A new soft actuator moves and stiffens like biological muscle. The muscles, or actuators, are constructed from low-cost, 3D-printed rubbers. Engineers integrated three actuators as ‘muscles’ into a human-sized robotic leg with 3D-printed rigid ‘bones’ and elastic ‘tendons’.

Daytime radiative cooling is an eco-friendly and passive cooling technology that operates without external energy input. Materials designed for this purpose are engineered to possess high reflectivity in the solar spectrum and high emissivity within the atmospheric transmission window. Unlike broadband-emissive daytime radiative cooling materials, spectrally selective daytime radiative cooling (SSDRC) materials exhibit predominant mid-infrared emission in the atmospheric transmission window. This selective mid-infrared emission suppresses thermal radiation absorption beyond the atmospheric transmission window range, thereby improving the net cooling power of daytime radiative cooling. This review elucidates the fundamental characteristics of SSDRC materials, including their molecular structures, micro- and nanostructures, optical properties, and thermodynamic principles. It also provides a comprehensive overview of the design and fabrication of SSDRC materials in three typical forms, i.e., fibrous materials, membranes, and particle coatings, highlighting their respective cooling mechanisms and performance. Furthermore, the practical applications of SSDRC in personal thermal management, outdoor building cooling, and energy harvesting are summarized. Finally, the challenges and prospects are discussed to guide researchers in advancing SSDRC materials.

Researchers have revived 80-year-old fungal pathogens from a museum collection and found that these pre-Green Revolution strains differ significantly from modern ones, revealing how decades of pesticide use and intensive farming have reshaped plant pathogens. By comparing the old and new fungi, the team uncovered critical insights into the evolution of fungicide resistance, environmental adaptation, and plant disease dynamics, paving the way for more sustainable, informed strategies in modern agriculture.

The University of Pittsburgh’s Tevis Jacobs and the University of Freiburg’s Lars Pastewka have teamed up with Saarland University’s Martin Müser and Jacobs’ graduate student Arushi Pradhan to conduct a worldwide challenge to increase awareness of how surface topography is measured and described. The results of their research are published in the article “The Surface-Topography Challenge: A multi-laboratory benchmark study to advance the characterization of topography” (DOI: 10.1007/s11249-025-02014-y) in Tribology Letters.

A Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts study shows that natural variation in Schizophyllum commune, coupled with glycerol or PEG crosslinking, produces films with specific strengths from 0.03–3 MPa·(m³/kg) and elongations up to 98 %, offering a genetic roadmap for sustainable materials.

A study in Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts presents yarn-free cellulose fibers extracted from wild paper-mulberry bast and functionalized with renewable suberin. The resulting textiles show 0.43 GPa tensile strength, broad-spectrum antibacterial activity and cradle-to-gate CO₂ emissions 90 % lower than PET, while 95 % of the coating can be recovered and reused.