Optical fiber sensors function as the nervous system of modern engineering, tracking fluid flow and high-frequency vibrations. But their extreme sensitivity makes them vulnerable to the chaotic environments of factory floors or deep-sea pipes.

In International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, Prof. Wei Xiong's team at Huazhong University of Science and Technology has built a protective shield directly onto the tip of a fiber. Their resulting device reduces the footprint of industrial sensors from the size of a finger to roughly 100 micrometers, or the thickness of a single human hair.

Researchers have explored human preferences for robot motion on a variety of household tasks. The study aimed to investigate whether preferences were similar between tasks, users, and if robots should behave in a human-like manner. The results found that preferences should be highly individualized, presenting a challenging future for integrating robots into everyday lives.

Converting sugarcane waste to biofuel could become more environmentally friendly and cost effective, thanks to a joint project at The University of Queensland and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. PhD candidate Ms Neethu Joshikumar has successfully tested a process to simplify the preparation of sugarcane waste, known as bagasse.

Researchers from The University of Osaka have proposed a compact LED design that directly emits circularly polarized light using a nanoscale GaN metasurface integrated onto the device. This design removes the need for bulky optical components traditionally used to create polarized light and could help enable smaller optical systems for applications such as 3D displays, augmented reality, and photonic technologies.

A Korean research team has developed an innovative technology that simultaneously produces two high-value chemicals using only glucose. The research team led by Dr. Young Kyu Hwang, Dr. Kyung-Ryul Oh, and Dr. Jihoon Kim at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) has developed a circular low-carbon catalytic process that co-produces gluconic acid—a key ingredient in detergents and pharmaceuticals—and sorbitol, widely used in sweeteners and cosmetics.

A research team led by Jae-Pil Heo, Professor in the Department of Software at Sungkyunkwan University(SKKU), has developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that can accurately recognize new actions from only a small number of example videos.

A flexible film that can passively repel ice and actively melt frost using only weak sunlight could replace energy-heavy heating grids in aviation and renewable energy.

Planting trees is widely championed as a straightforward, nature-based fix for global warming. The logic seems foolproof: expanding forests should pull more carbon dioxide from the air and pack it safely into the earth. However, a sweeping five-decade analysis of land transformation in Kerala, India, suggests the reality beneath the surface is full of unexpected trade-offs.

Published in the journal Carbon Research, the study was spearheaded by corresponding author V. K. Dadhwal at the School of Natural Sciences & Engineering, National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru. His team utilized advanced machine learning to map how half a century of plantation expansion actually impacted the dirt itself. Their findings challenge a popular assumption, proving that massive afforestation campaigns do not automatically equal a massive boost in soil organic carbon (SOC).

To accurately track the landscape from 1972 to 2020, the research team moved beyond traditional area-based counting. They fed a Random Forest predictive model with detailed historical land use maps, legacy soil measurements, local climate data, and topographic variables. This high-resolution approach allowed them to pinpoint specific geographical hotspots where carbon was either successfully sequestered or silently lost.

Phosphorus is an absolute necessity for growing crops, yet a massive portion of it remains locked away in the dirt, completely inaccessible to plant roots. Keeping enough "labile"—or readily available—phosphorus in agricultural fields is a constant headache for the farming industry. Now, a fresh look at the soil microbiome reveals that the key to freeing up this trapped nutrient relies heavily on the type of carbon we add to the earth, whether that is treated animal waste or, surprisingly, synthetic plastic pollution.

Featured in the journal Carbon Research, this detailed ecological assessment maps the underground mechanisms that drive nutrient cycling. The research was jointly led by corresponding authors Huifang Xie and Bingyu Wang from the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Chemical Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, housed within the School of Environmental and Biological Engineering at Nanjing University of Science and Technology.

The team wanted to understand how two very different types of human-introduced carbon affect the soil's ability to feed plants. They compared manure-derived hydrochar (HC)—a common, nutrient-rich soil amendment—against TPU microplastics (MPs), an increasingly ubiquitous environmental contaminant.