An elephant’s trunk is both strong and capable of extremely fine motor movements. With this muscular, boneless structure, an elephant can carry heavy logs—or deftly peel a banana. Lucia Beccai and colleagues studied the skin of the trunk, hoping to understand its properties and derive lessons for the next generation of advanced soft robotics. 

While optical computing systems (OCS) with high bandwidth, low latency, and inherent parallelism are promising accelerators for artificial intelligence, the existing OCS implementations require direct participation of physical hardware, tightly coupling development workflows to device access and limiting offline design. Now, researchers have developed a Digital Twin OCS, a system-level, measurement-driven digital surrogate that enables a hardware-decoupled and fully offline development paradigm for OCS.

Biomass chemical looping is emerging as a promising route for producing renewable energy and chemicals while enabling efficient carbon management. A comprehensive review highlights advances in hydrogen, methanol, syngas, and power generation pathways, alongside the growing role of machine learning in oxygen carrier design and process optimization. The study also evaluates lifecycle and economic performance, identifying biomass chemical looping as a sustainable platform for future low-carbon energy systems.

Solar power towers can play an important role in energy transition. They convert sunlight into heat that can be stored or used to generate electricity. Until now, however, data to test new methods for more efficient and reliable systems have been lacking. In a world first, researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) are now publishing freely accessible operational data from the Jülich Solar Tower test power plant. This provides a foundation for developing new AI methods and digital twins. The results were published in Nature Energy. (DOI: 10.1038/s41560-026-02070-1)

Imagine navigating a sprawling subway system or a dark tunnel where Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals cannot reach. 

New research led by Aston Business School says the UK must strengthen its role in shaping the global standards that underpin technologies such as AI, semiconductors, 5G, 6G and internet infrastructure if it is to convert scientific strength into industrial leadership. The report, Harnessing Global Standards for Technological Leadership: A Comparative Study of the UK and Other Leading Nations, was led by Professor Cher Li of Aston Business School, in collaboration with Dr Xin Deng at Alliance Manchester Business School and Dr John Moffat at Durham University Business School. 

Winterthur, 10 June 2026 – The roads, railways, and waterways that Europe uses to transport goods and people are deeply interconnected. But they often behave as separate systems. The EU-funded MOVEO project wants to find better ways to integrate these systems to make transport safer, more efficient and more reliable.

New culture system enables the stable, scalable, and low-cost production of clinical-grade intestinal organoids, as reported by researchers from Science Tokyo. Whereas conventional organoid cultures rely on materials and substances unsuitable for clinical use, this innovative strategy uses clinical-grade collagen and good manufacturing practice-compliant reagents/factors and techniques to achieve drastically enhanced growth. The results put us one step closer to organoid-based regenerative therapies for conditions like inflammatory bowel disease.