A research team from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a plasma-cascade process that enables the direct synthesis of cyclohexanone cyanohydrin [Cy(OH)CN] with nitrogen, methane, and cyclohexanone under mild conditions. The process achieved a Cy(OH)CN selectivity of 95.8%, a yield of 23.9%, and a formation rate of 0.60 mmol h^-1.

A new study has shown that agricultural waste from lavender straw can be transformed into a highly sensitive biochar-based sensor for detecting ethylene glycol, a widely used but potentially toxic chemical found in products such as antifreeze and industrial solvents.

A new biochar-regulated catalyst can remove 96.9% of the widely used insecticide imidacloprid from water within 40 minutes, offering a promising route for treating pesticide-contaminated wastewater.

Dissolved black carbon, a water-soluble fraction of black carbon produced from incomplete combustion and biochar, has long been viewed as a mobile form of carbon that can move from soils into rivers, lakes, estuaries, and oceans. A new review published in Biochar shows that its journey through the environment is far more complex than simple transport in water.

A team of astronomers, led by Brooke Kotten of the University of Michigan, has shown that TOI-5882—a sun-like star located some 1,300 light-years away—has likely eaten one of its planets.

SAN ANTONIO — June 15, 2026 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) recently received a patent for its EZ Flow™ technology, which reduces the viscosity of heavy crude oil by 40 to 60%. Developed through internal research funding, EZ Flow could help address a significant barrier for utilizing heavy crude oil in North America.

Advances in structural biology have allowed scientists to determine molecular structures with atomic‑level detail, sometimes yielding static snapshots that do not reflect the dynamism of proteins. However, these motions are often crucial for biological function. Researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) together with international collaborators have now combined several methods to shed light on how proteins ‘breathe’ and how some experimental techniques freeze their motion. The findings—which could boost protein design approaches and improve AI-based structural prediction tools—were published in Nature Chemistry.

For more than a hundred years, chemists have been building complex molecules step by step – bond by bond, atom by atom. But what if, instead of painstakingly reassembling molecules, they could be directly "rewritten"? This is exactly what a research team led by organic chemist Nuno Maulide from the University of Vienna has now achieved. In a recently published paper, the researchers describe a method that allows one of the most important classes of molecules in chemistry – called N-methylamines – to be directly and selectively transformed into significantly more complex structures. This lays the foundation for modern drug research: with the new method, hundreds of variants of a molecule can be easily prepared. The work was published in Nature Chemistry.