A unified scaling analysis gives quantum geometry and disorder their own measurable weight patterns, allowing researchers to separate competing sources of the second-order nonlinear Hall effect in existing experiments.

Cable tray systems are essential for supporting electrical and communication cables in buildings, but their failure during earthquakes can disrupt critical services and pose serious safety risks. Researchers have now validated Japan's seismic design guidelines through full-scale shaking table tests. While seismic supports proved sufficiently strong, the cable trays themselves were more vulnerable. The team also developed a simple steel-wire reinforcement method that significantly improves seismic performance in both new and existing buildings.

Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) are fundamental building blocks for flexible electronics, including flexible displays, wearable sensors and electronic skin. However, at the heterointerface between the organic semiconductor (OSC) and the dielectric layer where charge transport takes place, structural and energetic disorders inevitably introduce defects, which adversely affect device stability. To address these challenges, researchers from Tianjin University and collaborating institutions have developed a novel interfacial engineering strategy, in which ultrathin alkyl chains of alkylated OSC molecules are covalently attached to the OSC backbone. This approach effectively reduces the trap density at the OSC/dielectric interface, thereby enabling stable OFET operation. In addition, this strategy substantially decreases the dielectric layer thickness, which facilitates low‑voltage operation. As a result, OFETs constructed on the basis of this strategy operate stably at a low voltage of −1 V for over 10,000 s, while integrated logic circuits achieve high gain, fast switching and robust stability. This work provides a new pathway toward high-reliability flexible electronics.

A research team from Tiangong University has published a systematic practice-oriented review in Science Bulletin, establishing a unified semi-quantitative industrial evaluation framework covering eight core dimensions for lithium-ion battery prelithiation technologies. The framework enables objective head-to-head comparison of eight representative prelithiation strategies, provides a scenario-specific decision matrix for five typical application scenarios, and distills five universal design rules for next-generation solutions, closing the long-standing gap between laboratory innovation and large-scale battery manufacturing.

ζ-Carotene, a key intermediate in lycopene biosynthesis, is widely found in plants and photosynthetic microorganisms, but its isomer-specific properties remain poorly understood due to isolation and purification challenges. Researchers have now developed a purification strategy to obtain high-purity geometric isomers and systematically characterized, for the first time, their isomer-specific spectral properties, photoisomerization behavior, UV-shielding capacity, antioxidant activity, and skin-related biological activities—highlighting ζ-carotene's promise as a natural ingredient for skin health and photoprotection.

Hydrogen may be a clean fuel, but not all hydrogen is green. Most H₂ is still produced from fossil fuels, while storing and transporting it remain costly and technically challenging. For hydrogen to truly live up to its green promise, we need cleaner and less costly ways to produce and store it. Looking for a more sustainable way forward, researchers at Tohoku University have developed a potential solution. Their new recyclable system uses baker’s yeast to store hydrogen directly in organic molecules and abundant, inexpensive iron ions to release it when needed.

Extended reality (XR) aims for "immersion," requiring displays to simultaneously deliver a wide field of view (FOV) and true 3D imagery free of vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC). Researchers in China have reported a near-eye light-field display architecture based on a heterogeneous metalens array. By integrating lens and spatially heterogeneous prism phase designs with nanoimprint technology, the array overcomes the aberration-induced FOV limit of conventional microlens arrays, providing a hardware path for next-generation immersive XR displays.

Researchers have performed a full calculation within Glauber theory, a cornerstone framework for high-energy nuclear collisions. By accounting for all order multiple-scattering processes, their method accurately reproduces experimental data and provides a benchmark for simpler approximations, strengthening the theoretical foundation for studying ordinary and exotic nuclei.