
Meeting Announcement

A high-level scientific panel moderated by the Financial Times titled: “How the human exposome will unlock better health and medicine”, gathers three leaders of the Global Exposome Forum from the United States and Europe, to brief delegates from the global scientific community on progress made since its launch in Washington D.C. in May, 2025.

Meeting: 2026 AAAS Annual Meeting

Advancing AI for science: extracting and fusing cross-disciplinary expert knowledge with data to accelerate alloy discovery

Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

High-entropy alloys are promising advanced materials for demanding applications, but discovering useful compositions is difficult and expensive due to the vast number of possible element combinations. Now, researchers have developed a novel AI-driven framework that integrates experimental data, computational modeling, and cross-disciplinary expert knowledge extracted from scientific literature. By combining these sources in a way that accounts for uncertainty, their approach can make reliable predictions even for poorly studied alloy compositions, outperforming conventional data-driven machine learning methods that rely on training data alone.

Journal: Digital Discovery
Funder: Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

New measurement method enables efficient real-time verification of quantum technologies

University of Vienna
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The fragility and laws of quantum physics generally make the characterisation of quantum systems time-consuming. Furthermore, when a quantum system is measured, it is destroyed in the process. A recent breakthrough by researchers at the University of Vienna demonstrates a novel method for quantum state certification that efficiently verifies entangled quantum states in real time without destroying all available states - a decisive step forward in the development of robust quantum computers and quantum networks. The work was carried out in Philip Walther's laboratories at the Faculty of Physics and the Vienna Centre for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) and published in the journal Science Advances.

Journal: Science Advances

KRICT develops microfluidic chip for one-step detection of PFAs and other pollutants

National Research Council of Science & Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The research team overcame these issues by designing a trap-based microfluidic device that confines a small volume of extractant droplet inside a microchamber while allowing the sample solution to flow continuously through an adjacent microchannel. This configuration enables rapid and selective mass transfer of target analytes into the extractant, while solid particles pass through the channel without interference. After extraction, the extractant droplet can be retrieved for downstream analysis.

Journal: ACS Sensors
Funder: Ministry of Science and ICT