As freshwater shortages intensify around the world, scientists are searching for technologies that can do more than simply desalinate seawater. One of the biggest challenges is treating oil-contaminated seawater, where conventional desalination systems often fail because oil clogs membranes, blocks water transport and reduces efficiency.
SAN FRANCISCO – Rubicon Space Systems completed hot-fire testing of its Velox 5-newton ASCENT monopropellant thruster, paving the way for on-orbit operations in 2027.
“The program demonstrated performance beyond our design objectives,” Rubicon Director Daniel Cavender told SpaceNews. “We are now transitioning the thruster into flight production.”
The Velox thruster, fueled with ASCENT, a hydrazine replacement, was tested in Rubicon’s vacuum altitude test chamber in Huntsville, Alabama.
When people work in pairs or teams, they can often solve a wider range of problems, completing some tasks faster and more efficiently than they would alone. To assist users similarly to how other humans would, robots should be able to rapidly interpret human behaviors and commands, using their predictions to plan and precisely execute helpful actions.
Researchers at GenerativeBionics, Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and University of Manchester recently introduced a framework that could guide the design of robots that interact with humans more safely, efficiently and adaptively. Their design strategy, introduced in a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, was already used to create a new humanoid robot called ergoCub.
“Our work grew out of many years of experience developing different generations of humanoid robots,” Carlotta Sartore and Daniele Pucci, the paper’s first and senior authors, respectively, told Tech Xplore. “During this time, we repeatedly observed that robot hardware was often treated as fixed, while the control system was expected to compensate for its physical limitations.
Mayo Clinic researchers have identified a protein that cancer cells use to shut down the body’s immune response, a discovery that could help scientists develop new treatments that make cancer immunotherapies more effective.
Published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the study identifies a previously unknown role for a protein called TRAILshort, which acts like an immune “off switch.” The researchers found that TRAILshort prevents T cells — the immune system’s primary cancer-fighting cells — from recognizing and destroying cancer and virus-infected cells. In preclinical models, blocking the protein restored T-cell activity and improved immune response.
The researchers also found that TRAILshort reduces the effectiveness of chimeric antigen receptor-T cell therapy (CAR-T cell therapy), one of the most advanced forms of cancer immunotherapy. Their findings suggest that therapies designed to block TRAILshort could improve CAR-T treatment and potentially benefit other immune-based cancer therapies.
Soft sensors convert movement, temperature and moisture into electrical signals. Repeated bending and friction can cause their metal conductors to peel from the underlying polymer, while physical damage, such as cuts, can disable the device. Commonly used petroleum-derived substrates are also environmentally unfriendly because they are difficult to recycle.
Researchers at the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS CDE) have developed a soft, stretchable substrate that repairs itself, firmly grips metal conductors and can be remolded or broken down after use. It could make wearable patches and electronic skin used in applications such as health monitoring and virtual reality more durable while enabling the recovery of valuable components, thus reducing electronic waste.
The new material, called an intrinsically dynamic biosubstrate (IDBS), was developed by researchers led by assistant professor Zhai Wei from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at NUS CDE. Their findings were published in Nature Sustainability on June 19, 2026.
A flowering plant has been confirmed as a new carnivorous lineage, according to research published in Nature Communications. The findings show that Saxifraga candelabrum can attract, trap, digest and absorb nitrogen from insects, supporting a prediction made by Charles Darwin more than 150 years ago.
While many plants exhibit carnivorous traits such as prey capture, to be formally classified as carnivorous, they must show adaptations for attracting and catching, digesting and absorbing nutrients from prey. In 1875, Charles Darwin posited that some species from the genus Saxifraga—a group of flowering plants typically found in alpine environments—may be carnivorous because of their sticky glandular hairs, which can trap insects. However, there has been a lack of conclusive evidence to support this hypothesis.
Hang Sun and colleagues studied S. candelabrum, which grows in alpine areas of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau–Hengduan Mountains in China. Field observations and surveys of existing plant samples showed that insect prey were present on the glandular hairs of 43 out of 45 surveyed specimens, with mature plants displaying an average of 71 trapped insects in total (predominantly found on these hairs). The authors then looked for evidence of digestion and nutrient absorption to support their hypothesis.
Researchers have developed an implant that could deliver next-generation therapies for ovarian cancer precisely where they are needed while simultaneously monitoring how the disease responds.
The project was carried out by a team at CÚRAM, the Research Ireland Centre for Medical Devices based at the University of Galway, along with collaborators from the University of Minnesota, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Wyss Institute.
The research was published in the journal Device. It showed how the team developed a flexible, porous implant designed to sit inside the peritoneal cavity—the space surrounding the abdominal organs in a woman’s body where ovarian cancer predominantly occurs. The device is designed to connect to an external port through the skin so it can be replenished with therapeutic agents as often as needed without requiring further surgery.