Managing radioactive waste is one of the core challenges in the use of nuclear energy. In particular, radioactive iodine poses serious environmental and health risks due to its long half-life (15.7 million years in the case of I-129), high mobility, and toxicity to living organisms.
A Korean research team has successfully used artificial intelligence to discover a new material that can remove iodine for nuclear environmental remediation. The team plans to push forward with commercialization through various industry–academia collaborations, from iodine-adsorbing powders to contaminated water treatment filters.
Professor Ho Jin Ryu’s research team from the Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, in collaboration with Dr. Juhwan Noh of the Digital Chemistry Research Center at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, developed a technique using AI to discover new materials that effectively remove radioactive iodine contaminants. Their research is published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.
Light pollution, or artificial light at night (ALAN), is a widespread phenomenon in areas with dense human populations. Normally, animals use natural external cues, like sunlight and temperature, to synchronize their biological rhythms with the day-night cycle. However, ALAN is known to affect the biological rhythms of animals living within its range by altering physiological, molecular and behavioral mechanisms related to sleep-wake cycles (circadian rhythms).
The intricate, hidden processes that sustain coral life are being revealed through a new microscope developed by scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The diver-operated microscope —called the Benthic Underwater Microscope imaging PAM, or BUMP—incorporates pulse amplitude modulated (PAM) light techniques to offer an unprecedented look at coral photosynthesis on micro-scales.
In a new study, researchers describe how the BUMP imaging system makes it possible to study the health and physiology of coral reefs in their natural habitat, advancing longstanding efforts to uncover precisely why corals bleach.
The meteoric rise of cryo-electron microscopy from an obscure imaging technique to a powerhouse for determining biomolecular structures is transforming our understanding of biology.
A successful collaboration involving a trio of research institutions has yielded a roadmap toward an economically viable process for using enzymes to recycle plastics.
The researchers, from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and the University of Portsmouth in England, previously partnered on the biological engineering of improved PETase enzymes that can break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET). With its low manufacturing cost and excellent material properties, PET is used extensively in single-use packaging, soda bottles, and textiles.
The new study, published in Nature Chemical Engineering, combines previous fundamental research with advanced chemical engineering, process development, and techno-economic analysis to lay the blueprints for enzyme-based PET recycling at an industrial scale.
Greg Egan’s Diaspora is one of the most ambitious and mind-bending science fiction novels ever published. It came out in 1997 and originally started as a short story called “Wang’s Carpets.” That story ended up as a chapter in the novel. Diaspora is: dense, smart, and way ahead of its time. This is hard science fiction to the core. Egan invents entire new branches of physics. He reimagines life, consciousness, time, space — even what it means to be human. The book doesn’t ease you in. There’s a glossary, invented physics theories like Kozuch Theory, and characters that don’t even have genders. But if you stick with it, what you get isn’t just a story, it’s a look at what the future might actually become. By the year 2,975, humanity isn’t one species anymore. It’s split into three groups: Fleshers: The biological humans, including the “statics” (unchanged baseline humans) and all sorts of heavily modified versions — underwater people, gene-hacked thinkers, even “dream apes” who gave up speech to live closer to nature. Gleisners: AIs in robotic bodies that live in space. They care about the physical world and experience time like regular humans. They’re kind of old-school — still sending ships to the stars, trying to build things in real space. Citizens: These are digital minds that live entirely in simulated worlds called polises.
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