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Category: sustainability

Copper’s ‘gatekeeper’ could unlock cleaner energy future

A common mineral hiding in plain sight could hold the key to making copper production cleaner, faster and more efficient, just as global demand for the metal surges to power the energy transition. In an article published in Nature Geoscience, researchers from Monash University’s School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment describe why chalcopyrite, the source of around 70% of the world’s copper, has remained so difficult to process, and how its hidden chemistry could be harnessed to unlock more sustainable extraction.

Despite being known for more than 300 years, chalcopyrite continues to frustrate scientists and industry alike, resisting low-temperature leaching and slowing efforts to extract copper from lower-grade ores. This inefficiency is a major bottleneck at a time when copper is critical for renewable energy systems, electric vehicles and modern infrastructure.

“Chalcopyrite is the world’s primary copper mineral, but it behaves in surprisingly complex ways that have limited how efficiently we can extract copper from it,” said study lead Professor Joël Brugger from the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment.

Graphene as a charge mirror: Why water droplets ‘see’ graphene—but don’t show it

Research on graphene has made great strides in recent years. However, to fully harness its potential in applications such as desalination membranes, sensors, and energy storage and conversion, a deeper understanding of the interaction between graphene and water is required.

Until now, it was widely thought that graphene, when supported on a substrate, largely inherits the wetting properties of the underlying material, a phenomenon known as “wetting transparency.” An international research team led by Yongkang Wang and Yair Litman has now shown that, while graphene appears transparent on large scales, it exerts a subtle but significant influence on nearby water molecules at the nanoscale. The study is published in the journal Chem.

Graphene, a carbon layer just one atom thick, is considered a wonder material: extremely stable, highly conductive, and optically transparent. For a long time, it appeared just as transparent to water: measurements of the water contact angle—a measure of wettability—showed that graphene on a substrate lets through the substrates wettability virtually unchanged. This phenomenon of wetting transparency, observed for years, seemed to contradict the fact that graphene is highly polarizable and therefore reacts sensitively to charges in the substrate.

Tiny crystal defects solve decades-old mystery in organic light emitters

Materials that emit and manipulate light are at the heart of technologies ranging from solar energy to advanced imaging systems. But even in well-studied materials, some fundamental behaviors remain unexplained. Researchers at Rice University have now solved a long-standing mystery in a widely used organic semiconductor, revealing how tiny structural imperfections can actually improve how these materials work.

In a study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the team investigated 9,10-bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene (BPEA), a model system for studying how light energy moves through materials. For years, scientists have observed unusual optical behavior in BPEA, specifically two distinct absorption and emission signals that did not match existing theories.

“This was a long-standing puzzle in the field,” said Colette Sullivan, a doctoral student in Rice’s Department of Chemistry and co-author of the study. “Once we connected the experimental results with theory, it became clear the two signals were coming from completely different processes.”

How nuclear batteries could speed the race to fusion power

Fusion reactions release tremendous amounts of energy by fusing two lighter atoms into a heavier one. But harvesting that energy has proven challenging. The most common approach is to heat water and spin a steam turbine, but that approach isn’t terribly efficient, harnessing at best around 60% of the power.

Avalanche Energy thinks it can capture more of that energy by developing new materials known as radiovoltaics. Radiovoltaics are similar to photovoltaics — traditional solar panels — in that they use semiconductors to transform radiation into electricity. They’ve been around for a while, but they’re not very effective. Existing radiovoltaics are easily damaged by the very radiation they harness and don’t produce that much electricity.

Today, Avalanche was awarded a $5.2 million contract from DARPA to develop new radiovoltaics, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.

Space 18th SDG — A Side Event at COPUOS Legal SubCommittee — 16 April 2026

Space has become critical infrastructure for climate monitoring, disaster risk reduction, connectivity, navigation, education, and long-term planetary resilience. Even more important, space is an open horizon for new industrial development and settlement, starting with Earth orbit, the geo-lunar system, and the near-Earth asteroids. The Space 18th SDG initiative proposes a non-regulatory, enabling framework that strengthens the existing 17 SDGs by recognizing outer space as both an enabler of sustainable development and an environment requiring stewardship.
THE PANEL:
Prof. Sergio Marchisio, Space Law Expert, La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.
Ms. Fikiswa Majola, Deputy Director Space Systems, Department of Science and Technology (DST) South Africa.
Prof. Guoyu Wang — Space Law Center, China National Space Administration.
Dr. Claire Nelson, The Future Forum, Giamaica.
Adriano V. Autino, SRI CEO & Founder.
Maria Antonietta Perino, Thales Alenia Space, Italy.
Stefano Antonetti, D-ORBIT SpA, Strategy Director, Italy.
Antonio Stark, iSpace, Japan.
MODERATES:
Dr. Gülin Dede, SRI Director of Relations, Chair of the Space 18th SDG Coalition.

Street green space can help cool cities, but it will not be enough on its own

A new IIASA-led study finds that expanding street green space can reduce urban heat stress in cities worldwide, but even ambitious greening efforts are unlikely to offset a significant share of the additional heat expected under climate change. Instead, the research shows that street greenery should be part of a broader portfolio of urban adaptation measures.

Cities are on the front line of climate change, with rising temperatures and heat stress posing growing risks to health, productivity, and livability. Street green space, such as trees and vegetation along streets, is often promoted as a practical nature-based solution because it can provide shade, cooling, and other positive benefits, for example, improving the mental health of citizens. Yet, evidence on how much cooling street greenery can deliver, to which extent the amount of vegetation can be increased, and how much cooling can be expected in future climates has remained limited, particularly when taking a global view across very different urban forms and climate zones.

In the new study published in Environmental Research Letters, a team of researchers from IIASA and VITO Belgium combined high-resolution street greenery data with 100-meter urban microclimate model outputs for 133 cities worldwide, providing a neighborhood-scale assessment with global coverage. Rather than relying on satellite-based surface temperature alone, the team assessed how street green space relates to air temperature and wet-bulb globe temperature —a measure that captures heat stress more appropriately than temperature alone because it accounts for humidity, wind, and radiation.

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