Steroid hormones are among the most widespread aquatic micropollutants. They are harmful to human health, and they cause ecological imbalances in aquatic environments. At the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), researchers have investigated how steroid hormones are degraded in an electrochemical membrane reactor with carbon nanotube membranes. They found that adsorption of steroid hormones on the carbon nanotubes did not limit the hormones’ subsequent degradation. A report on their work has been published in Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52730-7).

Seoul National University College of Engineering announced that a research team directed by Professor Kyu-Jin Cho from the Department of Mechanical Engineering has proposed a gripper capable of moving multiple objects together to enhance the efficiency of pick-and-place processes, inspired from humans’ multi-object grasping strategy. The gripper not only transfers multiple objects at once but also places individual objects at desired locations. This achievement was published in the journal Science Robotics on December 12, recognized for analyzing human motion principles and successfully applying them to a robotic gripper.

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