Bharat Baruah never expected his woodworking hobby to collide with his day job in the chemistry lab. But one question kept nagging him: What if the future of windows wasn’t glass—or plastic—but wood?

Thirty years ago, a botanist in Germany had a simple wish: to see the inner workings of woody plants without dissecting them. By bleaching away the pigments in plant cells, Siegfried Fink managed to ...

Windows and smartphone screens may one day be constructed from transparent wood laced with egg whites and safely composted at the end of their life. Researchers are interested in using wood to make ...