Published in the Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts, this study introduces a revolutionary mechanochemical strategy that challenges conventional material synthesis paradigms. The research demonstrates that water, when combined with mechanical grinding, can activate sodium methylsilicate to generate reactive hydroxyl groups, enabling condensation with over 40 different substrates ranging from natural macromolecules to metal compounds. The resulting hydrophobic porous materials exhibit exceptional properties including surface areas of 129–388 m²/g, yields of 66%–90%, and remarkable versatility in environmental applications. Notably, the system can directly utilize untreated plant tissues and atmospheric CO₂, converting the greenhouse gas into valuable sodium bicarbonate byproducts. The materials demonstrate outstanding performance in oil-water separation with petroleum ether permeability exceeding 801 L/(m²·h), propofol medical waste adsorption rates above 85%, and dye degradation efficiencies reaching 99.99% for pollutants including Rhodamine B, Congo red, and Nile red. This work establishes a generalizable platform for sustainable material manufacturing that aligns with green chemistry principles, requiring no heating, organic solvents, or harmful catalysts while maximizing the utilization of naturally abundant renewable resources.

Gold nanoparticles with surface functionalization are vital to improve their stability, bio-compatibility to engineer them to be suitable candidates in advanced bio-medical technologies, including drug delivery systems, biosensors, bioimaging, photothermal cancer therapy etc.  They are also being exploited in catalysis and energy applications. Their performance in these applications depends strongly on how their surfaces interact with the surrounding medium, particularly the interfacial water, at the nanoscale. Therefore, understanding the thermodynamics and intermolecular structure of the interfacial water is crucial in the design process.

Contamination of ground, surface and drinking water by perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) affects millions of people worldwide.

A promising new method developed by Flinders University scientists paves the way to help remove the most difficult-to-capture variants of these persistent pollutants from water.

Excess phosphorus in lakes and reservoirs fuels harmful algal blooms, threatens drinking water safety, and damages aquatic ecosystems worldwide. Now, researchers have developed a new machine learning–guided strategy to design advanced biochar materials that remove phosphorus efficiently while dramatically lowering treatment costs. The study provides a practical pathway for restoring eutrophic waters at large scale.

Researchers have developed a new biochar material derived from marine microalgae that can detect hydrogen peroxide rapidly, sensitively, and without the need for enzymes. The discovery could support applications ranging from medical diagnostics to environmental monitoring and food safety.

A reserach team led by Professor Huang Zhang at Harbin University of Science and Technology recently made significant progress in the research of zinc-iodine aqueous batteries. They proposed an electrolyte additive strategy based on tetramethylammonium iodide (TMAI), which, through the synergistic effect of anions (I^-) and cations (TMA⁺), simultaneously solved three core challenges in zinc-iodine batteries: sluggish iodine reaction kinetics, polyiodide shuttle effect, and zinc dendrite growth. This research not only achieved ultra-long cycle stability of over 5500 hours for symmetric zinc batteries, but also demonstrated excellent performance with almost no capacity decay after 50,000 cycles in the full cell, providing a new approach for the design of high-performance, long-life aqueous zinc-iodine batteries. The article was published as an open access Research Article in CCS Chemistry, the flagship journal of the Chinese Chemical Society.

We have known for several decades that the universe is expanding. Scientists use multiple techniques to measure the present-day expansion rate of the universe, known as the Hubble constant. These methods are internally consistent and based on the same physics, so all observed values of the Hubble constant should agree. But those that come from early-universe datasets disagree with those that come from late-universe datasets. This problem is known as the Hubble tension and is considered to be one of the most significant open questions in cosmology. 

In JASA, researchers report that the color of a concert hall has an impact on the sound perception of a listener. They created 12 different-colored virtual reality environments, which varied in hues, brightness, and saturation, and used binaural technology that could adjust the sound as participants moved their heads. The participants were asked to rate the performances based on liking, strength, reverberance, and timbre, and the researchers discovered a clear correlation between the visual design of the hall and the perceived timbre of the music.