Four faculty members at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have been elected 2025 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the most prestigious honors a scientist can receive. The honor recognizes efforts across disciplines — including research, teaching and technology as well as leadership in academia and industry. In recognition of their extraordinary achievements, AAAS Fellows are elected to a lifetime appointment by their peers on the AAAS Council.

A new study reveals that seasonal freeze–thaw cycles can dramatically improve the ability of engineered biochar to trap toxic arsenic in contaminated soils, offering a promising strategy for safer agriculture and environmental remediation.

A new study reveals that advanced biochar-based fertilizers, especially those enhanced at the nanoscale, can significantly improve rice growth while reducing the uptake of toxic metals such as cadmium and arsenic. The findings offer a promising strategy to address the dual challenge of low fertilizer efficiency and food safety risks in contaminated agricultural soils.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the preeminent scientific institution in the United States, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals, has elected four researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst to its class of 2025 Fellows — a distinguished lifetime honor within the scientific community.

At the University of Missouri, research moves with purpose. Across campus, faculty, staff and students are digging into the kinds of challenges that shape daily life — from public health and education to agriculture, technology and community well‑being. Their work advances what we know and creates practical solutions that help people in Missouri and beyond. Each new finding adds momentum to a long-standing tradition of curiosity, collaboration and service that defines our mission. In recognition of those contributions, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has named three Mizzou researchers 2025 AAAS Fellows.

Rivers do not just move water; they act as nature's hard drives, saving a permanent record of what happens on the surface. When toxic chemicals settle into the mud at the riverbed, they create a chronological diary of human activity. Recently, a detailed investigation published in Carbon Research has opened up one of these geological diaries in Mongolia’s Orkhon River Basin, revealing exactly how economic booms and traffic jams translate into chemical fallout.

The detective work was spearheaded by corresponding author Jing Chen from Beijing Normal University. Drawing on the analytical power of the State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control and the Center for Atmospheric Environmental Studies, Chen's team extracted sediment cores to trace the history of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)—a notoriously stubborn class of toxic pollutants created by burning fuel and organic matter.

A new strategy for the efficient conversion of hemicellulose to furfural through a microwave-coupled multi-stage tandem process was proposed by the research team led by Academician Jiang Jianchun from the Institute of Chemical Industry of Forest Products, Chinese Academy of Forestry.