Plastic recycling is advancing rapidly, yet hidden chemical additives remain a largely overlooked challenge. A new article in Engineering reveals that thousands of additives in plastics accumulate and degrade through recycling cycles, threatening material safety and circularity. The article notes key limits in detection and sorting, and calls for focused research on additive behavior, improved analytical tools, and greater industry transparency to build safer, more sustainable plastic recycling systems.

Rolling bearings are critical components in heavy machinery, and their lubricant film thickness directly determines equipment reliability. This new study introduces a coupled elastohydrodynamic–acoustic framework for high-resolution, noninvasive ultrasonic measurement of dynamic oil film thickness in bearings. By accounting for elastic deformation and cavitation, the method greatly improves measurement accuracy and supports real-world industrial monitoring. It offers a practical way to assess bearing health and enhance operational stability.

Wastewater treatment plants are key to global carbon neutrality efforts. A new study in Engineering shares a clear, science-based roadmap to cut emissions and energy use in these facilities. It covers smarter operation, low-carbon technologies, greenhouse gas control, energy from sludge and effluent heat, and turning wastewater into valuable resources. This practical guide shows how to make wastewater treatment sustainable without losing treatment quality.

This comprehensive study details Nanjing Botanical Garden Mem. Sun Yat-sen’s remarkable achievements in plant germplasm collection, endangered species protection, and industrial resource development, providing valuable insights for China’s emerging national botanical garden system.

Researchers studying 5556 participants in a Chinese endoscopy-screened cohort found that genetic risk and lifestyle independently and jointly influenced upper gastrointestinal cancer risk. The study identified a potential new gastric cancer susceptibility locus at 6p12.1 from genome-wide association study and showed that adding polygenic risk scores to conventional risk models improved risk stratification. A healthy lifestyle reduced risk across genetic risk groups, with greater benefit among those at high genetic risk.

Lanthanide ratiometric nanothermometers often deviate from Boltzmann statistics, so calibration and sensitivity become unpredictable. Researchers developed a population dynamics framework that defines the onset temperature and thermal coupling window and yields a practical rule: the nearest lower level must lie beyond twice the interlevel gap. A splitting factor links sensitivity with chemical bonding. Using dual thermally coupled pairs, ultrathin flexible patches achieve real time temperature monitoring with up to 6.17 % K^-1 relative sensitivity.

A retrospective study of 17 drug-resistant epilepsy patients found that stereo-electroencephalography-guided radiofrequency thermocoagulation (RF-TC) rapidly altered brain network connectivity after treatment. Reductions in alpha-band connectivity within epileptogenic regions were linked to clinical outcomes, suggesting that short resting-state recordings may help predict treatment response. Findings support RF-TC as a network-modulating therapy rather than a purely local lesioning procedure and highlight its potential role in guiding more personalized epilepsy care.

Researchers have introduced a novel canonical correlation guided deep neural network (CCDNN) to improve multi-source data acquisition and fusion. The model is designed to integrate heterogeneous data more effectively, addressing limitations of existing fusion methods in handling diverse and high-dimensional inputs. By leveraging advanced neural network structures, CCDNN enhances feature representation and decision-making accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate superior performance across benchmark tasks, highlighting its potential for applications in intelligent control, automation, and data-driven engineering systems.