The EU-funded SpongeBoost project invites both organisations and private individuals, aimed at restoring sponge landscapes across Europe, to apply for the "SpongeBooster of the Year 2026" award. The winning project will receive recognition and visibility for its work during a field trip to its research area.

A new Concordia University study introduces an optimization model that combines drones with mobile blood-collection vehicles, or “bloodmobiles,” to improve delivery efficiency and reduce spoilage of donated blood. The model demonstrated that integrating drones could significantly accelerate transport and preserve blood freshness. Researchers say the approach could also enhance logistics for other time-sensitive operations, such as delivering medical supplies or humanitarian aid in remote or emergency settings.

The exploration-exploitation dilemma is a long-standing topic in deep reinforcement learning. In recent research, a noise-driven enhancement for exploration algorithm has proposed for UAV autonomous navigation. This algorithm introduces a differentiated exploration noise control strategy based on the global navigation training hit rate and the specific situations encountered by the UAV in each episode. Furthermore, it designs a noise dual experience replay buffer to amplify the distinct effects of noisy and deterministic experiences. This approach reduces the computational cost associated with excessive exploration and mitigates the problem of the navigation policy converging to a local optimum.

Silicon carbide (SiC) and silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) powders are critical raw materials for advanced ceramics. However, traditional synthesis methods face four major challenges: difficulty in achieving SiC nanosizing, difficulty in realizing Si₃N₄ high purification, the need for external energy input for the weakly exothermic Si-C reaction, and the requirement of adding large amounts of diluents to enable the combustion synthesis of the strongly exothermic Si-N₂ reaction. Recently, a research team utilized the difference in heat release between the Si-N₂ and Si-C reactions. By means of chemical furnace encapsulation, the strong heat release from the Si-N₂ reaction was used to induce the combustion synthesis of the weakly exothermic Si-C reaction system. Through the regulation of the combustion reaction temperature field and the partial pressure of CO reducing gas, β-SiC powders with an average particle size of only 30 nm and high-purity pink β-Si₃N₄ powders with an oxygen content as low as 0.46 wt% were successfully synthesized. Their work is published in the journal Industrial Chemistry & Materials on 10 October.