Newswise — Scientists discovered how tiny changes in superhydride structure enable superconductivity at near room temperatures but extreme pressure — offering clues for designing more practical superconductors.

Superconductors allow electricity to flow without resistance, meaning no energy is lost as heat. This property makes them useful for technologies such as MRI scanners, particle accelerators, magnetic-levitation trains and some power-transmission systems. Most superconductors, however, only work at extremely low temperatures — often hundreds of degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Keeping materials that cold requires complex and costly cooling systems, which limits where the superconductors can be used.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have helped take a step toward easing that limitation. They have gained new insight into a class of materials called superhydrides that can become superconducting at much higher temperatures — around 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The research was carried out with collaborators from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), the University of Chicago and DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. A key tool was the upgraded Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne.

“These experiments show what the upgraded APS can do. We can now study atomic-level structures with unprecedented detail in materials under extreme pressure.” — Maddury Somayazulu, Argonne physicist

Superhydrides are made mostly of hydrogen, held together in an ordered structure (crystal) by a small number of metal atoms. When subjected to extremely high pressures, these materials can carry electric current with no resistance. In a landmark 2018 study, researchers led by UIC professor Russell Hemley showed that a lanthanum-based superhydride could superconduct near 8 degrees Fahrenheit. The drawback was that it only worked at pressures equivalent to those deep within the Earth (1.88 million atmospheres), making it impractical outside the lab.

In the new study, Hemley and his fellow researchers explored whether changing the material’s chemistry could lower the pressure needed for superconductivity. They added a small amount of yttrium to the lanthanum superhydride to make it more stable and reduce the pressure required.

“To reach these extreme pressures, we squeezed a tiny sample between two diamonds,” said Maddury Somayazulu, a physicist at the APS. The team’s diamond-anvil device can generate pressures as high as five million atmospheres.

After forming the superconducting material at high pressure and temperature, the team used high-energy X-rays from the APS to study its structure (at beamlines 16-ID-B and 13-ID-D). ​“We focused an intense X-ray beam onto a sample only a few micrometers thick and about ten to twenty micrometers across,” said Vitali Prakapenka, a beamline scientist and research professor at the University of Chicago. One micrometer is about 1/70^th the width of a human hair.

The recent APS upgrade made these measurements possible. Its brighter, more tightly focused X-ray beam allowed researchers to study extremely small samples while changing the pressure. ​“That beam allowed us to separate signals coming from the tiny sample itself as opposed to those coming from the surrounding materials and diamond anvils,” Prakapenka said.

The team found that small differences in how atoms are arranged in a crystalline lattice can strongly affect superconductivity. They identified two different crystal structures, each becoming superconducting at a slightly different temperature.

“These experiments show what the upgraded APS can do,” Somayazulu said. ​“We can now study atomic-level structures with unprecedented detail in materials under extreme pressure.”

Although the pressures used in the experiments are still very high — about 1.4 million times atmospheric pressure — the researchers see this as part of a longer path forward. They are adding more elements to lower the pressure further with the goal of making these materials practical.

Diamonds provide a useful comparison, Somayazulu explained. Natural diamonds form deep inside the Earth under extreme pressure and temperature. Scientists later learned how to synthesize them in the lab, and eventually how to produce them without such intense conditions. Researchers believe superhydrides could follow a similar path.

“If we understand the physics well enough, we may be able to stabilize these structures at much lower pressures but still attain superconductivity close to room temperature,” Prakapenka said.

Experimental data from the APS will help guide theoretical models and AI tools in that search for new materials. Instead of testing only a few combinations at quite-challenging-to-reach extreme conditions, scientists can use AI to explore many possible multi-element compositions. They can then focus experiments on the most promising ones.

“The calculations are very demanding,” Prakapenka said. ​“Theorists rely on high-quality experimental data to make their predictions more accurate.”

Finding a material that superconducts at near room temperature and normal pressure could reshape the nation’s electrical infrastructure.

The research was supported by the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, DOE National Nuclear Security Administration and the National Science Foundation. Contributors include Maddury Somayazulu, Russell Hemley, Vitali Prakapenka, Abdul Haseeb Manayil-Marathamkottil, Kui Wang, Nilesh Salke, Muhtar Ahart, Alexander Mark, Rostislav Hrubiak, Stella Chariton, Dean Smith and Nenad Velisavljevic.

This article was adapted from the UIC release.

About the Advanced Photon Source

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

BYLINE: Kitta MacPherson

Newswise — Meteor impacts may have helped spark life on Earth, creating hot, chemical-rich environments where the first living cells could take shape, according to research integrated by a recent Rutgers University graduate.

“No one knows, from a scientific perspective, how life could have been formed from an early Earth that had no life,” said Shea Cinquemani, who earned her bachelor’s degree in marine biology and fisheries management from the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in May 2025. “How does something come from nothing?”

 Cinquemani is the lead author of a scientific review, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, examining where life may have first formed on Earth. The paper focuses on hydrothermal vents, places where hot, mineral-rich water flows through rock and emerges into surrounding water, creating the chemical conditions and energy gradients needed for complex reactions.

 Her research points to hydrothermal systems created by meteor impacts as a potentially critical and underappreciated setting for the origin of life, strengthening the case beyond conventional deep-sea vent theories. Cinquemani said such systems would have been widespread on early Earth, making them especially compelling environments for life to begin.

 The paper, co-authored with Rutgers oceanographer Richard Lutz, marks a rare achievement for a recent undergraduate whose work began as a class assignment and was transformed into a publication in a highly respected scientific journal.

 “It’s amazing,” Lutz said. “You often have undergraduates that are part of papers – faculty choose undergraduates all the time to work on papers and projects. But for an undergraduate to be the lead author is a huge deal.” 

 The project started in the spring of Cinquemani’s senior year in a course called “Hydrothermal Vents,” taught by Lutz, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Cinquemani’s assignment was to examine whether hydrothermal vents on Mars could have been harbingers of life there.

 “I was like, ‘I know nothing about this topic,’” she said. “Thinking about the origins of biology on another planet was like, whoa. Not sure how I’m going to do this.” The topic went beyond her usual comfort zone of biology and extended into chemistry, physics and geology, she said.

 Cinquemani expanded the assignment after graduation into a full scientific review of both impact-generated and deep-sea vent systems, which was accepted after what Lutz described as a demanding peer-review evaluation.

 “I have never seen such a rigorous review process,” Lutz said. “There were 15 pages of comments and five different rounds of reviews. She had the patience and perseverance, and the paper turned out magnificently.”

 Deep-sea hydrothermal vents have long been considered a possible birthplace of life. Discovered in the deep ocean in the late 1970s, these systems host entire ecosystems that thrive without sunlight. Instead of photosynthesis, microbes use chemical energy from compounds released by vent fluids, such as hydrogen sulfide, in a process known as chemosynthesis.

 Some deep-sea vents are powered by heat from the Earth’s interior near volcanic activity while others are driven by chemical reactions between water and rock that generate heat without magma. This heat facilitates chemical processes and provides a warm oasis in the otherwise barren seafloor of the deep ocean. 

 Cinquemani’s paper places more focus on a different category that has recently begun gaining attention: hydrothermal systems created by meteor impacts.

 When a large meteor strikes Earth, the impact generates intense heat and melts surrounding rock. As the area cools and water fills the crater, a hot, mineral-rich environment can form, similar in some ways to deep-sea vents.

 “You have a lake surrounding a very, very warm center,” Cinquemani said. “And now you get a hydrothermal vent system, just like in the deep sea, but made by the heat from an impact.”

 To explore how these systems might support life, she examined research on three well-studied crater sites that span vastly different periods of Earth’s history. The oldest is the Chicxulub impact structure beneath Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, formed about 65 million years ago and later shown to have hosted a long-lived hydrothermal system. Next is the Haughton impact structure in the Canadian Arctic, formed about 31 million years ago. The youngest is Lonar Lake in India, created about 50,000 years ago, where the crater still contains water and offers clues about how these systems evolve over time.

 These impact-generated systems may last thousands to tens of thousands of years, giving simple molecules time to form more complex structures that could lead to life.

 Scientists say such environments may have been especially important on early Earth, which experienced frequent asteroid impacts. In that sense, events often seen as destructive also may have helped create the conditions for life.

 The idea builds on decades of research into deep-sea vents while expanding the search for life’s origins into new territory.

 Lutz helped explore these deep-sea environments several decades ago when they were still a scientific mystery. As a young postdoctoral researcher, he joined the first biological expedition to study hydrothermal vents and descended more than a mile beneath the ocean surface in the research deep-sea submersible Alvin, where he observed thriving communities of organisms in total darkness.

 Those dives helped open a new field of research and shaped scientists’ understanding of how life can exist in extreme environments without sunlight.

 “We have talked for many years about the possibility that life may have originated at deep-sea hydrothermal vents,” Lutz said.

 Cinquemani’s work brings together those long-standing ideas with newer evidence that impact-generated systems also could play a role and may in some cases offer favorable conditions for early chemical reactions.

 The implications extend beyond Earth. Hydrothermal activity is thought to exist on the ocean floors of icy moons such as Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus, and may have existed in impact craters on young Mars. If these environments on Earth can support the chemistry of life, they could become key targets in the search for life elsewhere.

 For Cinquemani, the work is driven by curiosity.

 “Humans are insanely curious beings,” said Cinquemani, who works as a technician at Rutgers’ New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center in Cape May, N.J., where she supports aquaculture research while preparing to pursue advanced study in marine science. “We question everything. We may never know exactly how we began, but we can try our best to understand how things might have occurred.”

Explore more of the ways Rutgers research is shaping the future.

Catalytic treatment of industrial pollutants has long faced a practical bottleneck. Noble metal nanoparticles are highly active, but they often tend to aggregate, reducing the number of active usable reaction sites. Traditional methods for producing polymer-supported catalysts can also be slow, multistep, and dependent on toxic reagents, surfactants, or poorly controlled batch conditions. Meanwhile, 4-nitrophenol remains a hazardous pollutant commonly found in industrial wastewater, and existing catalytic systems often suffer from limited surface area, uneven active-species distribution, and inefficient mass transfer. Based on these challenges, in-depth research is needed on controllable catalyst supports and continuous-flow catalytic platforms.

In a study published (DOI: 10.1038/s41378-026-01176-6) in 2026 in Microsystems & Nanoengineering, Li Ma and colleagues from Xi’an Jiaotong University and collaborating institutions reported a spiral-microchannel platform for continuously producing morphology-tailored polystyrene microspheres loaded with Ag, Ag-Au, or Ag-Pt nanoparticles. Corresponding author Nanjing Hao and the team showed that tuning the structure of the polymer carrier could directly improve catalytic behavior in the reduction of 4-nitrophenol.

The researchers began with uniform solid polystyrene seeds averaging 1.48 μm in diameter, then used water-ethanol and water-toluene systems to drive them into hollow, dimpled, bowl-like, and open-hole forms. In one striking transformation, unsymmetrical dimples evolved into open-hole structures within 5 minutes after introducing a small amount of toluene. These evolving microspheres were then passed through a spiral microreactor, where rapid microscale mixing enabled metal precursors to form and anchor onto the polymer surface in minutes rather than hours. Hollow and open-hole structures provided larger surface areas and confined microenvironments, helping load more nanoparticles and improve mass transfer. The system produced evenly distributed Ag, Ag-Pt, and Ag-Au nanoparticles, while also reducing aggregation. Among all tested catalysts, open-hole Ag-Pt microspheres performed best, reaching a reaction rate constant of 1.73 × 10^^-2 s^{^-1} and an activity parameter of 692 s^^-1·g^^-1, while maintaining catalytic activity over five reuse cycles.

The study suggests that catalyst performance can be engineered not only by changing the metal itself, but also by reshaping the support beneath it. By controlling carrier morphology, the team was able to regulate nanoparticle immobilization, improve accessibility of active sites, and strengthen confined synergistic catalysis. In this sense, the microreactor becomes more than a synthesis tool: it becomes a way to manufacture catalytic function with precision.

The implications go beyond a single wastewater reaction. A scalable continuous-flow strategy for robust bimetallic catalysts could be valuable in environmental remediation, fine chemical synthesis, and other industrial processes where fast mixing, stable active sites, and reusable catalytic materials are essential. Just as importantly, the study turns a toxic pollutant into a useful product, pointing toward a broader model of greener chemistry in which waste treatment and value creation can happen together.

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References

DOI

10.1038/s41378-026-01176-6

Original Source URL

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-026-01176-6

Funding information

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFC3904301), the Key R&D Program of Shaanxi Province (2024GX-YBXM-471), the Qin Chuang Yuan Talent Program (2021QCYRC4-33), and the Distinguished Overseas Young Scholars of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (GYKP032).

About Microsystems & Nanoengineering

Microsystems & Nanoengineering is an online-only, open access international journal devoted to publishing original research results and reviews on all aspects of Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems from fundamental to applied research. The journal is published by Springer Nature in partnership with the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, supported by the State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology.

Photos

Key takeaways

• Aerosols are major drivers of virus transmission
• The performance of air disinfection techniques is hard to measure, but a new fluorescence-based method speeds up the process.
• The researchers aim to use it to improve their air disinfection technology, which can deactivate up to 99.9% of virus particles with plasma.

Newswise — The effectiveness of air disinfection devices may now be measured in minutes, rather than hours, with a new technique from University of Michigan Engineering. This is important for researchers developing better antiviral air purifiers, helping to mitigate outbreaks of viral respiratory diseases and prepare for the next pandemic.

The new method harnesses a property known as UV fluorescence, or how molecules absorb UV light, followed shortly thereafter by emission of energy at another wavelength. It turns out viral aerosols shine brighter before disinfection treatment than after. This finding offers the potential to indirectly but rapidly track the performance of air disinfection technologies and more. 

“Our findings suggest that it may be possible to detect changes in aerosol infectivity in a rapid, real-time manner without tedious laboratory procedures,” said Zhenyu Ma, a U-M postdoctoral research fellow and first author of the study in Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing. “As the field of application for this technology becomes clearer, we could use it to better understand the behavior of pathogenic aerosols and their infectivity, thereby providing essential information for public health guidelines.”

The speed of the new approach, developed in the lab of Herek Clack, U-M associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, is key. The standard method of evaluating an air disinfection process requires collecting pathogen samples from air before and after treatment. For viruses, it involves exposing host cells to the pathogen sample so that the viruses have something to infect. Then, technicians look for signs of infection through a microscope, a labor-intensive process that yields just a single measurement of air disinfection performance. 

In contrast, U-M’s approach yields results after several minutes of sampling a small portion of the air stream entering, and then exiting, an air disinfection device or chamber. The sampled air streams flow separately into a device that measures the size of each particle, exposes it to UV light and measures the intensity of its glow. With thousands of these measurements taken over a couple of minutes of sampling, naturally occurring particle-to-particle variations cause the fluorescence intensity measurements to take the shape of a bell curve. 

This bell curve shifts to lower intensities as the fraction of viral aerosols inactivated by the disinfection process increases. As a result, researchers can measure the fluorescence intensity of the air sample before and after the disinfection process and compare them to figure out how well disinfection worked. 

Once the expected shift in the bell curve is known for a particular pathogen, between treated and untreated viruses, the effectiveness determination takes just a few minutes. For researchers like Clack, who develop disinfection processes, this means faster prototyping and testing at different air flow rates, air temperatures, humidity levels and more.

“Even as the paradigm has shifted regarding the significance of airborne disease transmission, air disinfection technologies that do not rely on filtering air suffer slow development cycles because of how tedious it traditionally has been to prove how well the pathogens have been inactivated,” Clack said. “Having an indirect indicator, properly calibrated, for pathogen infectivity could speed up that development process tremendously.”

Fluorescence monitoring could also be effective for disinfection tools such as ozone and chlorine, the researchers suggest. But for techniques that disrupt the virus’ genome, such as ultraviolet light, fluorescence will not work. The genome is too deep inside the virus to be reached by these fluorescence detection methods, so their fluorescence signatures don’t change in the same way.

Clack’s group studies interactions between aerosols and strong electric fields. These fields produce nonthermal plasmas, or regions containing charged molecular fragments, which damage viruses and render them harmless. Their group has demonstrated that nonthermal plasmas are capable of reducing the number of infectious viruses in flowing air by 99.9% in lab testing as well as at enclosed livestock operations. 

Clack’s startup, Taza Aya, has prototyped plasma-based respiratory protective gear, currently being tested in a Michigan turkey processing plant.

Study: Using Viral Aerosol Fluorescence for Detection of Virus Infectivity Change Induced by Non-thermal Plasma (DOI: 10.10007/s11090-026-10648-6)  

Story by Jim Lynch, Michigan Engineering

Newswise — Micro- and nanofluidic systems are increasingly important in biology, medicine, chemistry, and materials science because they allow researchers to study reactions, transport, and molecular behavior in spaces that approach the dimensions of living capillaries or engineered nanosystems. Yet as chips become more integrated and more powerful, a bottleneck has emerged: the surrounding interface hardware often cannot match the chip’s sophistication. Researchers need systems that can simultaneously deliver multiple liquids, maintain stable seals, control heat and cooling, impose electric fields, and support in situ optical observation. Based on these challenges, deeper research was needed into multifunctional chip interfaces for highly integrated nanofluidic systems.

On January 19, 2026, a team from the Department of Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden reported (DOI: 10.1038/s41378-025-01125-9) in Microsystems & Nanoengineering a temperature-controlled nanofluidic chip holder with integrated electrodes for real-time optical analysis. The system was designed for 1 cm² silicon-based chips with up to 12 fluidic connection points. By combining heating, cooling, electrical control, and nanofluidic scattering spectroscopy in one platform, the researchers created a versatile interface for studying nanoscale transport and reaction processes directly on-chip.

The holder pairs a transparent acrylic channel plate with a thermally connected chip stage and four Peltier elements, allowing both heating and cooling while keeping the chip accessible to dark-field microscopy and spectroscopy. It can host miniature chips only 10 mm wide, yet each chip supports up to 12 independently addressable inlets or outlets, and 52 such chips can be produced from a single 4-inch wafer. In performance tests, the platform maintained stable cooling down to 12 °C at an optimized current and reached 112 °C in heating mode; under short high-current operation, the chip briefly dropped as low as 4 °C. The team then used Brilliant Blue and Fluorescein as model molecules to demonstrate three functions: on-chip solution switching and mixing, temperature-dependent diffusion inside a single nanochannel, and electrically modulated diffusion. Higher temperatures accelerated Fluorescein transport, while stronger applied voltages suppressed or slowed entry into the channel. At higher fields, the optical spectra also shifted toward longer wavelengths, suggesting field-induced changes in the dye’s electronic behavior.

“This work addresses a practical but often overlooked problem in nanofluidics: not just how to fabricate advanced chips, but how to operate them with precision once they are made. By integrating temperature control, electrical actuation, pressure handling, and optical readout into a single compact holder, the study turns the chip interface itself into an enabling technology. That matters because many important nanoscale processes—from molecular transport to catalytic reactions—depend on tightly controlled conditions that must be adjusted and observed in real time.”

The new platform could expand the experimental reach of nanofluidics across several fields. In chemistry, it may support studies of nanoscale mixing, diffusion, and catalytic reactions under controlled thermal and electrical conditions. In biology and biophysics, it could help researchers examine processes such as protein aggregation, folding, or transport in confined environments. Because the design is compact, modular, and compatible with optical readout, it also offers a practical route toward more scalable lab-on-a-chip and organ-on-a-chip research tools. More broadly, the work highlights that the future of highly integrated fluidics will depend not only on smarter chips, but also on smarter interfaces that make those chips truly usable.

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References

DOI

10.1038/s41378-025-01125-9

Original Source URL

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-025-01125-9

Funding information

Open access funding provided by Chalmers University of Technology.

About Microsystems & Nanoengineering

Microsystems & Nanoengineering is an online-only, open access international journal devoted to publishing original research results and reviews on all aspects of Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems from fundamental to applied research. The journal is published by Springer Nature in partnership with the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, supported by the State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology.

Newswise — Marine mud is generated in large quantities during dredging, coastal development, land reclamation, and marine construction. In fast-growing urban regions, this sediment can become a major waste-management burden because it is wet, sticky, difficult to handle, and often contaminated with heavy metals. Conventional stabilization methods usually rely heavily on Portland cement, which is effective but energy-intensive and carbon-heavy. Alternative geopolymer approaches are promising, yet many still depend on corrosive or costly activators and do not always immobilize contaminants well enough. Based on these challenges, there is a pressing need to carry out in-depth research on low-carbon, practical, and safe strategies for the remediation and in-situ reuse of contaminated marine mud.

A team from Harbin Institute of Technology, Tsinghua University Shenzhen International Graduate School, the University of Abomey-Calavi, and the Beninese Office for Geological and Mining Research reported (DOI: 10.1007/s11783-026-2122-z) online on January 10, 2026, in  ENGINEERING Environment that contaminated marine mud can be remediated and recycled in situ into engineered backfill materials using low-carbon formulations built around aluminosilicate raw materials.

To build a treatment route that was both effective and realistic, the researchers designed the work in stages. They collected marine mud from a construction site in Macao, then tested blends containing Portland cement, fly ash, slag, river sand, water, and low-concentration NaOH. The goal was not simply to harden the mud, but to find a mix that could improve strength, suppress heavy-metal release, and remain practical for large-scale site use. After preparing and curing the samples, the team evaluated compressive strength, unconfined compressive strength, leaching toxicity, and microstructural characteristics through XRF, XRD, SEM, and TEM analyses. The strongest optimized mixtures achieved unconfined compressive strengths (UCS) values of 7.75 MPa with 25% OPC, 4.24 MPa with fly ash, 8.69 MPa with slag, and 3.15 MPa with a river-sand formulation—each above the 1 MPa benchmark for backfill application. At the same time, the treatment sharply reduced the leaching of As, Ba, Cd, Cr, and Pb, with Pb completely removed in all mixtures. XRD and morphological analyses further showed that the stabilized mud developed mineral and gel phases dominated by SiO₂, Ca(CO₃), Mn_1.7Fe₁.₃O₄, and complex silicate structures, which helped explain the improved strength and contaminant immobilization.

“This work shows that contaminated marine mud does not have to remain an environmental liability,” the study suggests in essence. By replacing more carbon-intensive treatment approaches with lower-carbon mineral formulations, the research reframes marine sediment as a reusable resource rather than a disposal problem. Just as importantly, the team designed the system with real construction conditions in mind, including the use of locally available river sand and simplified activation chemistry. That practical orientation makes the study especially valuable for coastal cities facing both land scarcity and mounting waste-treatment costs.

The implications extend beyond one sediment stream. This research offers a route toward cleaner coastal engineering, lower landfill dependence, and more circular use of waste materials in infrastructure projects. For regions where marine mud accounts for a large share of construction waste, in-situ recycling could ease pressure on disposal sites while cutting transport and treatment expenses. The study also aligns with wider carbon-reduction goals by reducing reliance on traditional cement-heavy stabilization. In the longer term, such low-carbon remediation systems could help cities manage contaminated sediments more safely while turning them into useful materials for backfilling, site restoration, and future sustainable construction applications.

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References

DOI

10.1007/s11783-026-2122-z

Original Source URL

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-026-2122-z

Funding Information

This work was supported by Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation, China (No. 2022B1515130006). Acknowledgements are also given to Shenzhen Science and Technology Program: Sustainable Development Special Project (No.KCXST20221021111408021) and International Collaboration Project (No. GJHZ20220913143007013).

About  ENGINEERING Environment 

ENGINEERING Environment  is an international journal in environmental disciplines, jointly sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Tsinghua University, and Higher Education Press. The journal is dedicated to advancing and disseminating the discoveries of cutting-edge theories, innovations in engineering technology, and practices in technological application within the environmental discipline. Adhering to the principle of integrating scientific theories with engineering technologies, the journal emphasizes the convergence of environmental protection with One Health, climate change response, and sustainable development. It places particular emphasis on the forward-looking nature of novel technologies and emerging challenges, the practicality of solutions, and interdisciplinary innovations.

Newswise — By comparing natural microbial adaptation with targeted bioaugmentation using an antibiotic-degrading strain, the study reveals how biodegradation capacity fundamentally reshapes microbial succession, stability, and resilience under sustained antibiotic exposure.

Environmental risk assessments often judge antibiotics solely by concentration and intrinsic toxicity, assuming uniform microbial responses. However, microbial communities actively shape contaminant fate, particularly when they include antibiotic-degrading organisms. Sulfamethoxazole (SMX), a common sulfonamide found in wastewater and surface waters, illustrates this complexity. Even at low levels, SMX can suppress sensitive taxa, disrupt community structure, and impair essential functions such as nutrient removal. Yet some bacteria possess specialized genes that enzymatically inactivate SMX, reducing antibiotic pressure for the broader community. How such biodegradation capacity governs microbial succession and community stability remains insufficiently understood.

A study (DOI:10.48130/biocontam-0025-0016) published in Biocontaminant on 12 December 2025 by Bin Liang’s team, Harbin Institute of Technology, demonstrates that antibiotic-degrading bacteria act as keystone protectors that mitigate antibiotic stress, stabilize microbial community succession, and enhance ecosystem resilience, highlighting biodegradation capacity as a critical determinant of environmental risk.

Using a controlled sequencing batch reactor framework, the study first isolated and characterized an SMX-degrading bacterium from activated sludge by continuous subculture with SMX as the sole carbon source, then tested how degrader-enabled biodegradation reshapes community succession by inoculating the strain under defined antibiotic stress and tracking community dynamics with SMX degradation assays, ex situ degradation tests, and 16S rRNA sequencing across multiple reactor phases. The isolated strain, Paenarthrobacter sp. M5 (100% 16S rRNA similarity to P. ureafaciens), fully degraded 30 mg/L SMX within 10 h, producing equimolar 3-amino-5-methylisoxazole and carrying the key gene sadA; mechanistically, a SadA/SadC two-component system drove ipso-hydroxylation and cleavage of the -C–S–N- bond, yielding non-antibacterial intermediates (including p-aminophenol that could be further metabolized for growth). Four reactor treatments were established—NN (no SMX), SN (natural adaptation with SMX), NM (M5 inoculated without SMX), and SM (pre-adaptation: M5 inoculated with SMX)—revealing that SN communities acquired biodegradation gradually (over ~28 cycles at 2 mg/L SMX), whereas SM communities showed immediate, efficient degradation after inoculation; with increasing SMX loads, both SMX-exposed groups ultimately achieved complete removal, indicating inducible biodegradation under sustained selection. When SMX exposure was paused and then reintroduced at high levels, functional recovery ranked SN > SM > NM, while NN showed ~70% degradation with high replicate variability, underscoring how evolutionary history governs resilience. Ex situ assays reinforced these trends: SN improved to 36.3%, 62.3%, and 100% removal at 2, 5, and 10 mg/L SMX, SM remained consistently complete across phases, NN stayed low (12.2%–16.6%), and NM declined (30.5%→13.4%), highlighting antibiotics as the key driver sustaining degrader colonization. 16S/OTU analyses showed a shared core microbiome across all groups, but shared OTUs dropped sharply during restructuring (from 1,035 to ~440) before stabilizing (~533–578), while α-diversity patterns revealed that slower biodegradation in SN retarded succession and preserved higher diversity during T2–T4, whereas efficient degradation in SM buffered antibiotic stress and restored “regular” successional dynamics. Multivariate statistics (ADONIS/MRPP) confirmed dose-dependent SMX-driven divergence in SN versus NN, but minimal structural differences between SM and NN through most phases, indicating that bioaugmentation-mediated biodegradation can protect community structure from antibiotic perturbation.

These findings have direct relevance for wastewater treatment and environmental management. Antibiotic-degrading bacteria can stabilize treatment performance by protecting key microbial functions from antibiotic disruption. Targeted bioaugmentation or monitoring of native degrader populations could reduce the risk of treatment failure and limit conditions that favor the spread of antibiotic resistance.

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References

DOI

10.48130/biocontam-0025-0016

Original Source URL

https://doi.org/10.48130/biocontam-0025-0016

Funding Information

The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52322007), the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (Grant No. 2023B1515020077), and Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (Grant No. JCYJ20240813105125034).

About Biocontaminant

Biocontaminant is a multidisciplinary platform dedicated to advancing fundamental and applied research on biological contaminants across diverse environments and systems. The journal serves as an innovative, efficient, and professional forum for global researchers to disseminate findings in this rapidly evolving field.

Newswise — Algae blooms make a pond’s surface shine in mesmerizing green hues. But if the microorganisms responsible are cyanobacteria, they can also release toxins that harm humans and wildlife alike. So, a team reporting in ACS ES&T Water has designed a “set it and forget it” system for distributing algaecide using specialized buoys tethered at the site of a bloom. In tests, the buoys removed nearly all cyanobacteria without the need for frequent reapplication.

Algae blooms occur when extra nutrients in the water — likely from fertilizer runoff — cause tiny microorganisms like algae and cyanobacteria to proliferate. In 2014, one such algae bloom in Lake Erie near Toledo, Ohio, rendered drinking water unsafe for hundreds of thousands of residents. And now, a team of researchers from the University of Toledo are looking to create an algaecide treatment system that puts a stop to a bloom before it has even started. The team, including Umberto Kober, Hanieh Barikbin, Youngwoo Seo, Yakov Lapitsky and colleagues, designed a system that releases algaecide steadily over a period of weeks or months, making it less expensive and more efficient than existing options that require frequent reapplication.

The team constructed small, medium, and large-sized buoys out of PVC pipes, forming either a “T” or cross shape. Hydrogel disks were inserted into the pipe openings to control the diffusion of the liquid algaecide into the surrounding water. The buoys were then filled with a commercial hydrogen peroxide-based algaecide, which, upon immersion, slowly diffused through the hydrogel disks. The buoys were also engineered so that once the algaecide was gone, the buoy fell to its side, visually indicating that a refill was needed.

To test their performance, the small, algaecide-loaded buoys were put in a beaker with 1 liter of cyanobacteria-containing water collected from Lake Erie and monitored for two weeks. Every day a small portion of water was replaced with new lake water to ensure the buoys were continually exposed to fresh cyanobacteria. This way, the team could evaluate whether the buoys provided sustained algicidal activity rather than killing the cyanobacteria early in the process. Researchers found that the cyanobacteria were almost entirely eliminated within a week, and other microbes remained largely unscathed. Researchers estimate that their buoys could reliably release algaecide for at least four consecutive release cycles, each lasting 35 days.

Though further research is needed, including enhancements to prevent microbe growth on the buoy’s surface, the researchers say that this work overcomes challenges in sustained and targeted algaecide treatment.

“If successfully scaled up, this concept could enable early mitigation of harmful algal blooms without the need for labor-intensive repeated algaecide applications,” says Lapitsky.

The authors acknowledge funding from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The algaecide used in these experiments was provided by the SePRO Corporation, an algaecide manufacturer.

Authors Yakov Lapitsky, Umberto Kober and Youngwoo Seo have filed a patent application on this research.

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1876 and chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is committed to improving all lives through the transforming power of chemistry. Its mission is to advance scientific knowledge, empower a global community and champion scientific integrity, and its vision is a world built on science. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, e-books and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Registered journalists can subscribe to the ACS journalist news portal on EurekAlert! to access embargoed and public science press releases. For media inquiries, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note: ACS does not conduct research but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.

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Newswise — Labeled glass containers full of liquids stirred by spinning magnets are connected to humming machines with neatly organized tubes. Here in this lab space at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), scientists are pioneering ways to extract critical materials from recycled waste products.

Critical materials are essential to modern life because they possess properties that make them difficult to replace. They’re used in smartphones, satellites, computer chips, rechargeable batteries, fighter jets, advanced weapons systems and other technologies. But they can be hard to find; that’s where INL’s research comes in.

The national challenge

The U.S. has deposits of nearly all critical materials, but mining capabilities cannot meet the nation’s growing demand. Most extraction and processing are done overseas, much of it in China. This reliance on foreign critical materials risks supply disruptions that could affect U.S. national security, economic growth and everyday life. After mining, rocks are crushed and processed to separate valuable materials from waste. This step, called beneficiation, prepares the material for further refining. These materials are then concentrated for easier transport and treated with heat or chemicals to fully extract and purify them. However, modern processing isn’t always sufficient and often produces significant waste.

In copper mines, for example, the ore contains up to 0.2% copper, meaning about 99.8% of the rock is discarded. That waste still contains other metals and critical materials, but most processing facilities are only designed to extract one or two materials.

The critical materials in discarded rocks, e-waste and other sources don’t degrade over time and can be recovered. However, the U.S. lacks the infrastructure to recycle them.

Recycling facilities could tap into these largely untouched sources, helping meet U.S. demand. These facilities could be built far more quickly than new mines, which can take over a decade due to permitting, costs and infrastructure needs.

“The U.S. doesn’t recycle well,” said Bob Fox, a senior manager at INL. “There’s a willingness to recover critical materials from recycled sources, but there’s no infrastructure or market for it. Right now, critical materials recycling doesn’t have the economic incentives to drive infrastructure development.”

INL is working to change that by making recycling more efficient, less energy-intensive and economically viable.

“Recycling represents a crucial pathway for the U.S. to obtain critical materials, including rare earth elements like dysprosium,” said Arindam Mukhopadhyay, a staff scientist at INL. “Even critical materials we mine domestically, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese, can be recovered through recycling.”

INL’s recycling research

Since the early 2010s, INL has developed technologies that reduce chemical use, energy consumption and waste, making recycling more sustainable and cost-effective. These innovations improve recovery from sources such as electronic and agricultural waste, mine tailings and industrial wastewater.

“INL has developed a comprehensive portfolio of critical materials recycling technologies,” said Mukhopadhyay. “We have the expertise and proven processes to help make recycling economically competitive, which is essential for building a reliable domestic supply of the materials our nation depends on.”

One area INL has worked in for many years is biohydrometallurgy, which uses biological systems to dissolve and recover metals. INL’s research examines how microbial populations fed agricultural or municipal waste biomass produce organic acids that break down metals in both metallic and mineral forms. These biologically produced acids dissolve the material and release valuable metals such as rare earth elements, cobalt and lithium. The dissolved metals can then be recovered from the liquid using natural biology-based molecules instead of man-made chemicals. INL’s work is improving the efficiency, effectiveness and affordability of biohydrometallurgy and offers a promising, cost-effective alternative to harsh chemical reagents.

Ether-based Aqueous Separation and Extraction (EASE) uses water-soluble, ether-based chemicals that pull specific materials from mixtures to recover critical materials from industrial wastewater, desalination brines, mine runoff and geothermal fluids. This process uses less energy and fewer chemicals than conventional extraction methods and produces less waste.

Another area of innovation is INL’s electrochemistry work. Electrochemistry uses electricity to trigger chemical reactions that separate and recover critical materials from waste.

Electrons are easier and less expensive to generate than the chemicals required for traditional extraction methods. Electrochemistry can reduce the use of chemicals, some of which can be toxic, by 88% to 90%, and the process uses up to 75% less energy.

Electrochemical Leach (EC-Leach)

EC-Leach uses electricity to cause chemical reactions in liquids to extract critical materials like lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese. The process was originally developed to extract critical materials from used lithium-ion batteries, but INL is adapting it for mining applications.

Pilot systems show EC-Leach can recover more than 95% of these critical materials. INL researchers are working to scale this technology for commercial deployment.

Electrochemical Recycling of Electronic Constituents of Value (E-RECOV)

E-RECOV uses an electrochemical cell to recover critical materials from electronic scrap. Electrochemical cells use chemical reactions to produce electricity used in electrochemistry. E-RECOV operates at room temperature, uses up to 75% fewer chemicals than traditional processes and doesn’t produce toxic emissions.

The technology has received a TechConnect National Innovation Award and was a finalist for an R&D 100 Award. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute supports the development of TechConnect.

Free Flowing Electrophoretic System (FFES)

The FFE unit uses an electric field with tailored ligand systems (small molecules that bind to metal ions) to separate critical materials from complex mixtures into distinct, isolated streams. The device can be moved closer to, or into, mines to separate critical materials from metal-rich liquids.

Electrochemical Membrane Reactor

Researchers at INL developed an electrochemical membrane reactor that removes contaminants from spent lithium-ion battery leachates, the mineral-rich liquids produced during recycling. The reactor recovers more than 95% of valuable metals such as nickel and cobalt using only water, air and electricity. It also produces acid that can be reused in the extraction process. The system has the potential to serve as a cost-effective closed-loop solution for recycling critical materials from batteries.

Improving purity

Most modern applications need critical materials to be at 99.999% purity or higher, but most conventional separation processing can only achieve 85% to 95% purity unless the process is run over weeks or months. INL’s electrochemical work can achieve 99.9999% purity in fewer cycles, dramatically reducing processing time and costs.

Rare Earth Element-Metal (RE-Metal)

RE-Metal is a process that recovers rare earth elements from waste materials using electricity. First, the elements are dissolved using nontoxic solutions. Then an electric current is applied to turn the dissolved materials into solid metal on an electrode.

Other projects include generating hydrogen peroxide from air to help dissolve minerals and separating graphite, copper and arsenic while immobilizing toxic chemicals.

Real-world impact

“Our goal is to make recycling economically viable,” said Mukhopadhyay. “To do that, we’ve focused on reducing chemical use, energy consumption and waste generation while maximizing recovery rates.”

INL’s technologies offer cost-effective options to secure the domestic critical materials supply chain and meet the nation’s growing demand. By advancing recycling and recovery methods, INL helps ensure the U.S. has the materials it needs to overcome current and future challenges.

About Idaho National Laboratory

Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation’s center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment. For more information, visit www.inl.gov.

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Newswise — The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) recently named 24 new fellows to its 2026 class. The NHFP enables outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research in any area of NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observations, simulations, experimentation, or instrument development. Over 650 applicants vied for the 2026 fellowships, representing an oversubscription rate of 27 to 1. Each fellowship provides the awardee up to three years of support at a U.S. institution.

Once selected, fellows are named to one of three sub-categories corresponding to three broad scientific questions that NASA seeks to answer about the universe:

• How does the universe work? – Einstein Fellows
• How did we get here? – Hubble Fellows
• Are we alone? – Sagan Fellows

“The 2026 class of the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program is comprised of outstanding astrophysics researchers who will advance NASA’s pursuit of big questions about how the universe works, how it evolved over time, and whether we’re alone in it,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, Astrophysics Division director, NASA Headquarters, Washington. “Through their compelling research, and by sharing the products of that work with the broader community, this year’s fellows will once again play an important role in creating our future and in inspiring future generations of students to be a part of that future. These scientists across the country will enhance the impact of U.S. academic institutions and will further American leadership in space-based astrophysics research.”

The list below provides the names of the 2026 awardees, their fellowship host institutions, and their proposed research topics.

The 2026 NHFP Einstein Fellows are:

• Hollis Akins, Princeton University, “Charting the Growth of the First Supermassive Black Holes through ‘Little Red Dots’”
• Dhayaa Anbajagane, Stanford University, “Building a Multi-Probe Approach to Primordial Physics”
• Hannah Gulick, California Institute of Technology, “Probing Compact Object Demographics with a New Generation of Space-Based Observatories”
• Casey Lam, Carnegie Observatories, “A Portrait of Galactic Black Hole Demographics”
• Benjamin Lehmann, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “New Tools for Dark Matter Physics”
• Sizheng Ma, Johns Hopkins University, “Listening Beyond the Ring: A New Paradigm for Black Hole Spectroscopy”
• Megan Masterson, Harvard University, “The Dynamic Astronomical Sky as a Probe of Supermassive Black Holes”
• Simona Miller, City University of New York, “Probing High-mass Binary Black Hole Formation and Fundamental Physics with the Remnants of our Cosmos’ Most Extreme Collisions”
• Martijn Oei, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, “The Widespread Impact of Megaparsec-scale Jets on the Cosmic Web”
• Frank Qu, Stanford University, “Mapping Dark Matter and Baryons Across the Universe with the Cosmic Microwave Background”

The 2026 NHFP Hubble Fellows are:

• James Beattie, Institute for Advanced Study, “The Glue Between the Stars: Unraveling Turbulence and Magnetism Across All Scales”
• Vedant Chandra, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Dark Matter at the Threshold of Galaxy Formation”
• Roman Gerasimov, University of Notre Dame, “New Frontiers in Galactic Archaeology”
• Jared Goldberg, Columbia University, “Massive Stars, Inside and Out: Bridging 1D and 3D Models of Stars and Supernovae”
• Vasily Kokorev, University of Texas at Austin, “The Cosmic Frontier: Uncovering Faint Galaxies that Ignited the Early Universe”
• Konstantinos Kritos, Stony Brook University, “Unveiling the Mystery of Massive Black Hole Seeds Through Gravitational and Electromagnetic Waves”
• Anna O’Grady, Carnegie Mellon University, “Stay Close to Go Far: Resolved Stellar Populations in Nearby Galaxies as Critical Benchmarks for Binary Evolution Models”
• David Setton, Johns Hopkins University, “A Multi-Wavelength View of Quenching Across Cosmic Time”

The 2026 NHFP Sagan Fellows are:

• Hayley Beltz, University of Kansas, “From Magnetic Fields to Measurable Signals: 3D MHD Modeling of Sub-Jovian Exoplanets”
• Rachel Bowens-Rubin, Harvard University, “From Ice Giants to Exorings: New Frontiers in Exoplanet Characterization with JWST & Roman CGI Direct Imaging”
• Collin Cherubim, University of Chicago, “Mass Fractionation in the Escaping Atmospheres of Small Planets, and the Hunt for Helium and Oxygen Worlds”
• Arvind Gupta, University of Arizona, “Securing the Doppler Legacy in the Hunt for Earth-like Exoplanets”
• Henrik Kneirim, California Institute of Technology, “Decoding the Formation of Extreme Giant Planets”
• Samantha Scibelli, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, “Zooming in on Prebiotic Chemistry at the Earliest Stage of Low-mass Star and Planet Formation”

An important part of the NHFP is the annual symposium, which allows Fellows the opportunity to present results of their research, and to meet each other and the scientific and administrative staff who manage the program. The 2025 symposium was held at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Topics ranged from understanding the atmospheric chemistry of nearby, rocky planets with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to observations of some of the earliest galaxies in the universe, and mapping the expansion of our universe with the latest data releases from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. 

More information about the 2026 NHFP Fellows is available online.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, administers the NHFP on behalf of NASA, in collaboration with the Chandra X-ray Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California.