In the realm of smart manufacturing and digital engineering, a new technology named Data-Model Fusion (DMF) is gaining traction. A review paper in Engineering details how DMF integrates model-based and data-driven methods, addresses their limitations, and finds applications across the product lifecycle. It also explores DMF’s future directions, showing its potential to reshape industrial processes.

Florida’s Lake Okeechobee is essential for water management but faces harmful algal blooms, which thrive in warm, nutrient-rich waters.  Daily vertical migration enables them to survive in turbid conditions. A new study using a physical-biogeochemical model reveals that cyanobacteria move toward the surface for sunlight in the morning, boosting growth, and are redistributed by wind and mixing at night. This daily migration, combined with temperature and wind patterns, influences bloom development, offering insights to better monitor and manage harmful algal blooms.

If you haven’t heard of a tardigrade before, prepare to be wowed. These clumsy, eight-legged creatures, nicknamed water bears, are about half a millimeter long and can survive practically anything: freezing temperatures, near starvation, high pressure, radiation exposure, outer space and more. Researchers reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters took advantage of the tardigrade’s nearly indestructible nature and gave the critters tiny “tattoos” to test a microfabrication technique to build microscopic, biocompatible devices.

Conservators and museum technicians protect precious archaeological metal objects, such as tools and weapons, with clear coatings, leaving preserved and unobstructed views of these detailed treasures. However, researchers have reported in ACS Central Science that some of the resins used for these coatings react with iron-containing metals and can cause damage. The team developed a non-invasive fluorescence imaging strategy that reveals early signs of these damaging chemical reactions and confirmed its utility on ancient artifacts.