In a review in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Stephen Long, a professor of crop sciences and of plant biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, describes research efforts to “future-proof” the crops that are essential to feeding a hungry world in a changing climate. Long, who has spent decades studying the process of photosynthesis and finding ways to improve it, provides an overview of key scientific findings that offer a ray of hope.

POSTECH and Seoul National University Identify Innovative Mechanism in Iron-Based Catalysts, Doubling Hydrogen Production Efficiency.

A comprehensive review highlights cutting-edge advancements in inspection, environmental monitoring, and safety assessment technologies for oil and gas pipelines. These innovations address growing challenges posed by aging infrastructure, geohazards, and complex operational demands, paving the way for smarter, safer energy networks.

An international research team led by the Photonic Network Laboratory at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), and including Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. (Sumitomo Electric) have set a new world record in optical fiber communications, achieving data transmission at 1.02 petabits per second over a distance of 1,808 kilometers (roughly equivalent to the distance from Sapporo to Fukuoka, from Missouri to Montana or from Berlin to Naples). The experiment used a specially designed 19-core optical fiber with a standard 0.125 mm cladding diameter, compatible with existing fiber infrastructure. With a capacity-distance product of 1.86 exabits per second x km—the highest ever recorded—this demonstration marks the fastest long-distance transmission achieved in any optical fiber to date. The result represents a major step forward in developing scalable, high-capacity networks and addressing the world’s growing demand for data.

A standard cladding diameter 19-core optical fiber has been demonstrated to transmit more than 1 petabit per second in the past, but over relatively short distances, well below 1,000 km. The research team has achieved a dramatic extension of the transmission distance by developing a novel 19-core optical fiber also with a standard cladding diameter but with low loss across multiple wavelength bands used in commercial optical fiber transmission systems. In addition, an optical amplification system was developed to support the new optical fiber, which enabled a world record for long-distance high-capacity transmission. The newly developed technology is expected to make a significant contribution to both the expansion of the communication capacity and the long-range extension of optical communication infrastructure in the future, when communication demand increases.

The results of this experiment were accepted as a post-deadline paper presentation at the 48th Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC 2025) and presented on Thursday, April 3, 2025.

The Satellite Observation Center of the Earth System Division of the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) has been publicly providing global concentrations of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) and an air pollutant (carbon monoxide) obtained from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite-2 "Ibuki-2" (GOSAT-2, launched in October 2018).

In this study, a research team consisting of Dr. Hirofumi Ohyama (Senior Researcher), Dr. Yukio Yoshida (Senior Researcher), and Dr. Tsuneo Matsunaga (Director of the Satellite Observation Center) of the Earth System Division of the NIES developed a method to calculate the enhancement ratios among carbon dioxide, methane, and carbon monoxide concentrations in megacities, using data from GOSAT-2, the only satellite observing all three gases simultaneously. Furthermore, the team evaluated the accuracy of emission databases and estimated the methane and carbon monoxide emissions for approximately 40 cities around the world by using the calculated four-year average enhancement ratios. The results demonstrated that we could independently evaluate the values in emission databases for megacities using data from satellite observations without relying on complicated calculations of atmospheric transport. With continued observations, we anticipate that annual changes of emissions for certain cities can be captured from satellites. Furthermore, the GOSAT-GW satellite, scheduled for launch in FY2025, will be capable of observing carbon dioxide and methane at a greater number of observation points than GOSAT-2 and will also observe atmospheric concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, most of which is distributed around emission sources. These enhancements are expected to further improve the accuracy of emission estimates. The results of this study were published on 5 November 2024 in Environmental Research Letters, an academic journal in the environmental field.

Interactive robots should not just be passive companions, but active partners–like therapy horses who respond to human emotion–say University of Bristol researchers.

University of Utah researchers used their Salt Lake City campus as lab to determine how much outdoor particulate pollution affects indoor air quality. Their study concluded pollution from inversion and dust events is kept out of buildings, but wildfire smoke can sneak inside if efficient 'air-side economizers' are in use.