As an alternative to single-use plastic wrap and paper cup coatings, researchers in ACS’ Langmuir report a way to waterproof materials using edible fungus. Along with fibers made from wood, the fungus produced a layer that blocks water, oil and grease absorption. In a proof-of-concept study, the impervious film grew on common materials such as paper, denim, polyester felt and thin wood, revealing its potential to replace plastic coatings with sustainable, natural materials.

Resurrected by a team of Japanese physicists, a long-dismissed knot idea from the 1800s now offers clues to one of physics’ biggest unsolved mysteries, with help from ghostly particles, writhing relics of the primordial universe, and phantomlike barrier crossings.

Unless you’ve owned reptiles, you might not know that many of them “pee” crystals. Researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society investigated the solid urine of more than 20 reptile species and found spheres of uric acid in all of them. This work reveals how reptiles uniquely package up and eliminate crystalline waste, which could inform future treatments for human conditions that also involve uric acid crystals: kidney stones and gout.

Membrane reactors can address the limitations of conventional reactors for CO₂ conversion reactions by selectively removing H₂O molecules. However, the performance of zeolite-based membranes degrades at high temperatures and low H₂O concentrations, limiting practical applicability. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a novel silsesquioxane framework containing ionic liquid-modified zeolite membranes that demonstrate enhanced H₂O permselectivity even at dilute H₂O concentrations and high temperatures, paving the way for their application in membrane reactors.

Renewable energy is today the cheapest source of electricity available. In order to meet the goals agreed under the Paris Agreement, the share of renewables must be expanded to 100 per cent by the 2030s. However, this expansion comes with an increase in land-use, leading to rising public opposition. How can citizens’ preferences inform the planning of energy systems? This question was addressed by a team of researchers from ETH Zurich, the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences. The researchers developed an approach that enables the evaluation of energy plans not only in terms of technical and economic aspects, but also citizen preferences. 

As far as particles of light are concerned, the collective is more important than the individual. When they get to decide between two states, they will favor the one that many of their fellow particles have already adopted. However, this collectivist tendency does not kick in until enough photons have assembled in the same place. These findings, revealed by University of Bonn physicists in a recent study, could aid the development of ultra-powerful laser sources, among other things. They have now been published in the journal “Physical Review Letters.” 

Researchers discovered a previously unknown solar radio pattern — periodic beaded stripes — using the Chashan Broadband Solar Radio Spectrometer during a 2024 flare. These narrow, drifting radio bands, dotted with rhythmic “beads”, reveal rapid plasma processes in the Sun’s corona. The team attributes their formation to the double plasma resonance effect, modulated by magnetohydrodynamic waves. Observations suggest a weak magnetic field (~1 G) above the flaring loops in an active solar region.