Air pollution is a major environmental challenge of this century. In a recent Journal of Environmental Sciences review paper, scientists from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have highlighted potential technologies for direct purification of air pollutants in the environment, including photocatalysis and ambient non-photocatalytic approaches. They also propose the novel concept of an ‘Environmental Catalytic City.’

Silver iodide is the material of choice to make clouds release rain and snow. For decades, its remarkable ability to trigger precipitation has been used in cloud seeding to prevent hail damage and mitigate droughts. Now, for the first time, researchers at TU Wien have revealed in atomic detail how this process works.

A team of researchers from the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) and Tokyo Metropolitan University has developed a protein-based gel that replicates the softness and fibrous structure of native skeletal muscle tissue. This innovation enables the cultivation of muscle cells with slow-twitch characteristics, offering new possibilities for treating muscle loss, enhancing metabolic function, and developing next-generation biomedical devices.

In a paper published in National Science Review, a research team led by Prof. Hao Sun at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has clarified how fluorinated electrolyte additives function in rechargeable sodium-chlorine (Na-Cl₂) batteries. The study found that these additives do not primarily protect the anode by forming a solid electrolyte interphase, as previously believed. Instead, they to spontaneously react with electrolyte components to generate aluminum fluoride (AlF₃) catalyst in situ at the cathode, accelerating the NaCl/Cl₂ redox reactions. Based on this mechanism, the team designed a polymerized ionic liquid cathode catalyst for the cathode, achieving an exceptional rate capability of 30,000 mA g⁻¹ and stable cycling performance over 300 cycles. This work establishes a new design principle to linking anode additives to cathode catalysis, advancing the development of next-generation high-energy, ultrafast-charging batteries.

Physicists at Umeå University, in collaboration with researchers in China, have developed a laser made entirely from biomaterials – birch leaves and peanut kernels. The environmentally friendly laser could become an inexpensive and accessible tool for medical diagnostics and imaging.

Exploring topological singularities in non-Hermitian photonic systems has recently become a frontier in modern physics and engineering. Towards this goal, researchers in China have experimentally realized the transition from a bound state in the continuum (BIC) to an exceptional point (EP) in a terahertz metasurface by tuning the incident angle. Optical pumping modulates silicon’s carrier concentration, enabling dynamic EP switching and THz beam deflection for compact sensing and non-Hermitian photonic applications.