Nature of Water News

March 18, 2025

Top Headlines

Structure of Supercritical Water Decoded

Mar. 17, 2025 — When exposed to high temperatures and pressure, water enters a state in which liquid and gas can no longer be distinguished. For a long time, there has been controversy about how this looks like on a molecular ...

Magnetic Microalgae on a Mission to Become Robots

Mar. 17, 2025 — Scientists have developed a single-cell green microalgae coated with magnetic material. This miniature robot was put to the test: would the microalgae with its magnetic coating be able to swim through narrow spaces and, additionally, in a viscous ...

Decoding Nanomaterial Phase Transitions With Tiny Drums

Mar. 12, 2025 — When water freezes into ice or boils into vapor, its properties change dramatically at specific temperatures. These so-called phase transitions are fundamental to understanding materials. But how do such transitions behave in nanomaterials? A team ...

Water Movement on Surfaces Makes More Electric Charge Than Expected

Mar. 11, 2025 — Researchers have discovered that water generates an electrical charge up to 10 times greater than previously understood when it moves across a surface. The team observed when a water droplet became stuck on a tiny bump or rough spot, the force built ...

Latest Headlines

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Technique to Manipulate Water Waves to Precisely Control Floating Objects

Mar. 11, 2025 — Where there's water, there are waves. But what if you could bend water waves to your will to move floating objects? Scientists have now developed a technique to merge waves in a water tank to produce ...

Medical Infusion Bags Can Release Microplastics

Mar. 11, 2025 — Microplastics have been found almost everywhere that scientists have looked for them. Now these bits of plastic -- from 1 to 62 micrometers long -- have been found in the filtered solutions used for ...

Self-Optimizing Catalysts Facilitate Water-Splitting for the Green Production of Hydrogen

Mar. 11, 2025 — Researchers have developed cost-effective and efficient water-splitting catalysts to be used in the eco-friendly production of hydrogen. Catalyst ...

How Agave Plants Survive Extreme Droughts

Mar. 5, 2025 — Researchers used terahertz spectroscopy and imaging to gain new insights into how agave plants are so remarkably adept at retaining water in extremely dry ...

The Two Faces of Liquid Water

Mar. 10, 2025 — Scientists have uncovered a key finding to one of water's unique properties: at high pressure and low temperature, liquid water separates into two distinct liquid phases -- one high-density and one ...

Precision Cancer Treatment Using Magnet-Guided, Heat-Activated Nanoparticles

Mar. 6, 2025 — Cancer treatment has advanced significantly, focusing on targeted approaches that destroy tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue. Researchers have ...

Breaking the Surface: How Damage Reshapes Ripples in Graphene

Mar. 3, 2025 — Scientists discover how defects in the surface of two-dimensional sheets alter ripple effects, even freezing the sheet's motion ...

Researchers Quantify the Way Rivers Bend, Opening Up the Possibility for Identifying Origins of Channels on Other Planets

Mar. 5, 2025 — Whether it's rivers cutting through earth, lava melting through rock, or water slicing through ice, channels all twist and bend in a seemingly ...

A Hot Droplet Can Bounce Across a Cool Pan, Too

Mar. 3, 2025 — When a droplet of water falls on a hot pan, it dances across the surface, skimming on a thin layer of steam like a tiny hovercraft; this is known as the Leidenfrost effect. But now, researchers know ...

From Scraps to Sips: Everyday Biomass Produces Drinking Water from Thin Air

Feb. 25, 2025 — Discarded food scraps, stray branches, seashells and many other natural materials are key ingredients in a system that can pull drinkable water out of thin air developed by ...

A Clear Game-Changer: Water-Repellent Glass Breaks New Ground

Feb. 27, 2025 — Researchers have developed a new technique to make glass water-repellent, a feature that could improve safety in vehicles, reduce cleaning costs for buildings and enhance filtration systems. The ...

Lunar Trailblazer Blasts Off to Map Water on the Moon

Feb. 25, 2025 — On Wednesday 26 February, a thermal imaging camera blasted off to the Moon as part of NASA's Lunar Trailblazer mission. This aims to map sources of water on the Moon to shed light on the lunar ...

Precision Therapy With Microbubbles

Feb. 21, 2025 — Researchers have investigated how microbubbles tiny gas bubbles can deliver drugs into cells in a targeted manner using ultrasound. For the first time, they have visualized how tiny cyclic microjets ...

Giant X-Ray Facility Shows That Magnets Can Reduce Flaws in 3D Printed Components

Feb. 20, 2025 — Safety critical components for aircraft and Formula 1 racing cars could one day be 3D printed via a new technique that substantially reduces imperfections in the manufacturing ...

Closing the Recycle Loop: Waste-Derived Nutrients in Liquid Fertilizer

Feb. 20, 2025 — Researchers have succeeded in establishing a method for producing recycled liquid fertilizer that contains high concentrations of ...

Novel Carbon-Based Materials to Remove Hazardous 'Forever Chemicals' in Water

Feb. 19, 2025 — New research has emerged on the development of a novel membrane distillation system and an adsorbent (a substance that can trap chemicals on its surface) for the removal of hazardous perfluoroalkyl ...

Using a Data-Driven Approach to Synthesize Single-Atom Catalysts That Can Purify Water

Feb. 18, 2025 — Researchers tested a strategy for developing single-atom catalysts that may help us develop more efficient methods for water ...

Record-Speed Waves on Extremely Water-Repellent Surfaces

Feb. 13, 2025 — Physicists and biomedical engineers unlocked new properties in capillary waves thanks to ...

New Autonomous System to Monitor Arctic's Melting Ice

Feb. 10, 2025 — Researchers have designed an alternative, autonomous observational method to monitor the Arctic's melting ice, which holds promise for improving the autonomy of marine vehicles, aiding in ...

Ice Streams Move Due to Tiny Ice Quakes

Feb. 6, 2025 — An international team of researchers has shown that countless tiny ice quakes take place in one of Greenland's mightiest ice streams. This finding will allow the flowing of the ice sheet and ...

Discovery of Water Droplet Freezing Bridges Atmospheric Science, Climate Solutions

Feb. 4, 2025 — A groundbreaking study on the freezing of water droplets suspended in air sheds light on a key process in Earth's water cycle: the transformation of supercooled water into ...

Researchers Solve a Fluid Mechanics Mystery

Feb. 3, 2025 — Seven years ago, researchers caught an unexpected phenomenon on film: A pool of red dye that somehow 'knew' how to solve a maze filled with milk. Propelled forward by a couple drops of ...

New Weapon Against Harmful Algal Blooms

Jan. 27, 2025 — Effective management of phosphorus is needed to curb the rise of harmful algal blooms. Few studies have explored how algal biomass, especially blue-green algae, can be used to create materials that ...

Designing Proteins With Their Immediate Environment in Mind

Jan. 23, 2025 — Researchers have developed a computational method to explicitly consider the impact of water while designing membrane receptors with enhanced stability and signaling, paving the way for novel drug ...

Salt Deposit Ring Inside Your Pasta Pan?

Jan. 21, 2025 — If you've ever tossed a generous pinch of salt into your pasta pan's water for flavor or as an attempt to make it boil faster, you've likely ended up with a whitish ring of deposits ...

We Can Make Fertilizer More Efficiently Under the Surface of the Earth

Jan. 21, 2025 — Instead of relying on energy-hungry reactors to generate high temperatures and pressure, researchers are looking underground at Earth's natural heat and forces to cook up ammonia for fertilizer. ...

New Research Helps Eliminate Dead Zones in Desalination Technology and Beyond

Jan. 15, 2025 — Engineers have found a way to eliminate the fluid flow 'dead zones' that plague the types of electrodes used for battery-based seawater desalination. The new technique uses a physics-based ...

Engineers Develop Breakthrough Method for Aluminum Surfaces, Enabling Advancements in Cooling, Self-Cleaning and Anti-Icing Technologies

Jan. 15, 2025 — An international team of engineers has developed an innovative, scalable method for creating topography-patterned aluminum surfaces, enhancing liquid transport properties critical for applications in ...

Sensor Tech and Water Filtration: Graphene Made Permeable for Ions

Jan. 15, 2025 — A milestone in graphene research: Chemists have succeeded in controlling the passage of halide ions by deliberately introducing defects into a two-layer nanographene system. Their paper shows new ...

Self-Stimulated Ejection of Freezing Droplets, Unlocking Cost-Effective Applications in De-Icing

Jan. 14, 2025 — Water droplets under freezing conditions do not spontaneously detach from surfaces as they do at room temperature due to stronger droplet-surface interaction and lack of an energy transformation ...