EurekAlert! News by Subject: Tech & Engineering - News by Subject: Tech & Engineering

Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 25-Jan-2026 02:11 ET (25-Jan-2026 07:11 GMT/UTC)

For U.S. nuclear energy future, fuel supply cannot be overlooked

Stanford University
Reports and Proceedings

U.S. nuclear energy faces fuel supply chain vulnerabilities, with tight uranium supplies, geopolitical risks, and rising costs threatening both existing reactors costs and advanced reactor development.

The uranium conversion stage represents a major bottleneck, with only five large-scale facilities worldwide, shrinking stockpiles, and companies hesitant to expand capacity without long-term contracts that buyers are reluctant to sign at current high prices.

Next-generation reactors will require significantly more mined uranium per ton of fuel, potentially tightening supplies for the existing nuclear fleet, which is already facing high fuel costs.

Funder: U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/US Department of Energy

Study finds food waste compost less effective than potting mix alone

University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture
Peer-Reviewed Publication

To test the viability of food waste as a plant growth medium, researchers grew tomato and watermelon seedlings in pure food waste substrate, pure commercial peat moss-based potting mix and blends of the two with varying ratios to compare seedling germination, growth and nutrient uptake. The pure food waste substrate was made up of food scraps from a commercial partner and wood chips from a tree service company. The study found that while food waste compost might not be viable as a standalone alternative to commercial potting mix, it could be suitable as part of a substrate mix.

Journal: HortTechnology
Funder: National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch

UW researchers analyzed which anthologized writers and books get checked out the most from Seattle Public Library

University of Washington
Peer-Reviewed Publication

UW researchers analyzed the checkout data from the last 20 years of the 93 authors included in the post-1945 volume of “The Norton Anthology of American Literature,” which is assigned in U.S. English classes more than any other anthology. Sci-fi was especially popular.

Improving sleep isn’t enough: researchers highlight daytime function as key to assessing insomnia treatments

University of Maryland School of Medicine
Peer-Reviewed Publication

About one in nine adults suffer from chronic insomnia and its residual effects like drowsiness, cognitive issues, and irritability as well as increased health risks like diabetes and heart risks if left untreated. While many treatments are available, the challenge lies in determining how well a medication or other sleep aid works in individual patients. Now a new study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine has found using real-time smartphone-based assessments can help to determine the effectiveness of sleep medications by detecting improvements in daytime insomnia symptoms including thinking, fatigue, and mood. Following a two-week course of treatment, this smartphone-based assessment approach detected treatment effects more powerfully than did traditional methods like recall questionnaires.

Journal: JAMA Network Open
Funder: Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC

More data, more sharing can help avoid misinterpreting “smoking gun” signals in topological physics

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In topological condensed matter physics, where major discoveries could hold big implications for fields like information technology, the reliability of such discoveries could be greatly enhanced by taking several steps, like presenting larger sets of data, say Sergey Frolov and colleagues. Their insights are based in part on four original experiments they did that correspond to either theory predictions or published work. “Overall,” write the authors, “although replication crises are typically perceived to be a problem in fields less quantitative than physics, the overemphasis on smoking- gun claims has the potential to affect the reliability of findings irrespective of field.” Electrons in solids are restricted by their energies to certain intervals or bands that determine the solid’s electronic properties. These bands can be re-ordered into new topologies in non-traditional or re-structured materials, yielding unique electronic properties that could be useful in applications such as quantum computing and data storage. Guided by theory, condensed matter physicists design experiments to identify when a new topological regime has been achieved in a material, looking for a particular “smoking gun” signal that indicates the new topology. Now, Sergey Frolov and colleagues show in four experiments in topological physics that these smoking gun signals can also arise from trivial phenomena that mimic the true signal of a topological change. By fine-tuning their experimental parameters, Frolov et al. suggest, some researchers may be introducing a confirmation bias that points to the “discovery” of a smoking gun. Releasing comprehensive data sets, disclosing the full volume of their study and exploring alternative scenarios for the signal could help mitigate the risk of misleading smoking guns, Frolov et al. conclude.

Journal: Science

UBCO innovation blocks nanoplastics release from landfill leachate

University of British Columbia Okanagan campus
Peer-Reviewed Publication

UBC Okanagan researchers have created a new two-layer membrane filtration system that can significantly reduce the amount of micro and nanoplastics that leak from landfills into local water basins.

Dr. Sumi Siddiqua, Professor at UBCO’s School of Engineering, and doctoral student Mahmoud Babalar, have published a study detailing how a double-layer membrane installed at landfills can act as a filter to keep tiny pollutants out of groundwater and surrounding ecosystems.

“Landfills are silent threats to our environment, acting as major reservoirs for emerging pollutants,” says Dr. Siddiqua.

Journal: Journal of Environmental Management

Evidence of cross-regional marine plastic pollution in green sea turtles

Rissho University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Plastics were detected in 7 of 10 green sea turtles migrating to Japan’s Ogasawara Islands, dominated by meso- and macroplastics rather than microplastics. Green turtles likely ingested plastics through two distinct pathways: non-selective ingestion of plastics associated with large and drifting seaweeds, and selective ingestion of plastics resembling gelatinous plankton such as jellyfish and salpas. The ingested plastics originated beyond the turtles’ migratory range, highlighting the transboundary nature of marine plastic pollution.

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