Fresh aroma is one of the qualities that makes litchi immediately recognizable, yet the chemistry and genetics behind this sensory trait have remained unclear.

A new comprehensive review published in Chiral Chemistry highlights rapid progress in the catalytic asymmetric synthesis of chiral organogermanes, marking a significant shift from traditional resolution-based approaches toward efficient catalytic methods that directly control stereochemistry at both carbon and germanium centers.

Old charcoal kilns hidden in Mediterranean forests may offer a natural window into one of today’s most discussed soil technologies: biochar. A study published in Biochar shows that charcoal left in forest soils for decades undergoes clear chemical aging, develops oxygen-rich surface groups, and helps create distinctive soil microsites shaped by both biology and geology.

People are exposed to thousands of chemicals every day — through the products they use, the food they eat and the environments they live in — but only a fraction of those chemicals have been fully tested for safety.

Researchers at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) are turning to artificial intelligence to help close that gap, using new tools to predict chemical toxicity and determine how much those predictions can be trusted.

An international experiment that has already broken several records. The KATRIN project (KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino Experiment), led by KIT–Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and involving 20 institutions from seven different countries, including the Politecnico di Milano, celebrated the achievement of 1,000 days of neutrino measurements with the inauguration of phase 2 of the project: the commissioning of a new and more sophisticated detector, TRISTAN. The RadLab group of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – DEIB at Politecnico di Milano, led by professors Carlo Fiorini and Marco Carminati (the latter being the national coordinator for the experiment), also supported by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics, made a significant contribution to the creation of the new detector by designing and developing the detection modules and the low-noise, highly compact readout electronics of the SDD detector.

For about half the global population, rice is the staple food. Yet every year, a fungal disease – rice blast – destroys harvests that could feed 60 million people. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have uncovered how the pathogen outsmarts the rice plant’s defense system. The findings open up new possibilities for making rice more resilient, directly benefiting global food security. 

Researchers found that toxic metal particles in rural North China air are smaller and potentially more harmful than those in urban areas. The study showed that village pollution was strongly linked to biomass and coal burning, while urban pollution was mainly associated with dust-related mineral particles. The findings highlight the overlooked health risks faced by rural populations exposed to PM_2.5-bound heavy metals.