A new study published in Engineering offers insights into how global land surface soil organic carbon (SOC) levels are being influenced by climate change. The research explores historical trends and projects future changes in SOC, highlighting the complex interplay of climate factors and vegetation cover. While the findings indicate an overall increase in SOC, they also underscore the limitations of relying solely on natural carbon sinks to meet global carbon neutrality goals. This report provides a balanced view of the challenges and opportunities in leveraging soil carbon sequestration as part of broader climate mitigation strategies.

As ice sheets retreat, glacial environments initially absorb greenhouse gases but soil development over long times creates a source of greenhouse gases.

To curb global plastic pollution and to make plastics safer and more sustainable, countries are currently negotiating a global treaty. A new study published in Nature provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of all chemicals that can be present in plastics, their properties, uses, and hazards. Moreover, the study also provides a scientific approach for identifying chemicals of concern. This allows scientists and manufacturers to develop safer plastics and policy makers to promote a non-toxic circular economy.

Conventional polyimides (PIs) exhibit excellent thermal stability and mechanical performance, yet their dielectric properties (dielectric constant (D_k) > 3.2, dissipation factor (D_f) > 0.005 @ 10 GHz). In previous reports, the introduction of trifluoromethyl reduced the dielectric constant and dissipation factor, but it increased chain rigidity, weakened hydrogen bonds interaction, and reduced free volume, which definitely reduced mechanical performance (such as poor toughness leading to crack risks in advanced packaging). Therefore, it is necessary to design PI materials with high toughness and low dielectric properties to meet the demands of advanced packaging technologies evolving towards millimeter-wave frequencies and heterogeneous integration. A research team has developed a novel fluorinated polyimide that reduces the material's dielectric constant and dissipation factor while enhancing its mechanical properties. Their work is published in the journal Industrial Chemistry & Materials on 03 Jun 2025.

Researchers have created graphene-based membranes that mimic the chemical gating effect in biological membranes, achieving record ion selectivity (>10,000) between monovalent and bivalent metal ions including Li⁺ and Mg²⁺ ions. The membrane allows adaptive ion permeation in response to certain signaling ions like Al³⁺, thus enables smart and ultrafast ion separation for applications in filtration, sensing, and energy technologies.

A Caltech team has found a way to sum particle interactions in real materials with quantitative accuracy.