A team led by Pei-Yi Wu and Sheng-Tong Sun at Donghua University reported a strong hydrogel fiber material with water-induced adhesion properties that resolves the structural contradiction of simultaneously achieving mechanical strength and self-adhesion. The fiber exhibits reversible humidity-responsive characteristics, maintaining high strength in a dry state and rapidly transforming into a highly adhesive state upon contact with water. This water-activated self-adhesive behavior is completely reversible, providing new insights for the design of high-performance adhesive materials in fields such as intelligent capture and micro-soft robots. The article was was recently published as an open access research article in CCS Chemistry, the flagship journal of the Chinese Chemical Society.

In an innovative twist to sustainable agriculture, a new study reveals how sugarcane waste can be transformed into biochar—a powerful soil amendment that enhances soil quality. This research not only highlights a green approach to waste management but also provides a significant boost to soil health, offering a win-win for both the environment and farming practices.

Iron based nanoparticles are everywhere in soils, rivers, wetlands, and groundwater. Although invisible to the naked eye, these tiny particles help regulate how nutrients and contaminants move through nature. A new review by an international research team provides the most comprehensive explanation to date of why iron nanoparticles remain stable in some environments and rapidly transform or clump together in others. Their findings offer scientific insights that can improve strategies for managing water quality, soil remediation, and contaminant transport.

Researchers have uncovered surprising links between natural humification processes in soil, carbon metabolism, and the spread of antibiotic resistance. The findings provide fresh insight into how plant residues transform after entering soils and how these transformations influence microbial communities and ecological risks.

We experimentally demonstrate encrypted image transmission over 40 km of optical fiber with high decryption fidelity and achieve a 10 Gbit/s optical encryption rate using a lithium niobate photonic chip. This represents the first implementation of public-key encryption at the physical optical layer. 

CAD-NeRF rebuilds 3D scenes from < 10 images via ShapeNet CAD retrieval + self-supervised pose-density joint optimization

BG²VN toolbox generates Gaussian-based benchmark graphs with ground-truth vital nodes, offering the first standard test-bed for comparing vital-node mining algorithms