Black flies, sometimes known as “buffalo gnats,” may not be as widely recognized as the common housefly, but they are undeniably more pernicious. Females of most black fly species need a blood meal to produce eggs, and rather than cleanly piercing the skin like a mosquito, they slice it open and lap up the pooled…
Solar-driven process upcycles polystyrene waste using excess sulfur
A research team from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China has developed a new process that uses sunlight to convert polystyrene waste and excess sulfur into valuable organic products. They published their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The chemical industry produces over 20 million tons of polystyrene annually for…
Rising sea levels are lengthening Earth’s days at an unprecedented rate
Researchers have developed a novel physics-informed deep learning approach that reconstructs Earth’s rotational history with unprecedented precision, revealing that climate change is lengthening days at rates unseen in 3.6 million years. Climate change is lengthening Earth’s days by approximately 1.5 milliseconds per century, according to researchers at the University of Vienna and ETH Zurich. Rising…
Cockroach metabolism unlocks rapid polystyrene degradation
Researchers from Harbin Institute of Technology and Stanford University have discovered that the cockroach Blaptica dubia can degrade polystyrene microplastics at rates an order of magnitude higher than previously known insect species, and they’ve decoded the metabolic mechanism that makes it possible. The findings, published February 25 in Environmental Science and Ecotechnology, reveal a sophisticated…
Navigating the PFAS compliance playbook as federal testing standards continue to shift
Laboratories chasing defensible PFAS data for U.S. drinking water compliance are dealing with a wave of challenges that makes the seemingly simple goal elusive. In addition to growing PFAS testing demand, other challenges include blank contamination, sloppy field handling, method deviations and reporting errors. The EPA’s PFAS drinking water rule is live, requiring approved methods…
Sandia National Laboratories designs porous liquids to selectively capture methane
Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories are investigating methods to capture methane from biogas, a mixture found in waste such as food scraps, manure and sewage. Biogas is a renewable energy source produced by breaking down organic matter that can be used to fuel vehicles, heat homes and generate electricity. “We are creating new types of…
New material captures and releases CO2 in response to visible light
Researchers in the Netherlands, Italy and Poland have developed a new porous material that can selectively capture carbon dioxide and release it in response to visible light. Their work was published in PNAS last month. The work combines porous framework materials and light-responsive functional groups. Ben Feringa, who shared the 2016 chemistry Nobel Prize, and…
New method breaks down up to 99% of PFAS
Researchers at the University of Chicago have discovered a way to use lithium to break down 95% of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), one of the most abundant “forever chemicals,” which may cause cancer and other harmful effects. The team published their findings in Nature Chemistry. PFAS are commonly found in drinking water, soil, waste sites, foods…
New method achieves 89% defluorination of PFOA in lab tests
Researchers at Nanjing University published a new study in Environmental and Biogeochemical Processes describing a method for treating perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in water. By introducing a small amount of formic acid into a UV-activated persulfate system, the researchers increased defluorination from 27% to 89% in 24 hours. The best results required acidic conditions (pH 2.5),…
LLNL’s multi-ignition wildfire models could help predict and prevent, catastrophic fire events
Just weeks after the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires became the costliest in U.S. history, with insured losses exceeding $37 billion and total economic damage estimates ranging from $95 billion to $164 billion, new research from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) offers insights into one of the most dangerous and least understood wildfire phenomena: multi-ignition…
Scientists release sodium hydroxide into the ocean to combat acidification
Scientists pumped approximately 16,200 gallons of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine. It was the final phase of a study on a climate intervention that could simultaneously mitigate global warming and ocean acidification. Earth’s oceans absorb about one-third of human carbon emissions. However, as this carbon dioxide dissolves into the ocean, it reacts with…
R&D 100 Winner Spotlight: DuPont’s high-salinity wastewater membrane
DuPont Water Solutions’ FilmTec Fortilife XC160 membrane, a 2025 R&D 100 Award winner in the Mechanical/Materials category, tackles a challenge traditional reverse osmosis can’t: concentrating wastewater streams up to 16% salt. At that salinity, osmotic pressure overwhelms conventional membranes, but the XC160’s underlying technology, developed over a decade and refined while awaiting scale-up, handles it.…
R&D 100 winner: How one startup is eliminating the century-old ‘dirty step’ in rare earth alloy manufacturing
Making industrial and military magnets from rare earth metals is a dirty job, often relegated to countries with limited environmental oversight. Now, Gadolyn Inc., headquartered in Austin, Texas, has developed a way to do it cleanly, paving the way to bringing production back to the U.S. The traditional molten salt electrolysis method, used around the…
AmazonFACE: Simulating the carbon future of the Amazon
In the Amazon rainforest, scientists are pumping carbon dioxide into the canopy to simulate atmospheric conditions that may arise due to climate change to study how the biome adapts to heightened levels of carbon dioxide. Predicting the future The project is called AmazonFACE, short for Free-Air CO2 Enrichment. It is located near Manaus, the largest…
R&D 100 winners predict disease risk on a continental scale
EpiEarth predicts the number of disease cases, disease risk and the impact of mitigations on potential epidemics. The software can predict on a day, season or decadal timescale, giving officials the necessary time to plan. The modular design enables the substitution of different models, diseases or vector species, making EpiEarth generalizable across vector-borne diseases that…
6 R&D advances this week: a quantum computer in space and a record-breaking lightning bolt
This week in R&D: the first quantum computer in space is now orbiting the Earth; a potential new treatment for Alzheimer’s, thanks to cancer drugs; a startup is breaking ground on their first fusion power plant, they say they are on track to deliver fusion energy by 2030; Google DeepMind announced their AI Earth mapping…
New design for bioplastics inspired by leaves increases tensile strength
The detrimental effects of petroleum-derived plastics are well known. As pollution levels rise and concerns about microplastics and forever chemicals intensify, the need for a sustainable solution becomes increasingly evident. In response to this need, researchers are developing biodegradable plastics. However, bioplastics are not as strong as traditional plastics and only degrade in a high-temperature…
New nanotechnology method increases microalgae biofuel yield by 300%
Scientists from the University of Texas at El Paso demonstrated a new technique to improve the yield of biofuel from microalgae. Their study in ACS Applied Bio Materials centers on the microalga Chlorella vulgaris, which is commonly found in freshwater and can be used to produce biofuels. The researchers demonstrated that doses of zinc oxide…
Researchers developed an AI tool to help build greener buildings
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame developed an AI tool, called EcoSphere, to help make cities greener. They published their findings in npj Urban Sustainability. The researchers aim to help urban policymakers make informed decisions about sustainable building practices. “Our goal is to develop tools that assess the carbon emission reduction and mitigation potentials…
Plastic converted into clean energy
Researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have developed a method to convert plastic waste into hydrogen, which can be used for clean energy. They published their findings in Engineering. Using a photocatalyst to oxidize plastic The researchers engineered a porous tungsten oxide (WO3) photoanode that interacts with polystyrene (PS) plastic. PS…
E. coli makes Tylenol from plastic waste
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh genetically reprogrammed E. coli to convert plastic into paracetamol, which is also known as acetaminophen (Tylenol). They published their findings in Nature Chemistry. The process could cut down on plastic waste while reducing emissions from traditional methods of creating paracetamol. Using bacteria to recycle plastic Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is…
Microbes used to create usable materials from urine
Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), UC Irvine and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have used microbes to turn human urine into hydroxyapatite. The team published their work in Nature Communications. The scientists genetically modified yeast to take the phosphorus and calcium from urine and create hydroxyapatite, a mineral naturally produced…
Carbon capture method traps CO₂ as a solid that can be used to make cement
Researchers at the University of Michigan developed a method to capture carbon dioxide and convert it into metal oxalates, which are used in cement production. They published their findings in Advanced Energy Materials. Methodology: Lead catalyst Previous research has shown that lead can be used as a catalyst to convert carbon dioxide into metal oxalates.…
Floating solar mats clean polluted water — and generate power
Most people bring a blanket to the beach to soak up the sun — this “blanket” soaks up pollution instead. Researchers at Ohio State University have created a solar-activated “nanomat” that floats on water like a beach mat, but instead of providing comfort, it goes to work cleaning up harmful contaminants. The lightweight, reusable material…
New AI model offers faster, adaptive CO₂ retrieval from satellite data
A team of researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a new artificial intelligence-based model for retrieving atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations from satellite data. The Spectrum Transformer (SpT) model is designed to address long-standing challenges in real-time global CO₂ monitoring. Published in the Journal of Remote Sensing,…