Direct experiences have powerful effects on perception – a truth at the heart of new Stanford-led research showing how immersive VR can make distant places feel more immediate and climate-related impacts, such as flooding, feel personally relevant. Compared to seeing static images, the approach engenders feelings more likely to lead to constructive actions.

The growing global energy demand and worsening climate change highlight the urgent need for clean, efficient and sustainable energy solutions. Among emerging technologies, atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials offer unique advantages in photovoltaics due to their tunable optoelectronic properties, high surface area and efficient charge transport capabilities. This review explores recent progress in photovoltaics incorporating 2D materials, focusing on their application as hole and electron transport layers to optimize bandgap alignment, enhance carrier mobility and improve chemical stability. A comprehensive analysis is presented on perovskite solar cells utilizing 2D materials, with a particular focus on strategies to enhance crystallization, passivate defects and improve overall cell efficiency. Additionally, the application of 2D materials in organic solar cells is examined, particularly for reducing recombination losses and enhancing charge extraction through work function modification. Their impact on dye-sensitized solar cells, including catalytic activity and counter electrode performance, is also explored. Finally, the review outlines key challenges, material limitations and performance metrics, offering insight into the future development of next-generation photovoltaic devices encouraged by 2D materials.

A new research paper published in Science reports the functional extinction of Acropora corals from Florida’s Coral Reef. Scientists documented catastrophic mortality of these critically endangered corals following a record-setting marine heatwave in 2023 that marked the ninth mass bleaching event for the region. Both Acropora coral species — staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) and elkhorn (Acropora palmata) — are important reef-builders in Florida and the Caribbean and have been a major focus of recent coral restoration efforts.

The ocean’s smallest engineers, calcifying plankton, quietly regulate the Earth’s thermostat by capturing and cycling carbon. However, a new review published this week in Science by an international team led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Spain, finds that these organisms, coccolithophores, foraminifers, and pteropods, are oversimplified in the climate models used to predict our planet’s future. 

A new international analysis now published in Global Change Biology warns that penguin survival hinges on a shift in how science and conservation policy approach climate change: rather than examining extreme events in isolation, it is their cumulative effects that must be assessed. Applied for the first time in a quantitative way across habitats of all 18 penguin species in the Southern Hemisphere, this perspective provides a crucial tool to anticipate risks and design more effective conservation policies.

A unique long-term study, in which biological samples were collected from the same population of blue tits over a 30-year period, shows that rising spring temperatures have doubled the incidence of avian malaria in southern Sweden.

A research paper just published in Science China Life Sciences reveals that narrow-ranging species and wide-ranging species adopt distinct adaptive strategies to cope with aridity in drylands, with narrow-ranging species exhibiting higher leaf water content, a steeper increase in leaf volume relative to dry weight, and greater species abundance under high aridity, thereby enhancing water storage and conferring an adaptive advantage in extreme environments.

Backyard birders in South Africa may continue to enjoy biodiversity in visiting birds under climate change scenarios, while climate change and declining biodiversity may decrease birding in protected public parks.