Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: materials

A ‘consortium’ of bacteria cooperates to eat phthalate plasticizers that single microbes can’t stomach

Plastic trash has reached the world’s most remote locations, from the bottom of the Mariana Trench to the summit of Everest. Hundreds of plastic-eating microbes that could help us clean up have been discovered over the past quarter of a century, but there is a long way to go before they can be put to work in natural environments: Microbial digestion of plastic is still slow, requires high temperatures, and only proceeds efficiently in bioreactors. Moreover, most plastic-eating microbes discovered so far can only digest a single kind of plastic.

One solution would be to combine different microbes to tackle plastic pollution as a team. This allows them to share tasks, compensate for each other’s weaknesses, and continue working even when environmental conditions change.

Now, scientists in Germany have discovered such a synergistic “consortium” of plastic-eating bacteria, which can eat phthalate esters (PAEs)—plasticizers that are often found in building materials, food packages, and personal care products, but have been implicated in hormonal, metabolic, and developmental disorders and some cancers. The results are published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

ZZU team synthesizes bulk hexagonal diamond

Findings of ZZU team are published online in the journal Nature. [Photo/zzu.edu.cn]

A research team from Zhengzhou University (ZZU) has successfully synthesized bulk pure-phase hexagonal diamond and precisely resolved its crystal structure, revealing a novel phase transition mechanism. The findings were published online in the journal Nature on March 5, 2026, under the title “Bulk hexagonal diamond”

Diamond, renowned for its exceptional hardness, thermal conductivity, and wide bandgap, typically adopts a cubic structure. However, the existence of a hexagonal polymorph was first predicted theoretically in 1962 and later discovered in meteorites in 1967. Yet natural samples exist only as nanoscale grains embedded in meteorites, making isolation and property measurement extremely challenging. Moreover, the high formation energy barrier of hexagonal diamond under laboratory conditions has long hindered its synthesis, fueling debate over whether it can exist as a stable bulk material.

Thermoelectric effect in MoS2/MoSe2 heterostructures: Experimental evidence and theoretical aspects

Efficient energy harvesting for applications such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators and heat-recovery systems require novel thermoelectric materials with exceptional performance. This work demonstrates thermoelectric capabilities of n-type MoS2/MoSe2 heterojunctions fabricated by scalable radiofrequency sputtering. These heterostructures demonstrated an outstanding experimental Seebeck coefficient of ~ − 1.1 mV K−1 (ΔT = 40 K), arising from thermally activated carriers with a low activation energy of 32 meV, and estimated thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) values of ~ 1.0. Furthermore, computational calculations within framework of Density Functional Theory corroborate experimental findings allowing to elucidate a crucial role of atomic-scale in determining anisotropic thermoelectric properties.

Researchers realize room-temperature two-dimensional multiferroic metal

Multiferroic metals are materials that exhibit both electric polarization and magnetic order in the same crystal—a state known as multiferroicity. Because these properties coexist, they can interact through magnetoelectric (ME) coupling, allowing electric fields to influence magnetism.

Unfortunately, bulk multiferroic materials face limitations, including relatively small spontaneous polarization, weak ME coupling coefficients, and limited operational stability under ambient conditions due to oxygen-vacancy-induced leakage currents, which restrict their practical applications.

Now, however, researchers from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with their collaborators from Zhejiang University, have realized electric-field control of magnetic states using a two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals material, while demonstrating intrinsic room-temperature (RT) multiferroicity with strong ME coupling.

Stress-induced nucleolar rejuvenation via chaperone-mediated segregation in a filamentous fungus

Audra M. Rogers, Martin J. Egan et al. @UArkansas demonstrate that heat stress triggers nucleolar remodeling in filamentous fungi, enabling segregation of damaged material and selective inheritance of a new nucleolar compartment. This reveals a chaperone-mediated quality control mechanism that preserves nuclear function in highly polarized, multinucleate cells.

Model for nucleolar remodeling, partitioning, and quality control following heat shock. Schematic illustration of nucleolar remodeling in M. oryzae during recovery from heat stress. Heat shock damages the existing nucleolus. (2–3) A new nucleolar bud emerges from the old (preexisting) nucleolus and expands through de novo synthesis. Partial nuclear envelope breakdown permits entry of the molecular chaperones such as Hsp104 and Hsp70. The old nucleolar compartment accumulates SUMO-modified material and selectively recruits Hsp70 and Hsp104, mediating the partitioning of old and new nucleolar material. The newly formed nucleolus disassembles at mitotic onset and is preferentially inherited by daughter nuclei, while the old nucleolus is extruded and diminishes.

Figure 5.

Palladium-Catalyzed Asymmetric Oxidative Amination of Internal α,β-Unsaturated Esters with Lewis Basic AminesClick to copy article linkArticle link copied!

Chiral amines are privileged chiral building blocks with extensive applications in pharmaceuticals, advanced materials, and asymmetric catalysis owing to their unique structural features and functional diversity. Although palladium-catalyzed asymmetric allylic C–H amination offers an efficient strategy for constructing these motifs, the simultaneous challenges of coordinating sterically hindered internal alkenes and suppressing catalyst deactivation by Lewis basic amines have severely limited the development of asymmetric oxidative amination systems. In this study, we disclose a novel ester, an unmodified native functional group-directed strategy that enables the palladium-catalyzed asymmetric oxidative allylic amination of internal α,β-unsaturated esters with basic amines. This protocol yields a diverse array of non-natural γ-amino acid derivatives with excellent yields and high enantioselectivity (93% to >99% e.e.). Comprehensive mechanistic investigations, incorporating controlled experiments and density functional theory calculations, elucidate the intricate reaction pathway. The synthetic utility is further demonstrated through various product derivatizations and the streamlined synthesis of bioactive compounds. This work establishes a general platform for accessing enantioenriched nitrogen-containing architectures from readily available alkenes and amines.

Watching quantum behavior in action: MagnetoARPES reveals time-reversal symmetry breaking in a kagome superconductor

Electron movement and structures described in quantum physics allow researchers to better understand how and why materials like superconductors behave as they do. Rice University researchers Jianwei Huang and Ming Yi have developed a new capability, magnetoARPES, building on angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) that allows researchers to study quantum behaviors they have been unable to resolve using ARPES alone. The work has been published in Nature Physics.

MagnetoARPES adds a tunable magnetic field, external to the sample, to ARPES. This allows researchers to probe the full electronic response to a magnetic field, giving insights into why certain collective behaviors of electrons develop.

Magnetic fields have, historically, been excluded from ARPES experiments, but over the course of a few years of experimentation and simulations, Yi’s team found a viable way to incorporate this capability into the ARPES sample environment.

/* */