Every year, millions of tires end up in landfills, creating an environmental crisis with far-reaching consequences. In the United States alone, over 274 million tires were scrapped in 2021, with nearly a fifth of them being discarded into landfills. A study led by Dr. Aleksandr Zhukhovitskiy, an assistant professor in the department of chemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill, has pioneered a technique for breaking down this rubber waste and transforming it into valuable precursors for epoxy resins. This technique offers an innovative and sustainable alternative to traditional recycling methods while significantly reducing rubber waste in landfills.

University of Texas at Dallas developed a new theory to explain heat transfer on advanced surfaces, which they outline in an article published online March 13 in the physical science journal Newton.

The theory is critical to the researchers’ work to develop innovative surfaces for applications such as harvesting water from air without electricity.

Opioid use disorder is associated with more than 350,000 deaths annually worldwide. Guided by the need for an increased understanding of critical neurobiological features of addiction, researchers have now found a unique molecular signature and genes in the orbitofrontal cortex associated with heroin-seeking behavior. A preclinical rodent model implicated a gene called Shisa7 as the key predictor. A new study in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, provides valuable insights into the neurobiological mechanisms underlying heroin addiction and may have implications for the development of innovative strategies to combat the ongoing opioid epidemic.