Soil acidification threatens agricultural productivity across large areas of the world, but predicting how well biochar can restore acidic soils remains difficult. A new review suggests that artificial intelligence could help scientists move from trial-and-error applications toward more precise, mechanism-guided biochar management, provided that researchers improve the quality and biological relevance of the data used to train AI models.

Silver ions are widely used in industrial and antimicrobial applications, but their high mobility and toxicity can create serious risks when they enter aquatic environments. A new study published in Biochar shows that nano-biochar can rapidly convert dissolved silver ions into silver nanoparticles under carefully controlled alkaline conditions, revealing a key role for superoxide radicals in the process.

CHICAGO, August 27, 2026. NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED participated as an exhibitor at ACS Fall 2026, held from August 23 to 27 in Chicago, connecting with researchers, scholars, and students from around the world and introducing its academic journals and publishing initiatives to the international scientific community.

Rice University and collaborators in Switzerland have developed a new platform to grow human-derived nerve cells with Schwann cells, or supporting cells that form a protective coating called myelin around nerve fibers. This platform enables functional myelin in a three-dimensional lab-grown environment. Researchers confirmed that it worked by measuring an increase in the speed of electrical signals traveling across networks of connected nerve cells.

The next generation of microelectronics relies on radical improvements in transistor switching performance to advance computing power. However, conventional semiconductor technology has hit a physical limit known as the "Boltzmann tyranny," which restricts the energy efficiency of traditional transistors and stalls progress in high-performance electronics. To address this key bottleneck, a research team at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has engineered a novel tunnelling field-effect transistor (TFET) utilising two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials. The breakthrough brings this long-awaited experimental technology closer to commercial reality, offering a fundamental building block for energy-efficient computing and next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

Volatile resistive switching in electron systems is crucial for developing next-generation electronics. However, its underlying mechanism remains underexplored. In a new study, researchers explore the effect of Joule heating on resistive switching in a bulk organic conductor with a sharp metal-insulator transition (MIT) and weak heat dissipation. The study offers crucial insights for understanding the intermediate resistance state in bulk crystals with MIT, offering a pathway toward developing durable and efficient resistive switching technologies.

Researchers have developed a wide-field Fourier transform hyperspectral imaging system that captures electrochemical reactions on hundreds of individual nanoparticles simultaneously. By integrating a common-path interferometer with a fast 2D camera, the method provides real-time spectral evolution during electrodeposition of palladium and cadmium sulfide on gold nanoparticles. Statistical analysis reveals distinct deposition behaviors on nanospheres versus nanorods—insights that would require thousands of tedious single-particle measurements using conventional approaches.