Sets of metabolites found in blood and urine reliably correspond with how much energy from ultra-processed food a person consumes, according to a new study published May 20^th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Erikka Loftfield of the National Cancer Institute, USA, and colleagues.

A debate continues among scientists over whether tree composition in forests in eastern North American historically have been influenced more by climate or by cultural burning, which is the intentional and controlled use of fire by Indigenous people to manage their environment. Now, a new study of southern New England forests by a team including a researcher from Penn State lends credence to the cultural burning hypothesis, suggesting that fire-tolerant vegetation — oak, hickory and pine — were significantly more abundant near Indigenous settlements over the last 5,000 years.

New research could improve the efficiency of electrochemical carbon-dioxide capture and release by six times and cut costs by at least 20 percent. MIT researchers added nanoscale filtering membranes to a carbon-capture system, separating the ions that carry out the capture and release steps, and enabling both steps to proceed more efficiently.

Scientists from The University of Texas at Arlington are among the researchers worldwide recognized with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their contributions to the ATLAS Experiment. The $1 million award honors the team’s groundbreaking work at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization of Nuclear Research, known as CERN—the world’s largest particle physics laboratory—which led to the discovery of the Higgs boson, often called the “God particle” for its key role in explaining the existence of mass in the universe.

SAN ANTONIO — May 20, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has achieved a significant milestone, reaching new temperature records for testing materials in high-pressure environments. While conducting material testing for a high-pressure, high-temperature supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO₂) turbine, SwRI achieved unprecedented conditions of 1,150 degrees Celsius (2,100 degrees Fahrenheit) at 300 bar (4,350 psi). These are the highest published temperature and pressure conditions ever reached in sCO₂ materials testing.