Research published in JMIR Aging challenges tech stereotypes, showing that custom-built tablet food records are highly feasible and usable for older adults undergoing inpatient rehabilitation.

That is the idea behind accelerated carbonation. Crushed recycled concrete can be exposed to CO₂-rich gas, allowing carbon dioxide to react with the old cement paste and become locked into stable mineral compounds. In principle, this could help reduce the environmental impact of construction while giving demolition waste a second life.

The challenge is that concrete does not behave like a simple sponge for CO₂. Inside the material, the reaction depends on a fragile balance between gas, water, pores and minerals. If the pores are too dry, carbonation slows. If they contain too much water, CO₂ struggles to move through them.

At the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), researchers used neutron imaging on NeXT to follow water inside cement paste during carbonation, while X-rays tracked structural changes and cracking. This real-time view showed that carbonation actively reshapes the material as it progresses: it releases water, changes the pore network, slows CO₂ transport and creates cracks that later partly close.

The result is a clearer picture of what controls CO₂ storage in recycled concrete. This is an important step toward designing better carbonation treatments for recycled concrete and turning a major waste problem into a more circular route for lower-carbon construction.

Batteries are part of everyday life, powering everything from phones and laptops to electric cars. Most rechargeable batteries use a liquid to help lithium ions move during charging and discharging. But this liquid can create safety issues and limit how far battery performance can improve.

Solid-state batteries replace the liquid with a solid material. They could lead to safer, more compact and more powerful batteries. But making them work reliably remains a challenge. Unlike in a liquid, lithium ions must move through solid materials and if this movement is uneven, some parts of the battery may charge faster than others, reducing performance.

For the first time, a team at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and its partners have watched the lithium movement in real time using neutron diffraction, the only technique sensitive enough to track lithium deep inside a thick, working battery.

Their results revealed unexpected structural complexity in the electrode, showing that lithium movement inside the battery was not as uniform as expected. Understanding this hidden behaviour could point the way toward smarter battery designs.

A review team led by researchers at Tsinghua University has established a unified kinetic framework for electrochemiluminescence (ECL). By deconstructing the ECL cascade into electron transfer, chemical reaction, and exciton emission modules, the study offers a roadmap for overcoming intrinsic efficiency bottlenecks. This approach enables next-generation applications ranging from super-resolution imaging to dynamic information encryption.

The defect-rich Zn₂SnO_4-x/SnO_2-x heterostructure was designed as a bi-functional material for both sulfur cathode and lithium anode to regulate its electronic structure, accelerate the charge transfer and create more anchor sites for polysulfides, which could concurrently expedite sulfur conversion reactions and inhibit lithium dendrite growth.

Producing clean fuels from water using electricity or sunlight hinges on how efficiently catalysts can drive the oxygen evolution reaction, yet scientists have struggled to see where and how this reaction actually happens on a material’s surface. In a new study, researchers have introduced a spatially, temporally, and chemically multi-resolved in situ imaging technique that makes these hidden processes visible in real time, revealing how atomic defects and charge carriers control catalytic behavior in two-dimensional semiconductors. By directly comparing reactions under dark and illuminated conditions, the work explains why some defects boost electrocatalysis while others preferentially enhance photoelectrocatalysis, offering practical guidance for designing more effective catalysts for solar energy conversion.