The Southwest United States is currently facing its worst megadrought of the past 1,200 years. According to a recent study from The University of Texas at Austin, the drought could continue at least until the end of the century, if not longer.

In AIP Advances, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Chongqing Jiaotong University and Chongqing No. 7 Middle School compared the performance of three helmet materials under the most common types of impact and loading conditions. Though participation in sports can have positive impacts both physiologically and socially, extreme sports come with elevated risks. Researchers used computational simulations to run material comparisons for helmets made of strong plastic Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), fiberglass alloys, and aluminum composites. The findings are valuable for all extreme sports, but Wang notes the importance of customizing helmet properties to their intended activity, as the effect of an impact depends on its interaction with gravity, the potential for a rebound, and more.

Scientists predict one of the major surveys by NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope may reveal around 100,000 celestial blasts, ranging from exploding stars to feeding black holes. Roman may even find evidence of some of the universe’s first stars, which are thought to completely self-destruct without leaving any remnant behind.

An interference pattern that emerges from three stacked and twisted layers of graphene, called a supermoiré pattern, can uncover hidden properties of simpler moiré materials.

Led by Assistant Professor Kou Li, a research group in Chuo University, Japan, has developed chemically enriched photo-thermoelectric (PTE) imagers using semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) films, resulting in the achievement of enhanced response intensity and noise reduction, that enables efficient remote and on-site inspections, according to a recent paper publication in Communications Materials. CNT film-based PTE imagers are crucial for multimodal non-destructive inspection, but conventional device design strategies have faced challenges in achieving high response intensity for wireless data logging.

　CNT film-based PTE imagers enable functional electromagnetic-wave monitoring, potentially facilitating multimodal non-destructive inspection device usage. The CNT film compositions govern the fundamental device performance, and satisfying high PTE conversion efficiency (higher response and lower noise) is essential for sensitive operations. Although typical sensitive design focuses on minimising noise, the associated levelling-off response intensity (up to a few millivolts) induces technical limitations in device operations. These issues include mismatching for coupling with compact wireless circuits, which are indispensable for on-site inspection applications and require high-intensity responses at least a few millivolt orders. This work develops chemically enriched PTE imagers comprising semiconducting CNT (semi-CNT) films. While semi-CNTs provide greater intensity thermoelectric responses than semi-metal mixture compositions in the conventional PTE device, the presented imager employs p-/n-type chemical carrier doping to relax inherent significant bottlenecking noise. Such doping enhances material properties for PTE conversion with semi-CNTs up to 4,060 times. The imager satisfies similar performances to conventional CNT film devices, including ultrabroadband sensitive photo-detection (with minimum noise sensitivity of 5 pWHz^−1/2) under repeatedly deformable configurations, and advantageously exhibits response signal intensity exceeding a few–tens of millivolts. These features enable remote on-site non-destructive PTE imaging inspection with palm-sized wireless circuits.

The study achieves efficient electrocatalysis for the electrooxidation reaction in multi-electrolyte systems by synergistically modulating structure and electronic coupling through rational design. The research team established novel principles for controlling the morphology and performance of MOFs: formation of nano-flower structure requires co-existence of Ni site and Fc ligand, doping of Fe sites promotes 3D crystal morphology development, which marks a pioneering advance in the field. Among them, the Bimetallic Dual-Ligand MOF: NFBF (6:2) exhibits outstanding electrocatalytic performance (210 mV at 10 mA·cm^-2). Operando Raman spectroscopy and XAFS reveal the electronic restructuring feature of NFBF (6:2) during the catalytic OER process. Combined with DFT calculations, which identify Ni as the catalytic active site, these investigations uncover significant electronic migration and redistribution, substantially reducing the reaction energy barrier and accelerating the catalytic process. Comprehensive exploration demonstrates that NFBF (6:2) not only performs well under various multi-electrolyte conditions but also maintains a nearly consistent catalytic mechanism. Furthermore, when applied to overall water splitting, (+) NFBF (6:2) | | NFBF (6:2) (-) achieves significant catalytic effects in both alkaline freshwater (1.40 V at 10 mA·cm^-2) and seawater (1.44 V at 10 mA· cm^-2) electrolyzers. This work highlights the crucial role of electronic coupling in optimizing electrocatalytic performance and offers new insights for addressing mitigating environmental pollution, embodying substantial practical and research potential.