A field-based study from the Yunkai Mountains reveals divergent elevational diversity responses between overstory tree and understory plant communities, highlighting the necessity of integrating vertical stratification and full elevational gradients for tropical mountain biodiversity conservation.

Instead of being discarded after seawater desalination, concentrated brine can gain a second life as a chemical feedstock. Researchers have developed a solar-driven offshore continuous-flow platform that couples freshwater production with selective methane conversion by directly reusing desalination brine as the chlorine source. The integrated system simultaneously produces freshwater and chloromethane, offering a strategy for the in situ utilization of offshore natural gas resources and introducing a new approach to solar-driven offshore chemical manufacturing.

Recently, researchers from the Department of Neurosurgery and Neurosurgery Research Laboratory at West China Hospital of Sichuan University published a comprehensive review article in the Chinese Medical Journal focusing on the regulation and targeted therapy of the tumor immune and non-immune microenvironment. The review provides a complex scope of a new hotspot in glioma research and treatment: the glioma microenvironment and its targeted therapies.Recently, researchers from the Department of Neurosurgery and Neurosurgery Research Laboratory at West China Hospital of Sichuan University published a comprehensive review article in the Chinese Medical Journal focusing on the regulation and targeted therapy of the tumor immune and non-immune microenvironment. The review provides a complex scope of a new hotspot in glioma research and treatment: the glioma microenvironment and its targeted therapies.

Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO₂RR) offers a route for sustainable chemical production using water as a clean proton source. However, water also promotes the competing hydrogen evolution reaction, limiting CO₂RR performance. Here we establish interfacial water as a decisive but overlooked design parameter for selective CO₂-to-ethanol electrolysis. A hetero-solvent microenvironment confining diglyme (DiG) near the Cu catalyst substantially suppresses HER under both neutral and alkaline conditions, where protons are supplied via water dissociation. In situ infrared absorption spectroscopy and theoretical calculation results reveal that DiG strengthens the hydrogen-bonding network of interfacial water, reducing free-water population prone to dissociation. Concurrently, the modulated water network effectively hinders solvent-mediated hydrogenation that favors ethylene formation, thereby promoting ethanol formation. Because this strategy modulates the microenvironment rather than the catalyst, it readily extends to Cu–Ag bimetallic catalyst. Moreover, confining hetero-solvent within microenvironment rather than in the bulk electrolyte enables high-current operation at low cell voltages, achieving an ethanol partial current density of 184.2 mA cm⁻² at 3.6 V under neutral condition.

A research team has developed a metal-free, nitrogen-doped porous carbon catalyst that simultaneously improves the capacity, charging efficiency, and operating life of lithium–oxygen (Li–O₂) batteries.