Antibiotic residues in water are an emerging environmental concern because conventional treatment processes may not remove them completely. Now, researchers have shown that carefully tuning the balance of nitrogen and boron in biochar made from waste sawdust can greatly improve its ability to activate an oxidant and break down the widely used antibiotic sulfamethoxazole.

Jason Williams has been named the permanent director of the AgResearch and Education Center at Milan effective October 1, 2026.

National happiness is influenced by complex relationships beyond basic economic factors, according to a study published September 30, 2026 in the open access journal PLOS One by Javier I. Borráz-León of the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation, Mexico City and colleagues, which finds that cats and their parasites are strongly correlated with both positive and negative happiness scores worldwide.

A team led by University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers has developed a wearable wrist device powered by a machine-learning algorithm that can continually track changes in arm movement impairment caused by strokes. Monitoring changes throughout the entire rehabilitation process will allow clinicians to make real-time adjustments to therapy programs for tailored interventions and personalized care instead of the one-size-fits-all current standard. 

A new 0.36-mm² photonic chip is set to advance industrial swept-source optical coherence tomography, according to a study in PhotoniX Synergy. The compact system demonstrated high-precision performance, including imaging a smartphone camera, measuring silica wafers with sub-2 µm absolute error, and gauging photoresist height with a relative error of less than 0.12%. Additionally, the integration of a ball-lens fiber probe allows for 3D imaging inside narrow, hard-to-reach industrial components

Carbon quantum dot-mediated Fe₁₁ polyoxometalate (Fe₁₁POM) enrichment for accelerated photocatalytic H₂ evolution in a Zn_0.5Cd_0.5S system. The schematic illustrates the ternary Fe₁₁POM@CQD@Zn_0.5Cd_0.5S photocatalyst. Zn_0.5Cd_0.5S harvests visible light, carbon quantum dots relay photogenerated electronsand Fe₁₁POM accepts the transferred electrons to drive proton reduction to H₂. Lactic acid consumes photogenerated holes, helping suppress charge recombination and sustain hydrogen generation.

Novel treatments may improve outcomes for chronic subdural hematoma, a common brain bleed, by enabling more complete artery closure.