Buildings today typically rely on separate systems to provide electricity, heating and cooling. A research team at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has now developed a hybrid energy system that delivers all three simultaneously from the same surface by combining solar energy with the coldness of outer space. At the heart of the system is a transparent cooling layer that radiates heat into outer space as infrared radiation while allowing sunlight to pass through. The researchers successfully demonstrated the concept with a prototype under outdoor conditions and see it as a potential building block for multifunctional building envelopes. Results in Cell Reports Physical Science. (DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2026.103492)

The “Millennium Flood” of 1342 was not a single disaster at all. Historical records reveal a nearly two-year sequence of 16 major floods across Europe – with important lessons for today’s flood-risk planning.

For many years, cynodonts – animals that were a transitional link between early synapsids, a group of animals among which true mammals evolved, and the first true mammals – were believed to have laid eggs. Now, for the first time, a new study has found evidence to the contrary. Using a neonatal line, which is only rarely conserved in the fossil record, and comparisons of newborn-adult body weight ratios, a team in Argentina concluded that Chiniquodon theotonicus gave birth to live young. This pushes the timeline of this evolutionary adaptation back by up to 95 million years, said the team, and offers new avenues to reconstruct ecological aspects of the Triassic world.

Before tropical cyclones can significantly strengthen, they generally must first become vertically aligned, with their rotating centers stacked through the atmosphere. New research using nearly three decades of NOAA Hurricane Hunter observations identifies four features that can help a tilted storm become aligned and more capable of intensifying.

A new Perspective in Science Bulletin argues that the persistent gap between climate science and climate action stems from a conceptual blind spot: treating climate and social systems as separate domains rather than as one integrated, co-evolving entity. The authors introduce the Climate-Social Coupling System (CSS) paradigm and, by re-contextualizing the classic Environmental Kuznets Curve, sort national trajectories into “strong,” “weak,” and “de-coupling” states, showing that governance is the decisive, reversible steering mechanism that determines a country’s climate future.