Peatlands store vast amounts of carbon, but when they are drained for agriculture, they can become major sources of greenhouse gases. Restoring water levels can slow carbon dioxide emissions, yet overly wet peat can produce methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. This creates a difficult climate dilemma: how can peatlands be managed to protect soil carbon without triggering high methane release?

Paddy soils are living chemical reactors. Under flooded and drained conditions, microbes, minerals, oxygen, and organic matter constantly exchange electrons, shaping how pollutants move, transform, or disappear. A new study published in Biochar reports that a specially engineered form of biochar can redirect these electron flows, helping paddy soils generate more hydroxyl radicals, one of nature’s most powerful oxidants, and break down the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole more efficiently.

Microalgae have long been viewed as a promising source of renewable fuel. They grow quickly, capture carbon dioxide efficiently, and do not compete with food crops for farmland. Yet turning algae into usable liquid fuels remains difficult because algae-derived bio-oil often contains high levels of oxygen and nitrogen compounds, which can lower fuel quality, reduce stability, and create pollution concerns during combustion.

As global warming intensifies, window technologies that can automatically regulate indoor light and humidity in response to environmental changes could help reduce building energy consumption and support the development of a low-carbon city. A research team at the International Centre of Urban Energy Nexus (UEX) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has developed an innovative smart window film that leverages the unique properties of various materials to lower indoor temperatures during the day while absorbing moisture and reducing its transparency at night, thereby enhancing energy efficiency as well as improving indoor comfort and privacy. Antibacterial, durable and cost-effective, this innovative window film is particularly suitable for use in humid regions such as Hong Kong, offering a promising solution for green building development.

A systematic assessment of 102,847 plant specimens across nine subtropical mountains in Jiangxi, China, identifies four interconnected collection biases and proposes evidence-based strategies to improve sampling equity and conservation effectiveness.

This study presents a method for fabricating high-resolution, luminescent cerium-doped YAG:Ce³⁺ 3D microstructures using sol–gel synthesis combined with multiphoton laser lithography and controlled annealing. The process yields single-phase crystalline architectures with sub-micrometer features (≈0.48 µm) and isotropic shrinkage while preserving geometry. Structural and optical analysis confirms phase purity and strong emission at 558 nm, with optimal performance at 2 mol% Ce³⁺, enabling applications in photonic and optoelectronic microsystems.

Precise shaping of three-dimensional vector fields inside enclosed optical cavities has long been a critical unresolved bottleneck in modern photonics, essential for super-resolution imaging, nanolasers and advanced quantum photonic technologies. To address this, scientists in China invented a novel full-space adjoint-enabled freeform meta-optics framework, realizing 5-fold imaging fidelity enhancement while retaining λ/5 optical super-resolution. This technique opens new avenues for cutting-edge nanophotonics, topological photonics and quantum optics applications.

Researchers developed a KRAS-driven mouse model of sporadic brain arteriovenous malformation and identified thalidomide as a candidate therapy. In mice, thalidomide improved survival, reduced lesion growth, and stabilized abnormal vessels. In a proof-of-concept clinical study, most evaluable patients showed stable or regressed lesions.

Efficient electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonia requires not only active catalysts, but also precise control over active hydrogen utilization under industrial operating conditions. By introducing cerium into Cu₂O, we constructed Cu⁰-Cu⁺ and Cu-O-Ce dual active sites, enabling the regulation of hydrogen transfer pathways and suppressing the competing hydrogen evolution reaction to promote the selective nitrate-to-ammonia conversion.