Phosphorus is an absolute necessity for growing crops, yet a massive portion of it remains locked away in the dirt, completely inaccessible to plant roots. Keeping enough "labile"—or readily available—phosphorus in agricultural fields is a constant headache for the farming industry. Now, a fresh look at the soil microbiome reveals that the key to freeing up this trapped nutrient relies heavily on the type of carbon we add to the earth, whether that is treated animal waste or, surprisingly, synthetic plastic pollution.

Featured in the journal Carbon Research, this detailed ecological assessment maps the underground mechanisms that drive nutrient cycling. The research was jointly led by corresponding authors Huifang Xie and Bingyu Wang from the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Chemical Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, housed within the School of Environmental and Biological Engineering at Nanjing University of Science and Technology.

The team wanted to understand how two very different types of human-introduced carbon affect the soil's ability to feed plants. They compared manure-derived hydrochar (HC)—a common, nutrient-rich soil amendment—against TPU microplastics (MPs), an increasingly ubiquitous environmental contaminant.

Arsenic contamination in rice paddies is a stubborn and dangerous threat to global food safety. Heavy metals linger in the mud, stressing the crops and eventually making their way into the human diet. While engineers frequently test expensive chemical treatments to clean up these sites, a fresh ecological approach looks to a surprisingly common material for the cure: discarded pork bones.

A newly published paper in Carbon Research explores exactly what happens when agricultural lands are treated with micro- and nano-scale bone char (MNBC). Driven by corresponding author Chuanxin Ma at the Guangdong University of Technology, the investigation proves that adding just a small amount of this specially processed biochar triggers a massive biological revival in toxic soil.

This initiative draws on the deep ecological expertise housed at the Guangdong Basic Research Center of Excellence for Ecological Security and Green Development and the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Water Quality Improvement and Ecological Restoration for Watersheds. Rather than just trapping the arsenic, the researchers discovered that the bone char fundamentally alters how the soil microbiome behaves and survives under stress.

Human–machine interface (HMI) systems require energy harvesters that can operate efficiently under low contact forces, yet conventional tactile triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) suffer from low surface charge density and unstable output. Here, we propose a human skin electric field-induced air-breakdown TENG (AB-TENG) with a transistor-inspired architecture. The device employs a base terminal to collect electrons from human skin via an ionized air channel formed by air breakdown, enabling efficient conversion of the skin’s electric field through two operational modes: indirect (accumulated output) and direct (instant high output). In direct mode, the AB-TENG delivers 165 V at 2 N and 290 V at 24 N, with a peak power of 22 mW—22 times higher than conventional tactile TENGs. Practical utility is demonstrated through a self-powered infrared remote control and an ultrathin keyboard. This work establishes a new design paradigm that transforms air breakdown from a limitation into a functional mechanism, advancing skin-electricity-enhanced thin-film TENGs toward next-generation self-sustaining HMI platforms.

Media artist and KAIST professor Jinjoon Lee's doctoral thesis 'Empty Garden' officially acquired by the Ashmolean Museum, UK, for permanent collection

Korean artistic and academic achievement recognized as public cultural heritage at a museum predating the Louvre by 110 years — the 'heart of Western intellectual history'

Blending Eastern aesthetics of 'wandering' (거닐기) and 'emptiness' with data technology in the AI era — awarded Oxford's unanimous 'No Corrections' in just 2.5 years in 2020

First work by a contemporary Korean artist to enter the Ashmolean's permanent collection — officially confirmed by the museum's curator

Korean artistic and academic achievement officially recognised as intellectual cultural heritage — permanently preserved, researched, and exhibited within the Western public knowledge system