Achieving national carbon neutrality targets necessitates precise and reliable carbon accounting across all sectors, particularly in waste management. As municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) plants expand globally, their role in energy generation and waste reduction is balanced against the imperative to accurately quantify greenhouse gas emissions. Traditional accounting methods often encounter challenges with the heterogeneous nature of waste, evolving waste composition due to sorting initiatives, co-incineration practices, and the underestimation of inert materials. Researchers from Tongji University and the Shanghai Institute of Pollution Control and Ecological Security have developed an advanced methodology that significantly improves the accuracy of direct carbon emission calculations from waste incineration, a critical step towards enhancing sustainable waste management strategies and furthering carbon neutrality efforts.

Automated lesion segmentation is essential for DR screening, but current deep learning models often lack robustness, generating false positives in low-contrast or artifact-heavy regions. This instability largely stems from a lack of anatomical understanding. While incorporating vessel structures can guide the model, obtaining pixel-level vessel annotations for training is notoriously expensive and scarce.

To address this dilemma, the research team proposed MedFuse on 15 March 2026 in Frontiers of Computer Science co-published by Higher Education Press and Springer Nature.

The global surge in automotive industry growth presents an escalating challenge: the disposal of billions of end-of-life tyres (ELTs) annually. These durable, complex materials resist natural degradation, posing significant environmental and societal burdens. To address this mounting problem, a recent comprehensive review meticulously examines cutting-edge thermochemical processes as a viable pathway to transform ELTs into valuable products, thereby fostering a more circular economy.

Published in Carbon Research, the article meticulously synthesizes advancements in thermochemical techniques, specifically focusing on gasification, pyrolysis, and incineration. Researchers delved into the primary by-products of these processes, including oil, gas, and char, assessing their energy efficiency, product yield, and overall environmental footprint. The study clarifies the intricate correlations between diverse process parameters and the resulting composition, yield, and quality of these recovered materials, providing a robust foundation for future applications.

Sodium-ion batteries are promising alternatives to lithium-ion batteries for large-scale energy storage, enabling lower-cost and safer energy storage systems. O3-type layered oxides are considered mainstream cathodes materials for practical sodium-ion batteries owing to their high theoretical capacity and scalable production, drawing wide attention from both academia and industry. Nevertheless, their limited capacity within 2.0–4.0 V restricts market competitiveness.

Raising the voltage causes lattice oxygen instability, irreversible phase transitions, and electrolyte decomposition, resulting in structural degradation and rapid performance fading, which blocks their commercial application.

To address these issues, a research team led by Prof. ZHANG Xian-Ming from Taiyuan University of Technology has recently proposed an integrated design concept based on solid-solution reactions and anionic redox chemistry. They successfully developed a low-cost, high-capacity, long-life, and air-stable 4.3 V-class O3-type layered oxide cathode material, NaNi_0.35Fe_0.2Mg_0.05Mn_0.3Ti_0.1O₂ (FMT), fundamentally addressing the two critical problems of irreversible P3→O1 phase transition and lattice oxygen release at high voltages.

The team’s findings were published in Science Bulletin .

Scientists have illuminated the intricate relationship between bamboo biochar application, rhizosphere microbial communities, and the phytoremediation of cadmium (Cd)-contaminated soil. Heavy metal contamination poses significant ecological and health risks, with phytoremediation — using plants to extract pollutants — emerging as a sustainable solution. However, the effectiveness of amendments like biochar in enhancing this process, particularly through its influence on soil microorganisms, has been incompletely understood. This investigation sought to clarify how varying dosages of bamboo biochar modulate Cd accumulation in willow (Salix psammophila) and the underlying microbial mechanisms.

To unravel these complex dynamics, a controlled pot experiment was established using Cd-contaminated soil. Researchers applied bamboo biochar at five different rates: 0% (control), 1%, 3%, 5%, and 7%. Following 210 days of plant growth, meticulous measurements were taken, including plant biomass, root activity, and Cd concentrations in plant tissues, alongside detailed analyses of soil properties. A key aspect of the methodology involved DNA extraction and high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA and ITS rRNA genes to characterize bacterial and fungal communities. Advanced statistical techniques, such as null-model analysis, co-occurrence network construction, and piecewise Structural Equation Models, were then employed to decipher community assembly processes and microbial interactions.

Sub-headline: HIT (Shenzhen) researchers develop FedPD to enhance personalized cross-architecture collaboration

Researchers from Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen) proposed FedPD, a personalized federated learning method based on partial distillation. By assessing knowledge relevance for selective transfer, FedPD enables efficient collaboration among clients with diverse model architectures while significantly improving performance on heterogeneous data.