Looking for a practical way to produce carbon-negative power? A new study in Engineering introduces the staged, pressurized oxy-combustion (SPOC) technology, designed to retrofit old boilers with sustainable woody biomass. It delivers higher efficiency than standard carbon capture, supports flexible grid operation, and has been successfully tested with 100% biomass firing. This low-penalty solution offers a reliable path to decarbonize power and industrial cogeneration systems.

Hydrogen is a key carbon-free energy carrier for a sustainable future, but its lean combustion often suffers from thermodiffusive instabilities that distort flames and affect emissions. A new review in Engineering summarizes latest experimental findings to reveal how turbulence interacts with these instabilities. Using advanced laser diagnostics, researchers clarify flame structure changes under different conditions, providing reliable data to optimize low-emission hydrogen combustion systems.

Aquaculture provides vital protein and omega‑3 fatty acids for people worldwide, but it faces safety risks from marine toxins, heavy metals, microplastics and pathogens. Traditional detection and removal methods are often slow and costly. A new review in Engineering shows that nanostructures, with unique physical and chemical properties, can effectively detect and eliminate these hazards. This technology brings more sensitive, rapid and sustainable solutions to improve aquaculture safety and support global food security.

Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have developed a computer-guided electron beam technique that forms dome-shaped bumps on nanofilms in water within 10 seconds. These nanostructures can be flattened, reshaped, or repositioned as needed, offering potential applications in cell movement and nanorobot power systems.

The ability of bacteria to remove pollutants from soil, water, mine waste and other environments could be supercharged by a ‘friendly’ compatible virus, according to a study led by Flinders University.

The new insights, published in Communications Biology, suggests phage virus ‘bioaugmentation’ offers a compelling new direction for environmental biotechnology, by harnessing the ecological roles of lysogenic phages to enhance microbial function in polluted soils.

The rapid evolution of modern warfare toward distributed, intelligent, and global stealth has posed severe energy supply and information perception bottlenecks for combat nodes. Traditional energy supply strategies are unable to meet the strategic needs of long-range stealth operations and extreme environmental survival. Triboelectric nanogenerators provide a disruptive path for constructing self-sustaining military microsystems with high-efficiency and zero-power-sensing characteristics. This review establishes a comprehensive framework that systematically evaluates recent technological advances across an escalating hierarchy, encompassing individual soldier combat platforms, unmanned combat systems, strategic aerospace equipment, and special tactical scenarios. Crucially, moving beyond generic laboratory demonstrations, this review adopts a rigorous defense engineering perspective by conducting an integrated failure mode analysis to evaluate device degradation under severe battlefield stressors. Furthermore, it critically analyzes the primary engineering bottlenecks currently hindering military adoption, such as inherent impedance mismatch and scalable manufacturing barriers, and proposes targeted mitigation strategies. To systematically validate these solutions, we explicitly propose a concise evaluation framework strictly aligned with established military testing protocols. Ultimately, this review outlines several forward-looking strategic priorities, thereby constructing a highly actionable roadmap to accelerate the practical deployment of self-driven intelligent technologies.