While the majority of Midwestern farmers rotate corn and soybeans, commodity prices and corn yield advantages compel some to plant corn year after year. Although research on the benefits of corn-soybean rotation goes back decades, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign scientists are addressing holistic questions about crop yield, environmental impacts, and economic returns under various crop rotation scenarios. 

SAN ANTONIO — June 23, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has developed new methods for evaluating the performance and efficiency of fuel cell technology in hydrogen-powered vehicles without the need for test tracks or dynamometers.

Sandia National Laboratories and Central New Mexico Community College are partnering to create a training program for quantum technicians. 

Researchers at Rice and collaborators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Technology, Sydney report the first demonstration of low noise, room-temperature quantum emitters in h-BN made through a scalable growth technique.

If you’ve seen an owl fly, you probably didn’t hear a thing. That’s because their skin and feathers dampen sound by absorbing high- and low-frequency flight noise. Inspired by this natural soundproofing, researchers publishing in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces developed a two-layer aerogel that mimics the structures inside owl feathers and skin to mitigate sound pollution. This new material could be used in cars and manufacturing facilities to reduce traffic and industrial noise.

Primates, birds, and elephants are all known to make tools, but examples of tool use among marine animals are much more limited. Reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on June 23, a team of whale experts has found widespread tool manufacture and usage in an endangered population of resident killer whales living in the Salish Sea—part of the Pacific Ocean between British Columbia and Washington. The whales fashion tools from kelp and use them for grooming purposes.