The quality of European rivers has improved in recent years, but not at the pace required to meet the environmental targets set for 2030. This is one of the main conclusions of a study led by researchers María Pachés Giner and Remedios Martínez from the Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research.

Analysis of data available between 2015 and 2021 shows that organic pollution decreased in 14 of the 18 countries studied, while phosphate concentrations fell in 11 of the 16 countries for which sufficient information was available. However, these improvements alone do not guarantee that the targets set for the end of this decade will be met.

River sediments are not simply passive sinks for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). A study combining global observations with multimedia modeling suggests that climate-driven changes in sediment–water exchange could increase future PAH concentrations and ecological risks in the Yangtze and Huanghe watersheds, while the St. Lawrence watershed may follow a different, lower-risk trajectory.

This study shows that the recovery of the critically endangered Pinus dabeshanensis depends heavily on a few highly productive mother trees. After monitoring 88 adult trees over three years, researchers found that most trees produced no seeds, while just six trees produced more than 70% of all mature seeds. Seed dispersal success was mainly linked to how many mature seeds each tree produced. The findings suggest that conservation efforts should focus on protecting and supporting these key mother trees.

A review published in Nano Research systematically examines how acid treatment engineers the optoelectronic properties of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides, confronting the long-standing trade-off between optical enhancement and electrical performance. Superacid treatment boosts photoluminescence quantum yields toward unity by passivating sulfur vacancies, yet often degrades field-effect transistor transport. The authors rationalize this paradox with a sulfur-vacancy-mediated hopping transport model and assess strategies from two-step thiol–acid passivation to Lewis acid substitutional doping that decouple optical and electronic responses. Future directions include machine-learning-assisted atomic-scale characterization and defect-diverse studies, aiming to transform passive defect passivation into active functionality design.