Researchers and students from Okayama University of Science (OUS) and Mapúa University (MU) in the Philippines held their third joint colloquium, the “International Seminar on Sustainable Materials, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering,” as the opening event of MU’s International Month. More than 400 participants joined the hybrid event, which featured invited talks, student presentations, and award-winning posters, as well as campus visits, museum tours, and a student-led English–Japanese Café. The program is deepening research collaboration and inspiring future graduate study at OUS, marking a new phase of academic exchange between the two universities.

A team led by Pei-Yi Wu and Sheng-Tong Sun at Donghua University reported a strong hydrogel fiber material with water-induced adhesion properties that resolves the structural contradiction of simultaneously achieving mechanical strength and self-adhesion. The fiber exhibits reversible humidity-responsive characteristics, maintaining high strength in a dry state and rapidly transforming into a highly adhesive state upon contact with water. This water-activated self-adhesive behavior is completely reversible, providing new insights for the design of high-performance adhesive materials in fields such as intelligent capture and micro-soft robots. The article was was recently published as an open access research article in CCS Chemistry, the flagship journal of the Chinese Chemical Society.

In an innovative twist to sustainable agriculture, a new study reveals how sugarcane waste can be transformed into biochar—a powerful soil amendment that enhances soil quality. This research not only highlights a green approach to waste management but also provides a significant boost to soil health, offering a win-win for both the environment and farming practices.

Iron based nanoparticles are everywhere in soils, rivers, wetlands, and groundwater. Although invisible to the naked eye, these tiny particles help regulate how nutrients and contaminants move through nature. A new review by an international research team provides the most comprehensive explanation to date of why iron nanoparticles remain stable in some environments and rapidly transform or clump together in others. Their findings offer scientific insights that can improve strategies for managing water quality, soil remediation, and contaminant transport.

Chemists have long been fascinated and frustrated by saxitoxin: a molecule that causes temporary paralysis by blocking the electrical signals that nerve cells (neurons) use to activate muscle, and which accumulates in shellfish like clams, oysters and scallops. Although the way saxitoxin works has inspired interest in developing new anesthetics, extracting it from natural sources is neither scalable nor practical. Since its discovery, the molecule has defied practical laboratory synthesis, slowing the effort to create long-acting, highly targeted pain therapies inspired by its mechanism. Now, scientists at Scripps Research, in collaboration with Merck, report a streamlined approach to synthesize saxitoxin and related molecules (known as analogs) in the lab.

In a paper recently published by npj 2D Materials and Applications, researchers from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) have created a high-throughput computational strategy, creating a new, data-driven approach to finding ideal 2D materials and substrates. 

We experimentally demonstrate encrypted image transmission over 40 km of optical fiber with high decryption fidelity and achieve a 10 Gbit/s optical encryption rate using a lithium niobate photonic chip. This represents the first implementation of public-key encryption at the physical optical layer.