Paddy soils are critical ecosystems for global food security, yet also significant contributors to atmospheric greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. These unique wetland environments, characterized by prolonged flooding, play a complex role in the global carbon cycle. Scientists at the Guangdong Academy of Sciences and South China Normal University undertook a detailed investigation to understand the specific biogeochemical turnover of organic carbon fractions within these soils during flooding. This work aims to unravel the intricate mechanisms that govern carbon's fate, helping to predict and manage emissions from these vast agricultural lands.

The world faces an urgent challenge to achieve carbon neutrality, demanding innovative solutions for managing strategic gases like carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and hydrogen (H₂). CO₂ capture is vital for emissions reduction, CH₄ requires careful valorization and control due to its potent global warming impact, and H₂ is rapidly emerging as a cornerstone of future energy systems. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), a class of porous materials recognized by the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, are rapidly changing possibilities for strategic gas management due to their exceptional tunability.

A new review in Carbon Research provides a critical and integrated assessment of MOFs' potential across these three domains. Led by Reda Elkacmi from Sultan Moulay Slimane University, the authors detail how MOFs’ unique attributes—including surface areas exceeding 6000 m² g⁻¹, tunable pore environments, and modular coordination chemistry—enable significant CO₂ uptakes, high methane storage capacities, and impressive hydrogen volumetric densities. These properties empower MOFs to address multiple environmental and energy challenges simultaneously.

MD4SB will establish an infrastructure for the dynamic description of biological macromolecules, connecting three major European Research Infrastructures (Instruct-ERIC, ELIXIR, and EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC) with three of Europe's largest supercomputing centres (BSC-CNS, CINECA, and JSC).

The project will facilitate the use of molecular simulations to understand how biomacromolecules function, advance the molecular description of diseases, and accelerate drug discovery.

Coordinated by IRB Barcelona, the project brings together 25 partners across 8 countries and incorporates Almirall, Sanofi, and other pharmaceutical companies to provide feedback and evaluate the practical usefulness of the platform in industrial settings. The IRB Barcelona spin-off company Nostrum Biodiscovery will bridge the gap between academic groups and pharmaceutical companies.

A team at the University of Basel, Switzerland, has developed a versatile nanorobot with propulsion and payload modules. The two reusable modules autonomously self-assemble and could be used in medicine or industry.

Researchers developed a simpler and more cost-effective method to measure DNA-bound phosphorus, a biologically active form of phosphorus linked to soil microbes. The study found that this hidden nutrient pool is closely associated with microbial activity and soil fertility. The findings could support more sustainable phosphorus management and agricultural production.

Terraxy, a KAUST spinout specializing in soil‑regeneration and carbon‑capture technologies for desert environments, has raised $3 million in a Seed‑2 round led by Wa’ed Ventures with participation from KAUST. The funding accelerates Terraxy’s shift from pilot operations to full industrial production, including a 30,000 m² commercial facility in Al Zulfi. Terraxy’s Carbosoil technology enhances plant growth in sandy soils by up to 70% while enabling long‑term CO₂ storage. Supported by MEWA’s Regulatory Sandbox and KAUST’s innovation ecosystem, Terraxy is emerging as a key enabler of Saudi Arabia’s sustainability, land‑rehabilitation, and carbon‑management goals under Vision 2030.

Physicists have long wondered whether the fundamental laws of nature contain freely adjustable external “dials.” A researcher at Kyushu University and collaborators have shown, under certain assumptions, that continuous parameters in conformal field theories can be generated by operators within the theory itself. The findings support Einstein’s idea that apparent free parameters in quantum gravity should be explained by dynamical fields rather than chosen externally.

A team from Tsinghua University reports Au–TiO₂ metasurfaces that convert visible light into singlet oxygen at high speed and extremely high local density. By combining quasi-BIC field confinement with hot-carrier transfer across an ultrathin interface, the device produces molar-level singlet oxygen locally within seconds, which is surprisingly ~10⁶ times that achieved by conventional approaches. Besides, the on-chip generator enables wavelength- and pixel-selective cytotoxicity for targeted tumor cell killing in photodynamic therapy.