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. 

Researchers have developed a method to enhance ultra-thin magnets, making them more robust for future electronics and quantum computing.

By combining these magnets with topological insulators, they improved the strength of the magnetic ordering, enabling operation at higher temperatures.

SAN ANTONIO — June 23, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) have evaluated a promising approach to improve long-term carbon storage in depleted oil and gas reservoirs. The team proposes using foam-entrapped supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO₂) to prevent stored and captured carbon from moving back to the surface. The project is supported by the Energize program, a joint effort between SwRI and UT Austin to enhance scientific collaboration between the two institutions.

Endogenous AICAR (Acadesine) demonstrates significant therapeutic potential as a phase III clinical agent for the treatment of adverse cardiovascular reactions to coronary artery bypass grafting and as a phase I/II clinical agent for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. However, its biosynthetic mechanism remains poorly defined. Previous study demonstrated that AICAR was significantly enriched in the Fusarium solani mutant veA^OE14, which overexpressed the global regulator VeA. In May 2025, the research team led by Professor Jichuan Kang from the Engineering and Research Center for Southwest Biopharmaceutical Resource of National Education Ministry of China, Guizhou University, published a research paper titled “MtfA, a C2H2 transcriptional regulator, negatively regulates PRPS2-mediated biosynthesis of the adenosine analogue Acadesine in Fusarium solani” in the journal Mycology.

This study elucidated, at the molecular level, the regulatory mechanism by which VeA overexpression enhances AICAR production in Fusarium solani. The team established a three-tier regulatory network model (VeA-MtfA-PRPS2) (Figure 1), laying an important foundation for the engineering of filamentous fungal strains for AICAR biosynthesis.