With a new electrochemical synthesis via an electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR), achieving carbon-free ammonia production is closer to reality through work from Drs. Abdoulaye Djire and Perla Balbuena, chemical engineering professors at Texas A&M University, and graduate students David Kumar and Hao En Lai. A topic outlined in their recent paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society introduces NRR, which produces ammonia in a cleaner and simpler way by using renewable electricity.
The research branches off of the team’s previous work, where they looked further into enabling two-dimensional materials in renewable energy.
“The current process of making ammonia is energy intensive and emits a lot of carbon dioxide, so if you can make ammonia electrochemically, then you can avoid these two negative effects,” Djire said. “During the electrochemical NRR process, water provides the hydrogen atoms, which combine with nitrogen from the air to form ammonia, all powered by electricity.”
In recent years, membranes have found extensive applications, primarily in wastewater purification and food packaging. However, petroleum-based membranes can be detrimental to the environment. For this reason, extensive studies are being conducted to identify environmentally friendly substitutes for the materials used in membrane composition. Among these materials, polylactic acid (PLA) and poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) are two bio-sourced and biodegradable polymers that can be derived from lignocellulosic waste. These polymers also possess suitable characteristics, such as thermal resistance and mechanical strength, which make them potential candidates for replacing conventional plastics.
Researchers found that a bacterium from kimchi can bind and help expel nanoplastics from the body, showing promise as a probiotic approach to reducing plastic accumulation.
Is your houseplant thirsty? Are crops getting enough water? Is a forest at high risk of wildfire? Leaf health can answer all these questions, and researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed new technology to measure hydration levels with greater accuracy and without hurting the plant. The researchers developed an electronic tattoo for leaves that uses the hyperflexible and sustainable material graphene to track hydration levels. It sticks on the leaves without harming them, a major improvement over current methods that work only with dead or dried-out leaves or provide indirect measurements.
“Being able to directly measure and monitor the live leaf over time, at the point of photosynthesis, gives us more information to understand the health of our plant ecosystems, whether that’s an individual plant or an entire forest,” said Jean Anne Incorvia, associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and one of the leaders on the new research published recently in Nano Letters.
Researchers at the University of Seville’s Food Color and Quality Laboratory have studied the effects of different cooking methods used for tomatoes and carrots (in the oven, microwave or air fryer, among others) on the amount of carotenoids that are potentially available for absorption by the body following the digestion of these foods. According to the study, the bioavailability index varies significantly depending on how these foods are cooked. Carotenoids are compounds of great importance due to their positive health effects.
In the case of carrots, the bioavailability of total carotenoids increased ninefold when cooked in the oven. For tomatoes, the highest bioavailability values were obtained by cooking them in either an air fryer (190 °C for 10 minutes) or a conventional oven (180 °C for 20 minutes). There were no significant differences between the two methods. Although the increase in bioavailability was more modest (a 1.5-fold increase), it was also significant compared to raw tomatoes.
The researchers also highlight that the increases in the bioavailability of the vitamin A precursor carotenoids in tomatoes (α-carotene and β-carotene) ranged from 26 to 38 times and 46 to 71 times, respectively, compared with those in raw carrots. Cooking is, therefore, a sometimes-overlooked strategy for combating vitamin A deficiency, one of the world’s most serious nutritional problems.
Amebiasis is a parasitic disease caused by the microscopic protozoan Entamoeba histolytica. Infection occurs through the ingestion of cysts from contaminated water or food. Worldwide, approximately 50 million symptomatic cases are estimated annually, mainly in tropical and subtropical regions.
Fumagillin, a fungal natural product, has been studied for decades as a potential antiparasitic drug, but its more potent relative, ovalicin, was never developed. Now, a study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society reveals why: although ovalicin is highly active against amebiasis, liver enzymes rapidly break it down in the body. Researchers used a chem-bio hybrid approach to turn that insight into metabolically stable drug candidates that worked in animal models of amebiasis, including liver infection with abscess formation.
The research team, led by scientists from the Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences at Nagoya University, identified the liver cytochrome P450 enzymes responsible for ovalicin breakdown, with CYP 2B1 and CYP 2C6 emerging as the main drivers. Blocking these enzymes with a chemical inhibitor significantly prolonged ovalicin survival, providing strong evidence that rapid liver metabolism limits its effectiveness.
Soil is often perceived simply as “dirt,” but in reality, it is a dynamic, living system that acts as Earth’s natural sponge. Unfortunately, common agricultural practices—including deep plowing and the use of heavy machinery—can severely disrupt this natural system, according to a new study led by Dr. Shi Qibin from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with international partners.
The study, published in Science, shows that healthy soil contains a natural internal “plumbing” network of microscopic pores and channels that allow water to infiltrate deeply into the ground, where it becomes available to plant roots.
Frequent plowing or heavy tractor traffic not only disrupts soil structure but also reduces its ability to help crops withstand both flooding and drought.
A team from the Institute of Neurosciences of the University of Barcelona (UBneuro) has designed and validated in animal models an innovative compound with a pioneering mechanism of action for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Unlike current drugs, which mainly remove beta-amyloid plaques that accumulate in the brain, this new experimental drug reprogrammes the neuronal epigenome by correcting alterations in gene expression that contribute to the progression of the disease. The results of this study, published in Molecular Therapy, open the door to an epigenetic-based therapeutic strategy to fight Alzheimer’s disease.
“The compound FLAV-27 represents an innovative and promising approach to Alzheimer’s disease, with the potential to modify the disease process, as it acts not only on its symptoms or a single pathological biomarker, but directly on its underlying molecular mechanisms,” says Aina Bellver, a researcher at the UB Institute of Neurosciences (UBneuro) and first author of the paper.
The study was led by Christian Griñán and Mercè Pallàs, UBneuro researchers and Professors from the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences. Th work was performed with the participation of researchers from the CIBER Area for Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED), as well as the UB Institute of Biomedicine (IBUB), the Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety (INSA-UB), the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS) and other national and international institutions.
Humans excel at transmitting ideas, skills, and knowledge across generations, and at building on those competencies in a cumulative manner. James Rilling, Professor of Psychology at Emory University, explores how the transmission of our cumulative culture is assumed to depend on both language and mental perspective-taking, or theory of mind. If humans have specialized abilities in these domains, we must have neurobiological specializations to support them. Our research has used comparative primate neuroimaging to attempt to identify such specializations. The arcuate fasciculus is a white matter fiber tract that links Wernicke’s and Broca’s language areas. It is known to be involved in multiple, high level linguistic functions such as lexical semantics, complex syntax, and speech fluency. Using diffusion weighted imaging and tractography, we have demonstrated human specializations in the size and trajectory of the arcuate fasciculus that may partially explain human linguistic abilities. Theory of Mind depends on a set of cortical regions that belong to a neural network known as the default mode network that is functionally connected, highly active at rest, and deactivated by attention-demanding cognitive tasks. We and others have used functional neuroimaging to show that chimpanzees and other primates appear to have a default mode network that is similar to that of humans. However, the non-human primate default mode network seems to have weaker connectivity between certain key nodes, suggesting that these connections could play a role in human theory of mind specializations. Recorded on 02/27/2026. [3/2026] [Show ID: 41329]
Explore More Science & Technology on UCTV (https://www.uctv.tv/science) Science and technology continue to change our lives. University of California scientists are tackling the important questions like climate change, evolution, oceanography, neuroscience and the potential of stem cells.
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