Lehigh University professor Israel E. Wachs elected to National Academy of Engineering
Grant and Award Announcement
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 10-May-2026 08:15 ET (10-May-2026 12:15 GMT/UTC)
An international research collaboration co-led by UCLA has developed a nickel-iron battery, reviving a chemistry favored by Thomas Edison.
In the study, the team grew extremely tiny clusters of metal using proteins, then embedded them in an ultrathin carbon-based conductor to make electrodes.
The resulting battery charged in seconds and kept working after more than 12,000 cycles of draining and recharging, suggesting a potential application in storing renewable energy.
Building on their groundbreaking 2018 research into how some of the body’s cells, such as neurons and cardiac tissue, communicate via ions that flow through cellular channels, chemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst demonstrated a “leakiness” to a particularly mysterious type of channel, known as a “big potassium,” or BK channel. This leakiness is key to further study the body’s electrical infrastructure, which, when it goes haywire, can result in maladies like epilepsy and hypertension.
A study conducted by the Laboratory of Functional and Evolutionary Morphology at the University of Liège (BE) reveals the unexpected importance of acoustic communication in the evolution of boxfishes. This discovery offers new perspectives on the role of acoustic communication in the evolutionary history of numerous fish groups.
In early 2025, the party-loving city of New Orleans, Louisiana, hosted two major events within the span of a month: Super Bowl LIX and Mardi Gras. And, as with many major events, it appears there was an increase in recreational drug use during this time. Researchers publishing in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters show how monitoring wastewater revealed an increase in the use of relatively new dangerous synthetic opioids during these two events.
Researchers have developed a Unity-based Virtual Reality (VR) system for the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) experiment. This system enables immersive visualization of complex detector geometry and events information, thereby refining simulations and enhancing physics analysis.