A review published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences synthesizes current knowledge of nitrous oxide (N₂O) production by marine planktonic ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA), an important microbial group involved in ocean nitrification. The authors summarize the potential metabolic pathways of AOA-derived N₂O and examine how environmental factors including oxygen, temperature, pH, substrate availability, and organic carbon regulate this process. The review highlights the need to understand multifactorial effects of ocean warming, acidification, and deoxygenation to better predict marine N₂O emissions under future climate change.

In a paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences, a team of researchers led by Professor Jia Xin from the Institute of Environmental Archaeology at Nanjing Normal University reconstructed the environmental evolution and human settlement adaptation processes at the Xuecheng archaeological site in the Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River during the Mid to Late Holocene. By integrating multiple environmental proxies and high precision topographic data, the study revealed how hydrological and landscape changes shaped prehistoric settlement migration and spatial organization, providing new evidence for understanding human environment interactions during the formation of early Chinese civilization.

Circularly polarized light (CPL) carries spin angular momentum information and holds great promise for magnetic recording, spin optical communication, biological sensing and quantum computation. Conventional CPL detectors rely heavily on bulky and complex external optical components, which restrict device integration and miniaturization. Chiral organic semiconductors possessing an intrinsic capability for direct CPL discrimination, have emerged as promising candidates for CPL detectors. However, their development faces an intrinsic trade-off between charge carrier mobility and absorption dissymmetry factor.

Encouragingly, tremendous efforts have been devoted to resolving this contradiction, contributing to the development of a series of high-performance chiral organic semiconductors and thereby CPL detectors. Now, writing in Science Bulletin, researchers at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, systematically review representative progress of chiral organic semiconductors with a particular emphasis on the planarity-helicity dilemma and spectral tailoring. The review further highlights advances in CPL detectors and emerging applications, and discusses key challenges and future opportunities toward high-performance, miniaturized, and integrated CPL detection technologies.

Researchers have realized nonreciprocal dynamic degeneracy splitting in a gyromagnetic non-Hermitian photonic crystal. By engineering different lifetimes for opposite momentum channels at the same real frequency, the system turns loss into a directional selector, enabling momentum-selective bulk transmission and directional imaging.

Lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO₂, LCO) stands as one of the most representative cathode materials in lithium-ion batteries. The improvement in energy density of LiCoO₂ is essentially achieved by increasing the charge cut-off voltage. However, under high-voltage conditions, the electrolyte solvent molecules undergo severe oxidative decomposition at the cathode interface. Moreover, a series of issues including transition metal dissolution, oxygen release, and deteriorated thermal stability, have become bottlenecks that severely restrict its practical application.

To address this challenge, Prof. Yang Sun (Sun Yat-sen University), Associate Researcher Maolin Yang (Xiamen University), Professors Qiaobao Zhang (Xiamen University), Yu Qiao (Xiamen University), and Academician Shi-gang Sun (Xiamen University) have proposed a novel strategy to stabilize high-voltage LiCoO₂ cathodes by coating them with a conformal zeolite layer using a scalable high-speed solid-phase mechanofusion technique. The sub-nano channels of zeolite enable complete Li⁺ desolvation, creating a locally supersaturated electrolyte that suppresses solvent decomposition. The Zeolite@LCO cathode achieves ~83% capacity retention after 300 cycles at 4.8 V and stable operation at 5.0 V, with significantly enhanced thermal safety. This work provides a translatable paradigm for high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries. This work was recently published online in Science Bulletin.

A new review traces more than 70 years of microecology research in China, from early ideas about microbial balance to today’s work in precision medicine, sustainable agriculture and environmental restoration. The authors argue that combining artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and international collaboration could help turn microbiome science into practical solutions for human, animal and environmental health.