The private Swiss NOMIS Foundation is investing €20 million to support research at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) in Klosterneuburg—a partnership that focuses on daring science. Starting in 2026, projects will be funded for five years that break new ground and therefore have the potential to deliver substantial leaps in our knowledge.

Project Mingde, a non-profit initiative by the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has been recognized for its Duling Educational and Cultural Centre (the Project) as the Architizer A+ Jury Winner in the “Concepts – Architecture + Community” category. Additionally, the project was shortlisted as a finalist in three other categories: “Concepts – Architecture + Localism,” “Concepts – Architecture + For Good” and “Built – Sustainable Cultural Building." This marks the second international accolade for the project, following its success in November 2024, when it won The Architecture MasterPrize under the category of Educational Buildings.

Modular Integrated Construction (MiC) is an innovative approach revolutionising the construction industry. To advance the sustainable development of MiC and align with the government’s strategic vision for high-quality development and the creation of "better houses", MiC Laboratory (MiCLab) of The University of Hong Kong (HKU) hosted the International Conference on Modular Integrated Construction: New Paradigm on 26 June 2025 at the Rayson Huang Theatre. The conference brought together over 400 local and international experts from government, industry, and academia to share groundbreaking advancements in MiC and exchange insights into innovative modular construction practices and knowledge.

Researchers in Japan have successfully generated lung cells similar to alveolar epithelial type 2 (AT2) cells from mouse embryonic fibroblasts without using stem cell technology. The AT2-like cells were generated in just 7 to 10 days—a significant reduction compared to the approximately one month typically required by conventional stem cell-based differentiation methods. This approach may pave the way for treating interstitial pneumonia and other serious respiratory diseases.

An Osaka Metropolitan University-led research team has developed an index for determining appropriate irradiation conditions for laser treatment and conducted an in-silico-supported meta-analysis that analyzed treatments within that index. 

Ship traffic in shallow areas, such as ports, can trigger large methane emissions by just moving through the water. The researchers in a study, led by Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, observed twenty times higher methane emissions in the shipping lane compared to nearby undisturbed areas. Despite the fact that methane is a greenhouse gas that is 27 times as powerful as carbon dioxide, these emissions are often overlooked with today's measurement methods.

"Our measurements show that ship passages trigger clear pulses of high methane fluxes from the water to the atmosphere. This is caused by pressure changes and mixing of the water mass. Even if the pulses are short, the total amount during a day is significant," says Amanda Nylund, researcher at Chalmers University of Technology and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, SMHI.

The ability to analyze gene expression at the single-cell level — known as single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) — has transformed life sciences, driving discoveries across immunology, oncology, and developmental biology. Over 40,000 studies have leveraged this technique to map the complex diversity of cells within tissues and organisms.

Yet beneath this explosive growth lies a persistent problem: clustering instability. When researchers attempt to group cells by expression patterns to identify cell types or disease states, they often face inconsistent results — even when analyzing the same dataset repeatedly.

Inaccurate clustering can lead to misclassifying normal cells as cancerous or missing rare but critical cell types — jeopardizing interpretation and therapeutic decisions. This “reliability crisis” forces scientists to rerun analyses or rely on computationally expensive pipelines to extract trustworthy insights.

Now, a research team led by Professor KIM Jae Kyoung of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) has developed a solution: a mathematical framework named scICE (single-cell Inconsistency Clustering Estimator).