Old charcoal kilns hidden in Mediterranean forests may offer a natural window into one of today’s most discussed soil technologies: biochar. A study published in Biochar shows that charcoal left in forest soils for decades undergoes clear chemical aging, develops oxygen-rich surface groups, and helps create distinctive soil microsites shaped by both biology and geology.

Over the past decade, potassium deficiency has become more common across the U.S. Cotton Belt as farmers use more modern, high-yielding cotton cultivars that have greater nutrient demands. In 10 field trials conducted by Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers during the 2023 and 2024 growing seasons at three Arkansas locations, results showed that potassium fertilization increased cotton yields by up to 70 percent in potassium-deficient soils. No response was observed in soils with optimum potassium availability. The study also showed that lint turnout and quality are positively affected by potassium fertilization, with fiber elongation and strength being more strongly related to potassium availability than other lint quality parameters. As part of their studies on potassium monitoring in cotton, the experiment station researchers also tested methods for collecting cotton tissue samples. The study suggested that concentrations in the petiole had a stronger relationship with relative cotton yield — compared to maximum potential — than in the leaf throughout the growing season. Still, the researchers proposed season-long follow-up tests of both the leaf and petiole for potassium levels.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have uncovered key principles that govern how DNA “origami” structures fold, findings that could make nanoscale materials faster and easier to manufacture.

People are exposed to thousands of chemicals every day — through the products they use, the food they eat and the environments they live in — but only a fraction of those chemicals have been fully tested for safety.

Researchers at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) are turning to artificial intelligence to help close that gap, using new tools to predict chemical toxicity and determine how much those predictions can be trusted.

Stroke ranks as the fourth leading cause of death in Hong Kong. Between 2001 and 2021 there was a distinct trend towards younger onset ages of stroke, which has exerted a profound impact on the public health system and the families of patients. To address the challenges of disability and slow rehabilitation progress associated with hemiparesis, a common sequela of stroke, a research team at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has applied intelligent closed-loop mobile technology to develop a new-generation wearable rehabilitation device, the “Remind-to-Move” (RTM) sensory wristband. Complemented by a mobile application, the device delivers instant feedback to users and automatically adjusts treatment regimens, thereby enabling more personalised home-based rehabilitation training.

The review highlights: the importance of hierarchical pore engineering for rapid ion transport; the role of heteroatom doping and surface functionalization in enhancing capacitance and electrochemical stability; and the integration of conductive nanostructures to improve energy density and long-term cycling performance.

New research supports what trade unions have always claimed: unionization pays off. It contributes to higher wages for both genders, and because women are the main winners, helps close the wage gap between the sexes.

An international experiment that has already broken several records. The KATRIN project (KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino Experiment), led by KIT–Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and involving 20 institutions from seven different countries, including the Politecnico di Milano, celebrated the achievement of 1,000 days of neutrino measurements with the inauguration of phase 2 of the project: the commissioning of a new and more sophisticated detector, TRISTAN. The RadLab group of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – DEIB at Politecnico di Milano, led by professors Carlo Fiorini and Marco Carminati (the latter being the national coordinator for the experiment), also supported by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics, made a significant contribution to the creation of the new detector by designing and developing the detection modules and the low-noise, highly compact readout electronics of the SDD detector.

For about half the global population, rice is the staple food. Yet every year, a fungal disease – rice blast – destroys harvests that could feed 60 million people. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have uncovered how the pathogen outsmarts the rice plant’s defense system. The findings open up new possibilities for making rice more resilient, directly benefiting global food security.