The seawater desalination based on solar-driven interfacial evaporation has emerged as a promising technique to alleviate the global crisis on freshwater shortage. However, achieving high desalination performance on actual, oil-contaminated seawater remains a critical challenge, because the transport channels and evaporation interfaces of the current solar evaporators are easily blocked by the oil slicks, resulting in undermined evaporation rate and conversion efficiency. Herein, we propose a facile strategy for fabricating a modularized solar evaporator based on flexible MXene aerogels with arbitrarily tunable, highly ordered cellular/lamellar pore structures for high-efficiency oil interception and desalination. The core design is the creation of 1D fibrous MXenes with sufficiently large aspect ratios, whose superior flexibility and plentiful link forms lay the basis for controllable 3D assembly into more complicated pore structures. The cellular pore structure is responsible for effective contaminants rejection due to the multi-sieving effect achieved by the omnipresent, isotropic wall apertures together with underwater superhydrophobicity, while the lamellar pore structure is favorable for rapid evaporation due to the presence of continuous, large-area evaporation channels. The modularized solar evaporator delivers the best evaporation rate (1.48 kg m⁻² h⁻¹) and conversion efficiency (92.08%) among all MXene-based desalination materials on oil-contaminated seawater.

A team of researchers led by Dr. Jong Min Kim, Center for Extreme Materials Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Dr. Sang-rok Oh, Center for Computational Science, Dr. Sang Soo Han, Center for Computational Science, Prof. Kwang-hyung Lee, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and Dr. Joonhee Moon, Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI), developed a highly efficient mesoporous catalyst that can effectively produce hydrogen peroxide even in air supply environments with low oxygen concentrations and neutral electrolytes by introducing mesopores into the carbon catalyst.

The Arctic is one of the regions most strongly affected by climate change. In recent decades, the temperature there has risen four times as fast as the global average. The ASCCI measurement campaign coordinated by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Goethe University Frankfurt is investigating why the Arctic is warming so much faster than the rest of Earth’s surface and what effects that will have. With measurement flights taking place in the region through early April, the researchers are working to gain a better understanding of the causes and effects of Arctic climate change.  

A team of researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology has systematically reviewed the key scientific technologies of construction robots in extreme environments, summarized the research advancements, and discussed future research directions. The research article detailing these innovations, titled "Construction Robotics in Extreme Environments: From Earth to Space," has been published in the prestigious journal Engineering.

Exercise science researchers at the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health are recruiting parent-child dyads to participate in a virtual study about the use of technology among children ages 3-5. Participants can earn up to $1200. 

Scientists from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the National Center for Wildlife (NCW) report in PNAS NEXUS an unusual ecosystem below the third largest coral reef system in the world and biggest in the Red Sea. Found in Difat Farasan, otherwise known as the Farasan Bank and located near the border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, deep waters were inhabited by corals, fish and other animals not expected to survive in conditions of such low oxygen and high acidity.