A team of researchers has announced a breakthrough in carbon dioxide (CO2) capture technology, unveiling a novel biochar material synthesized from corn straw using a microwave-assisted, two-step chemical activation strategy. This innovative approach, published in Sustainable Carbon Materials, promises a low-cost, scalable solution for addressing global greenhouse gas emissions and advancing climate change mitigation efforts.

It doesn’t take technical expertise to work around the built-in guardrails of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, which are intended to ensure that the chatbots operate within a set of legal and ethical boundaries and do not discriminate against people of a certain age, race or gender. A single, intuitive question can trigger the same biased response from an AI model as advanced technical inquiries, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State.

The University of Delaware is leading a $3 million NIH-funded project to develop radiation-free MRI imaging that can detect problems in bone healing sooner. By combining ultrashort echo time MRI with 3D modeling, the team aims to predict fracture strength and personalize recovery for faster healing.

Rice University is partnering with researchers at the University of Washington, Columbia University and Louisiana State University on a $2 million award from the National Science Foundation to revolutionize how materials and microrobots can be designed, controlled and applied in real-world environments.

In the development of Parkinson’s disease, it may not be a good idea to turn the amp to 11. High-volume noise exposure produced motor deficits in a mouse model of early-stage Parkinson’s disease, and established a link between the auditory processing and movement areas of the brain, according to a study published November 4^th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Pei Zhang from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and colleagues.

Rice researchers studying a class of atom-thin semiconductors known as transition metal dichalcogenides have discovered that light can trigger a physical shift in their atomic lattice, creating a tunable way to adjust the materials’ behavior and properties.