Accurately predicting complex agronomic traits remains a major bottleneck in crop breeding. This study demonstrates how optimized genomic prediction models can reliably forecast flowering time, yield components, and oil content in rapeseed using genome-wide genetic information.

Understanding how plant architectural traits change over time is essential for improving crop breeding efficiency and production management. 

Effective hydrophobic barriers were essential for plants to survive on land, yet how these barriers became specialized across different tissues has remained unclear. 

High-energy-density lithium-ion batteries are essential for next-generation electric vehicles and energy storage systems. However, Li-rich cathodes often underperform due to sluggish lithium reinsertion and irreversible capacity loss. This study introduces a kinetic activation strategy that regulates in-plane transition-metal (TM) ion migration and triggers controlled local structural rearrangements. By promoting lattice oxygen activation and enhancing Li-ion reinsertion kinetics, the team achieved reversible Li storage beyond 1.1 mol, reaching 348 mAh g⁻¹, close to theoretical limits. The work reveals a direct link between TM migration, lattice oxygen redox, and Li-ion mobility, offering a new pathway toward high-energy-density battery cathodes.

Improving the capacitance of supercapacitors requires gaining control over ion behavior inside carbon nanopores. This study demonstrates that electrowetting—voltage-driven electrolyte infiltration—can both increase active surface area and restructure the electric double layer, resulting in significantly enhanced charge storage. Carbon electrodes with tuned pore sizes were paired with monovalent and multivalent cations to identify optimal pore–ion combinations. The work reveals that mesopores combined with multivalent ions support stronger ion packing and dual-ion adsorption, delivering higher capacitance than systems relying solely on micropores or monovalent ions. The results establish electrowetting as a viable pathway to surpass conventional strategies focused only on surface area enlargement or ion-distance reduction.

Lithium metal batteries hold potential for next-generation energy storage, but interfacial instability limits their long-term performance. This study shows how combining LiDFOB and LiPF₆ in a dual-salt electrolyte can regulate electrode–electrolyte interphase (EEI) at both cathode and anode. Using in situ electrochemical atomic force microscopy (EC-AFM), researchers visualized the real-time formation of a bilayer cathode electrolyte interphase (CEI) on NCM622 cathode and a LiF-rich solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) on lithium metal anode. These compact EEI films help reduce impedance, enable more uniform Li deposition, and improve cycling stability. The work offers direct evidence of interface evolution during operation, providing a guidance for the optimal design to construct a stable electrode/electrolyte interface in lithium metal batteries.

This study presents a highly efficient approach to solar hydrogen production by pairing water electrolysis with the selective oxidation of biomass-derived glucose. Central to this advance is a copper-doped cobalt oxyhydroxide catalyst that guides glucose through a finely tuned cascade of α–C–C bond cleavages, producing up to 80% formate while simultaneously lowering the anodic potential by nearly 400 mV. This design enables hydrogen generation in a simple membrane-free reactor, achieving production rates that surpass 500 μmol h⁻¹ cm⁻². By converting low-cost sugars derived from non-food biomass cellulose into valuable chemicals during hydrogen generation, the method boosts energy efficiency and dramatically improves economic feasibility, pointing toward a more sustainable model for solar fuels.

Lithium-rich layered oxides (LRLOs) offer exceptionally high capacities but suffer rapid energy loss because of irreversible migration of transition-metal (TM) ions during cycling, triggering oxygen release and voltage decay. This study presents a breakthrough strategy: using trace dopants (only 0.75 at.% W⁶⁺) placed precisely at tetrahedral sites in the lithium layer. These isolated single dopants exert long-range Coulomb repulsion, suppressing both in-plane and out-of-plane TM migration across a ~2-nm region. As a result, cation ordering is preserved over 250 cycles, oxygen release is significantly reduced, and voltage decay drops to just 0.75 mV per cycle. This work provides a new atom-efficient pathway for stabilizing high-energy LRLO cathodes.