This study shows that the recovery of the critically endangered Pinus dabeshanensis depends heavily on a few highly productive mother trees. After monitoring 88 adult trees over three years, researchers found that most trees produced no seeds, while just six trees produced more than 70% of all mature seeds. Seed dispersal success was mainly linked to how many mature seeds each tree produced. The findings suggest that conservation efforts should focus on protecting and supporting these key mother trees.

Forests store carbon and support biodiversity, but management that benefits one goal may not benefit the other. A study of 150 forest plots found that increasing management intensity reduced total and aboveground carbon while increasing belowground carbon. Aboveground insect diversity and biomass also increased, whereas belowground fauna showed no overall response. Relationships varied among arthropod groups, habitats and years, revealing no single optimal management strategy. The authors suggest combining generally lower-intensity management with a mosaic of forest types to better balance carbon storage, arthropod habitat, climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation.

An ethylene carbonate (EC)-based electrolyte highly compatible with high-voltage LiNi_0.5Mn_1.5O₄ (LNMO) cathodes is developed. Two insights that go against conventional understanding are uncovered, i.e. contrary to the common belief that EC decomposes readily under high voltage, it demonstrates outstanding high-voltage stability; and LNMO cycles in this electrolyte without forming a typical cathode/electrolyte interphase, experiencing instead a unique surface restructuring.

Approximately one-third of fresh fruit is lost along the supply chain, with harvesting and grading representing major sources of loss. Inspired by the deformation mechanism of octopus suckers, the researchers developed a soft robotic gripper integrated with three-axis triboelectric tactile sensors. The system independently resolves normal and tangential forces and, within a single picking cycle, simultaneously assesses fruit firmness, enables damage-free harvesting, and measures fruit weight. Field trials demonstrated the feasibility of integrating non-destructive harvesting with in-field quality grading, offering a new pathway to reduce post harvest losses, streamline fresh-produce supply chains, and improve operational efficiency.

A review published in Nano Research systematically examines how acid treatment engineers the optoelectronic properties of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides, confronting the long-standing trade-off between optical enhancement and electrical performance. Superacid treatment boosts photoluminescence quantum yields toward unity by passivating sulfur vacancies, yet often degrades field-effect transistor transport. The authors rationalize this paradox with a sulfur-vacancy-mediated hopping transport model and assess strategies from two-step thiol–acid passivation to Lewis acid substitutional doping that decouple optical and electronic responses. Future directions include machine-learning-assisted atomic-scale characterization and defect-diverse studies, aiming to transform passive defect passivation into active functionality design.

The global push to transition from fossil fuel dependence to low-carbon sustainable energy systems has spurred urgent research into advanced functional materials that address critical performance gaps in energy storage and conversion technologies. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), an emerging class of porous crystalline materials with ultrahigh surface areas and precisely tunable pore structures, have exhibited outstanding advantages across electrochemical energy storage, electrocatalysis and photocatalysis, offering transformative solutions to advance the deployment of next-generation clean energy technologies.

Researchers at Northeast Normal University have shown that the relative twist angle between two WS₂ layers can be used to tune both exciton binding energy and photoinduced bandgap renormalization. Using femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy, they found that the exciton binding energy changes from 265 to 336 meV as the twist angle approaches 30 degrees, while bandgap renormalization near the Mott transition varies by more than 100 meV. Strong interlayer coupling near 0 degrees also enhances exciton transport, yielding an effective mobility of 134 cm²/(V·s), about three times that of the near-30-degree bilayer. The results connect twist-controlled interlayer coupling with dynamic screening and nonequilibrium many-body physics in two-dimensional semiconductors.

This study examines how dryland vegetation in northern China responds to interannual droughts using satellite data from 2001 to 2022. The researchers found that severe drought changes the balance between drought resistance and post-drought recovery. Under moderate drought, plants that resisted drought well also tended to recover well, but under severe drought this became a tradeoff. Arid ecosystems appeared more fragile as drought intensified, while semi-arid areas relied more on recovery. The findings highlight the need to consider both resistance and recovery in dryland restoration and management.

To unlock the full energy potential of lithium-ion batteries, researchers at Tsinghua University have developed a novel synthesis route for the high-capacity cathode material LiNiO₂. Their “low-temperature reaction–high-temperature crystallization” (LR-HC) strategy bypasses problematic rocksalt phase formation that plagues conventional methods, yielding a material with significantly improved cycling stability and efficiency. The work offers a scalable pathway toward next-generation high-energy-density batteries and deepens the fundamental understanding of nickel-based cathode synthesis.

The fabrication of high-performance 3D hydrogel scaffolds for tissue engineering requires a balance between mechanical stiffness and structural integrity, yet single-wavelength femtosecond laser processing has struggled to achieve both simultaneously. A dual-wavelength dual-pulse strategy with optimized spatiotemporal coordination has now been applied to the preparation of three-dimensional hydrogel cell scaffolds, overcoming the inherent limitations of single-wavelength processing and enabling 20-layer bubble-free scaffolds with enhanced mechanical properties and in-situ nanoscale topography for improved cellular responses.