A group of researchers including scientists of the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo have uncovered a surprising role for calcium in shaping the building blocks of life. Their study reveals that calcium ions help determine the molecular "handedness" (chirality) of tartaric acid polymers—an essential feature of biological molecules like DNA and proteins. This discovery sheds light on how life's uniform molecular structures may have first emerged on early Earth. In a twist on traditional theories, the researchers suggest that simple polyesters, in addition to peptides or nucleic acids, could have adopted this crucial trait on early Earth, offering a fresh perspective on life’s chemical origins.

The High Energy Photon Source (HEPS), China’s flagship synchrotron radiation facility, has officially begun its joint-commissioning phase after successfully completing photon beam commissioning, the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which developed the facility, announced on March 27 in Beijing.

A research team led by Prof. WEN Liping from the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a biomimetic adsorbent that can attract and hold uranium ions. The inspiration for this adsorbent is the natural porous structure of the spiky, globular fruit of the Chinese sweet gum tree, Liquidambar formosana.

Transition metal valence state, a key property steering heterogeneous catalysis, has remained underexplored for its role in tuning S cathode kinetics in Li–S batteries. This study reported that CuO and Cu₂O particulate catalysts exhibited distinct interactions with sulfur species, dictating the kinetics of sulfur reduction reactions. While Cu²⁺ enables direct (poly)thiosulfate redox, both Cu²⁺ and Cu⁺ indirectly modulate lithium (poly)sulfide chemisorption by altering O^2- reactivity and Li bond strength. CuO with stronger interactions enabled faster sulfur reduction reaction kinetics, achieving enhanced Li–S battery performance. This work expands the scope of metal-valence-state effects in catalysis and offers an unconventional strategy to optimize Li–S battery performance via indirect Li-bond regulation.

Yo Kobayashi from The University of Osaka has demonstrated that it is possible to use human tissue as a computational resource to perform complex calculations. The inherent nonlinear mechanical properties of soft tissue make it a surprisingly ideal reservoir for information processing. The results of this discovery pave the way for applications where human tissue can be used to handle computational tasks.

Around 98 per cent of lignin created as a forestry by-product from plants is discarded, but a new enzyme could be the key to extracting high-value molecules from this waste using a green chemistry approach.

Through the weak nuclear force, one quark flavor can transmute into another. However, current data and theory indicate that the probabilities of quark flavor transmutation do not add up to 100%, as predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics. To understand whether this is due to physics beyond the Standard Model or underestimated uncertainties, nuclear theorists laid out a new framework needed to extract the up-down quark flavor mixing with a precision of a few parts in ten thousand from certain nuclear beta decays.