Africa’s largest monkey, the mandrill, Mandrillus sphinx, is being forced out of its home within a national park due to hunting pressure, new research has revealed.

Fine chemicals are part of daily life, serving as dyes, fragrances, and food additives. However, their production harms the climate and environment due to toxic chemical precursors. Since 2023, researchers in the ETOS Future Cluster, jointly led by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), have been working to replace conventional production processes with electrochemical processes that use renewable electricity. Following a successful initial phase, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) funds the cluster for an additional three years, providing EUR 12 million.

That the universe is expanding has been known for almost a hundred years now, but how fast? The exact rate of that expansion remains hotly debated, even challenging the standard model of cosmology. A research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) and the Max Planck Institutes MPA and MPE has now imaged and modelled an exceptionally rare supernova that could provide a new, independent way to measure how fast the universe is expanding.

New observations of Ganymede reveal a striking similarity between the auroras on the largest moon in the solar system and those on Earth. The international team of astrophysicists, led by researchers from the University of Liège, has produced new results indicating that, despite different conditions, the fundamental physical processes that generate auroras are common to different celestial bodies, and not just planets.

Chinese researchers have developed China's first compact high-temperature superconducting magnetoplasmadynamic thruster, achieving a revolutionary reduction in power consumption from 285 kW to under 1 kW and weight from 220 kg to 60 kg. Published in National Science Review, the breakthrough utilizes YBCO superconducting material operating at liquid nitrogen temperatures (-196°C) to replace traditional copper coils. The thruster demonstrates an exceptional specific impulse of 3,265 seconds at 12 kW input power—more than ten times higher than conventional chemical propulsion. The team also established a comprehensive analytical magnetohydrodynamic model that accurately predicts performance parameters. This advancement solves the critical propulsion bottleneck for small satellites, enabling lightweight, cost-effective spacecraft with dramatically reduced fuel requirements for deep space missions.