Engineering
press releases.

Engineering21 Jul 2025

Breaking the crystalline barrier: Amorphous nanomaterials in advanced photocatalysis

Photocatalysis, a technology that converts solar energy into chemical reactions, holds immense promise for addressing energy shortages and environmental pollution. However, traditional crystalline semiconductors face limitations in efficiency and stability. A groundbreaking review led by researchers from China Three Gorges University and Capital Normal University unveils how amorphous nanomaterials, which are lacking of long-range atomic order, could overcome these barriers and provide a new thought of advanced photocatalysis. Published in Nano Research, the ...

Read the release

Engineering18 Jul 2025

Counterfeited in China: New book assesses state of industry and its future

Counterfeiting tops the list of organized crimes committed worldwide, raking in nearly half a trillion dollars in 2019. These illicit businesses impact consumers, workers, brand owners, state authorities, and the overall economy. For example, counterfeit luxury goods like handbags and watches are commonly sold to unsuspecting consumers and divert revenue from legitimate producers. Moreover, the proliferation of counterfeiting has fueled the advancement of other types of organized crimes, such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, and money laundering. In a new book, a Rutgers ...

Read the release

Engineering17 Jul 2025

Controlled human gut colonization by an engineered microbial therapeutic

Engineered gut bacteria designed to treat kidney stones successfully colonized the gut microbiome and reduced oxalate levels in animal models and early clinical trials in humans, researchers report. The findings offer a promising, yet still imperfect, step toward microbial therapies. Efforts to manipulate the gut microbiome using engineered bacteria for therapeutic purposes have shown promise in animals, but often fail in clinical settings due to being hindered by inconsistent colonization. To overcome this challenge, Weston Whitaker and colleagues focused on Phocaeicola vulgatus, a common gut bacterium, and engineered it to consume the seaweed-derived nutrient, porphyran. ...

Read the release

Engineering17 Jul 2025

2024 Nano Research Young Innovators (NR45) Awards in Nanomaterial Self-assembly

Recently, Nano Research announced awardees of the 2024 Nano Research Young Innovators (NR45) Awards in Nanomaterial Self-assembly. Twenty-four outstanding young investigators under the age of 45 were selected for their extraordinary contributions in nanomaterial self-assembly. They were selected through a competitive process by an award committee from Nano Research’s editorial board. Congratulations to all the 24 awardees in 2024! The 24 awardees include Dr. Jiarong Cai from Nankai University; Dr. Jie Chao from Nanjing University of Post & Telecommunications; ...

Read the release

Engineering14 Jul 2025

Macromolecular gene delivery systems: advancing non-viral therapeutics with synthetic and natural polymers

Gene therapy has emerged as a revolutionary approach to treating genetic disorders by directly addressing underlying genetic abnormalities. However, the success of gene therapy hinges on the efficient and safe delivery of therapeutic genes to target cells. Traditional viral vectors, despite their high transfection efficiency, face limitations such as immunogenicity, limited cargo capacity, and risks of insertional mutagenesis. Non-viral gene delivery systems, particularly those based on macromolecular carriers, have gained prominence as safer and more versatile alternatives. This review explores the advancements in synthetic and natural polymer-based gene delivery systems, highlighting ...

Read the release

Engineering14 Jul 2025

Pusan National University researchers unveil game-changing UV-fueled shape-shifting and shape-fixing smart materials

Magnetic micropillar arrays consist of tiny, vertical pin-shaped structures, arranged in a grid-like pattern. These micropillars can change their shape to a pre-programmed geometry when exposed to a magnetic field. They are made from magnetically responsive composites, comprising rubbery polymers like polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) embedded with magnetic particles. These composites can change their shape and recover repeatedly without any deterioration. Unfortunately, conventional magnetic micropillar arrays can only hold their changed shape temporarily while the magnetic field is being applied. Previous studies have explored various approaches to address this issue, including water-soluble ...

Read the release

Engineering14 Jul 2025

Researchers hit ‘fast forward’ on materials discovery with self-driving labs

Researchers have demonstrated a new technique that allows “self-driving laboratories” to collect at least 10 times more data than previous techniques at record speed. The advance – which is published in Nature Chemical Engineering – dramatically expedites materials discovery research, while slashing costs and environmental impact. Self-driving laboratories are robotic platforms that combine machine learning and automation with chemical and materials sciences to discover materials more quickly. The automated process allows machine-learning algorithms to make use of data from each experiment when predicting which experiment to conduct next to achieve ...

Read the release

Engineering11 Jul 2025

Pusan National University researchers identify key barriers hindering data-driven smart manufacturing adoption

Modern manufacturing operates in complex environments where traditional management approaches are no longer enough. This highlights the need for real-time, dynamic and self-adaptive management strategies. Manufacturing data analytics (MDA) has emerged as a powerful solution for transforming traditional manufacturing into smart manufacturing. Through MDA, manufacturers can identify hidden patterns in external and internal data, allowing them to better anticipate and respond to geopolitical risks and rapidly changing customer expectations and demands. However, despite these benefits, adoption of MDA remains surprisingly low, with ...

Read the release

Engineering10 Jul 2025

Drone herbicide applications prove effective for common reed control

WESTMINSTER, Colorado – 10 July 2025 – New research from the University of Waterloo shows that a single, targeted herbicide application from a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) can suppress common reed invasions with more than 99% effectiveness. This result is among many research findings recently published online in Invasive Plant Science and Management (IPSM), volume 18, 2025, by Cambridge University Press, a Weed Science Society of America (WSSA) research journal. “The 99% reduction in live common reed stems observed with RPAS-based herbicide application demonstrates its capacity to suppress invasive common reed effectively,” says Rebecca ...

Read the release

Engineering9 Jul 2025

Turning step-growth into chain-growth with click polymerization

A controlled/“living” click polymerization method developed by researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo and Nagoya University enables precise chain-growth of AB-type monomers—traditionally limited to step-growth processes—by leveraging copper-catalyzed azide–alkyne cycloaddition. The approach achieves well-defined polymers with narrow dispersity and enables the bidirectional synthesis of ABA-type block copolymers, offering a powerful new strategy for constructing functional macromolecular architectures from a wide range of monomers. Traditional polyaddition reactions involving AB-type monomers, which contain both azide and alkyne ...

Read the release

Engineering7 Jul 2025

Findings of study on how illegally manufactured fentanyl enters U.S. contradict common assumptions, undermining efforts to control supply

Illegally manufactured fentanyl kills a significant number of people in the United States and Canada every year. Since the emergence of modern heroin markets in the late 1960s, controlling supply has been associated with important reductions in opioid use and harms in several cases worldwide. But these efforts depend on understanding the dominant drug-trafficking routes. In a new analysis, researchers developed an index to compare U.S. counties’ proportion of large seizures against their proportion of the national population. Their findings counter ...

Read the release

Engineering7 Jul 2025

Rice engineering student honored for research to reduce surgical complications

Chihtong “Lily” Lee never set out to reinvent surgical tools, but her curiosity, precision and creativity led her to do just that. The 2025 Rice University graduate recently earned second place in the undergraduate category at the ASME SB3C Summer Bioengineering Conference, a competition hosted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Selected as one of the top presentations out of more than 200 submissions, Lee was invited to attend the national conference in New Mexico, where she stood out for her work on improving surgical ...

Read the release

Engineering7 Jul 2025

In situ polymerization in COF boosts li‐ion conduction in solid polymer electrolytes for li metal batteries: A new approach to enhance ion transport efficiecyn

In the quest for more efficient and sustainable energy storage solutions, researchers are constantly exploring innovative ways to enhance the performance of solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) for lithium metal batteries (LMBs). A recent article published in Nano-Micro Letters, authored by Professor Xingping Zhou and Professor Zhigang Xue from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, presents a groundbreaking approach to improving lithium-ion conduction in SPEs through in situ polymerization within a covalent organic framework (COF). Why This Research Matters Enhanced Ion Transport Efficiency: Traditional SPEs often suffer from low ion transport ...

Read the release

Engineering4 Jul 2025

Drones reveal extreme coral mortality after bleaching

New research has revealed alarming coral mortality rates of 92 per cent after last year’s bleaching event at Lizard Island on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef, marking one of the highest coral mortality rates ever documented globally. The team assessed the impact of the Fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event, declared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in April 2024, which caused extensive bleaching and mortality across the reef system. Lead author Dr Vincent Raoult from Griffith University’s School of Environment, ...

Read the release

Engineering2 Jul 2025

RT-EZ: A golden gate assembly toolkit for streamlined genetic engineering of rhodotorula toruloides

For economic and sustainable biomanufacturing, the oleaginous yeast Rhodotorula toruloides has emerged as a promising platform for producing biofuels and other valuable chemicals. However, its genetic manipulation has been limited by its high GC content and the lack of a replicating plasmid, necessitating gene integration. To address these challenges, researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI), a Department of Energy-funded Bioenergy Research Center, developed the RT-EZ toolkit ...

Read the release

Engineering2 Jul 2025

This spongy material and the sun’s power remove salt from seawater

Most of Earth’s water is in the oceans and too salty to drink. Desalination plants can make seawater drinkable, but they require large amounts of energy. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Energy Letters have developed a sponge-like material with long, microscopic air pockets that uses sunlight and a simple plastic cover to turn saltwater into freshwater. A proof-of-concept test outdoors successfully produced potable water in natural sunlight in a step toward low-energy, sustainable desalination. This isn’t the first time scientists have created spongy materials that use sunlight as ...

Read the release

Engineering1 Jul 2025

Frequency-engineered MXene supercapacitors enable efficient pulse charging in TENG–SC hybrid systems

A team of researchers from Yonsei University and Pohang University of Science and Technology, led by Professors Sang-Young Lee, Sang-Woo Kim, and Changshin Jo, has unveiled a groundbreaking strategy to overcome the long-standing challenge of efficient energy storage in triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) systems. Published in Nano-Micro Letters, this work introduces a system-level solution that leverages frequency modulation to significantly enhance the compatibility and charging efficiency between TENGs and supercapacitors ...

Read the release

Engineering30 Jun 2025

Breakthrough resins speed up 3D printing with built-in material control

Inspired by how nature blends toughness and flexibility, such as the rigid structure of bone surrounded by pliable cartilage, all with elegant and precise geometric properties, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a fast, precise new 3D printing method that seamlessly merges soft and hard properties into a single object using different colors of light. This advance could pave the way for next-generation prosthetics, flexible medical devices and stretchable electronics that move naturally with the body, much like a human joint or ligament. The process is described in a paper out today in Nature Materials. “What really motivated ...

Read the release

Engineering27 Jun 2025

Building breast tissue in the lab to better understand lactation

Human breast milk is uniquely adapted to meet an infant’s nutritional needs. Surprisingly, we still know very little about how milk is even made in the breast. A team of ETH Zurich researchers led by Marcy Zenobi-Wong, Professor of Tissue Engineering and Biofabrication, want to change that. In the lab, Zenobi-Wong and her team developed tiny replicas of lactating breast tissue. This involved isolating cells from human breast milk that are naturally found in milk. Some of the cells from lactating breast tissue and the so-called lactocytes – the cells in breast tissue that produce milk – end up in ...

Read the release

Engineering26 Jun 2025

From hydration layers to nanoarchitectures: Water’s pivotal role in peptide organization on 2D nanomaterials

Researchers at the Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI), Kanazawa University, report in Small, a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering nanotechnology, published by Wiley-WCH, Germany, how short peptides self-assemble linearly on atomically-thick solid surfaces, such as graphite and MoS2. The research addresses a longstanding challenge in materials science: understanding the complex, sequence-specific interactions between peptides and solid substrates, and the critical role of local hydration ...

Read the release

Engineering20 Jun 2025

Interfacial polymer cross-linking strategy enables ultra-thin polymeric membranes for fast and selective ion transport

Polymeric membranes are widely used in separation technologies due to their low cost and easily scalable fabrication. However, unlike inorganic nanoporous materials such as metal-organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks, which feature periodic and ordered channels, polymeric membranes produced through traditional methods—such as phase separation—typically have irregular and disordered pore structures. This structural limitation makes it difficult to accurately separate ions or molecules ...

Read the release

Engineering13 Jun 2025

Bodybuilding in ancient times: How the sea anemone got its back

A new study from the University of Vienna reveals that sea anemones use a molecular mechanism known from bilaterian animals to form their back-to-belly body axis. This mechanism ("BMP shuttling") enables cells to organize themselves during development by interpreting signaling gradients. The findings, published in Science Advances, suggest that this system evolved much earlier than previously assumed and was already present in the common ancestor of cnidarians and bilaterians. Most animals exhibit bilateral symmetry—a body plan with a head and tail, a back and belly, and left and right ...

Read the release

Engineering13 Jun 2025

Researchers develop a rapid method for building vascular organoids

Blood vessels are essential to nearly all tissues, delivering nutrients and oxygen, regulating hemostasis, and modulating inflammation. Recreating functional vascular networks is foundational to both basic and translational vascular biology, however current methods to make blood vessels from stem cells are often slow, inefficient, or lack the complexity needed for therapy. In this study, researchers developed a fast and defined method to build vascular organoids—3D microvascular networks—from human stem cells. By ...

Read the release

Engineering12 Jun 2025

Capturing the fleeting transformation of perovskite nanomaterials under light

A team at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics (CMSD) — led by Director CHO Minhaeng (Professor of Chemistry, Korea University) and Professor YOON Tai Hyun (Department of Physics, Korea University) — has developed a powerful new spectroscopic technique that enables real-time tracking of how perovskite nanomaterials change under light. The technique, called asynchronous and interferometric transient absorption spectroscopy (AI-TA), provides ultrafast measurements of excited-state dynamics and structural transformations in light-responsive materials. It overcomes major limitations ...

Read the release

Engineering11 Jun 2025

Global mercury levels in rivers have doubled since Industrial Revolution

Mercury levels in the world's rivers have more than doubled since the pre-industrial era, according to new research from Tulane University that establishes the first known global baseline for riverine mercury pollution. The study, published in Science Advances, developed a process-based model to simulate mercury transport in rivers and found that global rivers carried approximately 390 metric tons of mercury to oceans annually before 1850. Today, that figure has jumped to about 1,000 metric tons per year. Primary drivers of the increase ...

Read the release