PFAS, often called “forever chemicals,” are a growing global concern because they persist in water, are difficult to remove, and have been linked to health risks, including certain cancers. A new review by researchers from Hanyang University shows that the length of a PFAS molecule’s fluorinated carbon chain is a key predictor of its environmental behavior and treatment response. The study found that short-chain PFAS are generally more mobile and harder to remove, providing a practical framework for improving water treatment and contamination cleanup.

To address this limitation, research teams led by Prof. Kai Zhang (University of Göttingen) and Prof. Rongxin Su (Tianjin University) have developed an integrated salt-assisted assembly (iSAA) that couples ion crosslinking with organic–inorganic co-assembly to construct nanofibril–crystal (NF-C) composite films exhibiting vivid, tunable interference colors. The work has been recently published in Research.

A research team at the College of Science, National University of Defense Technology has proposed a compact way to generate and manipulate relativistic mid-infrared light using transversely magnetized plasma. Their studies demonstrated that a magnetized plasma can function as a relativistic waveplate, enabling both frequency conversion and polarization manipulation within a single laser-plasma interaction process. The advance points to a new class of plasma optical components capable of operating in regimes far beyond conventional optical devices.

The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS, President Dr. Lee Ho Seong) has developed an ultra-sensitive immunoassay-based analytical platform that can detect and quantify trace amounts of “Small Excised Damaged DNA (sedDNA)” fragments generated during cellular DNA repair. This technology enables highly sensitive detection with quantification down to the level of several thousand molecules, measuring up to 22 times more DNA fragments than conventional methods. It provides a new analytical foundation for comparing DNA repair capacity between individuals and studying cellular responses to anticancer drugs and carcinogenic agents.