In Olympic weightlifting, athletes must account for the barbell’s “whip,” which is the bouncy bendiness of a bar under dynamic movements and can be affected by the steel alloy the barbell is made of, its coating, and how it connects to its sleeve. Lifters use the whip to assist the upward motion of the bar by timing the bounciness. Joshua Langlois will present work studying these Olympic barbell vibrations as part of the 190th ASA Meeting.

Our Solar System is currently passing through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a region of highly diluted gas and dust between the stars. On its path, Earth continuously accumulates iron-60, a rare radioactive isotope of iron produced in stellar explosions. This has now been confirmed by an international research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) through the analysis of Antarctic ice tens of thousands of years old. From the steady but time-varying influx, the researchers conclude that the radioactive isotope has been stored within the cloud since a long-past stellar explosion. The results have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters (DOI:10.1103/nxjq-jwgp).

MIT researchers developed a way to precisely move columns of individual atoms within a material, to produce exotic quantum properties. The approach works in minutes at room temperature, and could aid the development of stable quantum devices.

Global efforts to combat climate change often focus on what we can see: forests, renewable energy, and surface-level farming practices. A new analysis argues that one of the most significant battlegrounds in carbon sequestration lies hidden deep underground. A comprehensive review led by Professor Nanthi Bolan at The University of Western Australia consolidates global knowledge on deep soil carbon, the massive carbon reserve stored more than 30 centimeters below the surface, which has long been excluded from standard carbon accounting.

The paper provides a critical assessment of this enormous carbon sink, noting that deep soil layers (below 30 cm) contain over 850 petagrams of carbon worldwide. This accounts for approximately 50-60% of the total carbon stored in the top meter of soil. While surface soil carbon is closely tied to vegetation and is quick to respond to management changes, deep carbon dynamics are governed by different, more permanent factors.

Hormones influence the behavior of cells in the brain, including areas of the brain that process hearing, and scientists have begun recognizing differences between the sexes and their effects on health outcomes. In simple hearing tests, men show an earlier, more gradual decline, while women experience regular fluctuations each month during menstruation and sharp changes at menopause. Anhelina Bilokon from the University of Maryland will present work related to sex-dependent auditory variability as part of the 190th ASA Meeting.

Hydrogen purification is a critical challenge for clean energy. The Sun and Kang’s group have now developed a novel composite membrane using a "mortar-and-brick" strategy. This membrane combines a metal-organic framework (MOF) as the "bricks" with a hydrogen-bonded organic framework (HOF) as the "mortar," creating an all-nanoporous hierarchical structure. Hetero-MOF facilitates the hetero-nucleation, and the systematic rule of HOF’s crystal growth interfered by hetero-phase is established: suppressing the homo-nucleation, balancing nucleation driving force with molecular attachment rates, and optimizing the nutrients supplement and demand. The optimized membrane shows a 562% increase in hydrogen permeance and 241% improve in hydrogen/methane selectivity compared to a pure HOF membrane, offering a new blueprint for next-generation gas separation materials that combine easy processing with high performance.

Harnessing solar energy to produce usable power is not new, but the technology is constantly evolving and improving. A major development in recent times is the use of perovskite solar cells (PSCs), which are low-weight, highly efficient, flexible solar cells using perovskite (typically a metal-halide material with a specialized structure) crystal structures to absorb light. Though a promising concept, improvements are necessary for PSCs to be able to reach their full potential. Researchers approach these improvements by introducing an additive, 1H-indole-3-carbohydrazide (1H-CBH) to effectively alleviate the main obstacle of PSCs, which are defects leading to loss of energy and efficiency in the cell.

Harvesting distributed wind energy in complex environments remains a major challenge. Researchers from China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Tsinghua University, and the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems proposed a vortex-induced vibration-based triboelectric nanogenerator (VIV-TENG). The device can collect wind energy from all directions and operate efficiently under low wind speeds and high humidity. At 3.5 m/s, it delivers an average output power of 49.5 μW, demonstrating its potential for powering small electronic devices and enabling self-powered systems in urban environments.