In a study published today in Stem Cell Reports, Shunsuke Yuri of the National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Japan and Ayako Isotani of the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, successfully generated rat-derived kidneys in mice using a technique known as interspecies blastocyst complementation. The researchers created mouse embryos genetically unable to form kidneys, leaving a developmental niche that could be filled by injected embryonic stem cells. When rat embryonic stem cells were introduced into these embryos, they contributed extensively to kidney formation, particularly to nephron progenitor cells and ureteric bud lineages, resulting in the generation of a rat cell-derived kidney.

As health-conscious consumers continue to seek lower alcohol content in their wine, scientists like Zachary Bean are working on ways to both meet this demand and make it better. Bean, a master’s student in the department of food science for the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas, was awarded an Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation scholarship to carry out his research on fermentation-based strategies that reduce alcohol in wines at Graz University of Technology.

 

In addition to finding ways to ferment grape juice without producing as much alcohol, Bean’s work also explores novel yeasts and methods to overproduce aromas to compensate for their eventual loss when reducing alcohol through grape juice dilution.

Pepper the friendly, humanoid robot both looks and behaves much like a human being. But is that enough?

A new robotic “gripper” designed to pick fruit could mean supermarket shoppers enjoy better quality produce as well as new options like pawpaws, according to West Virginia University researcher Anand Mishra.

A new study found that plants may reveal recent PFAS contamination linked to airborne deposition that can go undetected in soil analyses. Conducted in agricultural fields near the conflict zone in southern Israel, the research showed that potato leaves contained substantially higher concentrations of certain PFAS than the surrounding soils, suggesting direct exposure from the atmosphere rather than uptake through roots alone. While the study did not identify specific sources and found no clear relationship between soil PFAS concentrations and distance from the conflict zone, the findings raise the possibility that military-related activities, including the use of aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) and potentially explosives-related sources, may contribute to atmospheric PFAS deposition. The results suggest that vegetation can serve as a sensitive indicator of recent airborne contamination and complement traditional soil-based environmental monitoring.

Raman optical activity, long thought to require chiral molecules or magnetic order, has been demonstrated in an achiral, nonmagnetic crystal by researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo. The effect arises through ferroaxial order, a coordinated rotation of atoms within the lattice, and is detected using circularly polarized Raman spectroscopy. These findings show that optically inactive materials can also display chirality-like optical responses and expand the scope of optical techniques for discovering new materials.  

Researchers have developed a new magnetic memory material whose information can be rewritten using light instead of electric current. The advance could enable memory devices that are about 1,000 times faster and far more energy efficient, offering a potential path to reducing electricity use in AI systems, data centers and next-generation information infrastructure.