Seawater is not just a source of salt and water; but it contains a rich variety of ions that benefit to electrocatalytic reactions. This review article provides a timely appraisal of how ions in seawater can be harnessed to drive and enhance electrochemical processes. It identifies key mechanic insights, material design strategies, and future research directions to accelerate the transition from laboratory scale seawater electrocatalysis to real-world electrochemical applications.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers has combined deep botanical knowledge with powerful genomic technology to decode and mine the DNA of non-flowering seed plants and uncover genes that evolved to help plants build seeds. These findings, published in Nature Communications, may aid scientists in improving seed crop production in agriculture and in the conservation of these ancient endangered seed plants.

Ceramic tile manufacturing is a process that demands intensive energy use (30–40 kW/m²) and resources (0.02 t/m² of raw materials and 0.010 m³/m² of water). About 90% of the energy consumed comes from the combustion of natural gas. The spray-drying stage alone accounts for 95% of water use, 34% of energy consumption (mainly thermal), and 32% of CO₂ emissions. These figures highlight the urgent need to improve the sustainability of this process in order to reduce waste and water use, and to contribute to the challenge of decarbonization.

A consortium made up of three research institutions and four organizations from key European regions in ceramic tile production has launched the INNOVATILE project, funded by the European Union through the Interreg NEXT MED Programme. The project promotes a new, more sustainable technology aimed at significantly reducing the environmental impact of ceramic tile manufacturing, potentially cutting production costs by around 10%.

The initiative, coordinated by the University Institute of Ceramic Technology (IUTC) of the Universitat Jaume I of Castelló, seeks to lower energy and resource consumption in ceramic tile production by implementing an innovative atomised powder production process. This technology is designed to minimize the use of energy, water and raw materials during the drying stage of raw materials. The project has a total budget of €2,800,575.65, of which the EU provides €2,492,512.33, covering 89% of the total cost.

A new critical review published in Materials Futures traces the rapid evolution of Refractory High-Entropy Alloys (RHEAs), a revolutionary class of materials engineered for extreme environments. The review, led by researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, highlights a paradigm shift from traditional alloy design towards computational- and microstructurally-guided strategies. It details how advanced tools like machine learning, quantum mechanics simulations, and phase diagram calculations are accelerating the discovery of new compositions. A central focus is on innovative microstructural designs, including metastable engineering, heterogeneous structures, and atomic-scale chemical ordering, that are successfully overcoming the long-standing trade-off between strength and ductility. The authors conclude that the integration of multi-scale modeling, in-situ characterization, and closed-loop data analysis is poised to transition RHEAs from laboratory breakthroughs to critical components in aerospace, energy, and nuclear applications.

We systematically review 34 relevant studies between 2015 and 2025 following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, focusing on the combination of multimodal wearable sensing with learning models.

A collaborative research team from the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), the University of Tokyo, Kyushu University, and Brookhaven National Laboratory has, for the first time, directly and precisely measured changes in the internal electric potential of a fusion plasma under conditions similar to those expected in fusion reactors.

This achievement establishes a new method for in situ evaluation of plasma confinement states, providing key insights for the control and performance optimization of next-generation fusion reactors. The internal plasma potential plays a crucial role in determining how effectively energy is confined within the plasma. By combining advanced accelerator technology with non-contact plasma diagnostics, the researchers have opened a new path toward direct understanding of the behavior of fusion-core plasmas.