A clearer future: Researchers unveil transparent, plastic-free wood
Feb 2026, phys.org
There was a lot of work coming out related to wood, like black wood, clear wood, wood stronger than steel, and I'm not sure what happened to all that.
Wood is normally opaque because it contains lignin and countless microscopic air cavities called lumens, which scatter light. Removing lignin turns wood white and translucent but achieving true transparency has been challenging.The research team focused on delignified wood treated with potassium hydroxide (KOH). They discovered that alkali treatment removes most of the remaining hemicellulose and changes the chemical state of carboxyl groups in the cell walls. These changes soften the wood's internal cellulose microfibril skeleton. When the treated wood is dried, the softened cell walls collapse more completely, reducing internal air gaps and dramatically decreasing light scattering. As a result, the material becomes highly transparent—without polymer impregnation or plastic additives.
via University of Osaka: Hitomi Yagyu et al, Anisotropic Transparency of Alkali‐Treated Wood, Macromolecular Materials and Engineering (2026). DOI: 10.1002/mame.202500389
Image credit: AI Art - Actually Not Charles Clyde Ebbets 1932 Lunch Atop a Skyscraper But In 2023 - 2025
AI-designed diffractive optical processors pave the way for low-power structural health monitoring
Mar 2026, phys.org
Probably read carefully, this is complicated.
Structural Health Monitoring - Instead of relying on traditional sensor networks that digitize raw physical signals, the new system uses a passive, optimized diffractive layer attached to the target structure. As the structure oscillates, this optimized diffractive surface moves, modulating an incoming illuminating wave to encode the structural displacements into light, which is then captured by a few optical detectors and rapidly decoded by a low-power neural network.
via UCLA Engineering Institute for Technology Advancement: Yuntian Wang et al, Structural vibration monitoring with diffractive optical processors, Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea1712
What Chinese characters can tell us about designing strong materials
Apr 2026, phys.org
So what about graffiti?
"Certain Chinese characters have strong, distinctive geometries, and these are shapes that 'felt' like they could exhibit unique mechanical properties and behaviors."The presence of curves, crossbeams, and gradation, and the fact that they fit into discrete square cells makes Chinese characters especially fit for creating functional, structural unit cells.
via American Institute of Physics and University of Edinburgh: Mechanical metamaterials built from Chinese characters, The Journal of Applied Physics (2026). DOI: 10.1063/5.0304459
Texas startup uses robots to build homes out of clay and soil
May 2026, KXAN Austin
Startup Terran Robotics - they're literally grabbing dirt from the ground at the site and using it to build the house, using robots to do "rammed earth" construction, which is, interestingly, also the building style most often used in the self-sustainable Earthships of the American Southwest.
How cement 'breathes in' and stores millions of tons of CO₂ a year
Dec 2025, phys.org
The cement in U.S. buildings and infrastructure sequesters over 6.5 million metric tons of CO2 annually. This corresponds to roughly 13% of the process emissions in U.S. cement manufacturing. In Mexico, the same building stock sequesters about 5 million tons a year.A concrete highway in Dallas sequesters CO2 differently than Mexico City apartments made from concrete masonry units (CMUs). A foundation slab buried under the snow in Fairbanks, Alaska, "breathes in" CO2 at a different pace entirely."Carbon uptake is very sensitive to context. Four major factors drive it: the type of cement used, the product we make with it (concrete, CMUs, or mortar), the geometry of the structure, and the climate and conditions it's exposed to. Even within the same structure, uptake can vary five-fold between different elements.""We observed something unique about Mexico: Despite using half the cement that the U.S. does, the country has three-quarters of the uptake. This is because Mexico makes more use of mortar and lower-strength concrete, and bagged cement mixed on-site. These practices are why their uptake sequesters about a quarter of their cement manufacturing emissions.""Increasing the amount of surface area exposed to air accelerates uptake and can be achieved by foregoing painting or tiling, or choosing designs like waffle slabs with a higher surface area-to-volume ratio. Additionally, avoiding unnecessarily stronger, less-porous concrete mixtures than required would speed up uptake while using less cement."
via MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub: Hessam AzariJafari et al, Carbon uptake dynamics of cement-based materials: Linking market structure, material use, and the carbon cycle, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2515116122
