A widely burned agricultural waste rapeseed straw is used as an effective, eco-friendly corrosion inhibitor for cold-rolled steel in methanesulfonic acid.

Researchers have turned lightweight balsa wood into a strong, water-resistant composite by filling its pores with polylactic acid (PLA) built from small molecules inside the wood itself.

With the unique advantages that very low Earth orbit (VLEO) satellites have demonstrated in fields such as high-resolution remote sensing, the contradiction between the demand for large-volume data downlink and the extremely short visibility windows of ground stations has become increasingly prominent. Sun-synchronous orbit VLEO satellites typically have only one to two ground station passes per day, each lasting only a few minutes, far from sufficient to meet the high-throughput data downlink requirements generated by missions such as high-resolution imaging and video surveillance. However, existing relay architectures are unsuitable for small satellites due to constraints in mass, power consumption, and latency; low-rate terminals can only provide basic telemetry; conventional proportional–integral–derivative controllers struggle to maintain accuracy under nonlinear and strong disturbance environments; and nonlinear model predictive control imposes excessive computational burdens. Therefore, how to coordinately optimize the resource allocation and control strategies of VLEO satellites and relay constellations to achieve an effective balance between data transmission efficiency and onboard computational capability has become a key technical challenge in supporting high-capacity VLEO missions.

With the increasing threat posed by space debris to the safe operation of on-orbit spacecraft, the Whipple shield, as a critical means of defending spacecraft against hypervelocity impacts, has evolved from conventional single-layer configurations to advanced architectures employing high-performance materials such as fiber-reinforced composites. Advanced shields such as carbon fiber–reinforced composite laminates involve additional energy dissipation through failure modes including fiber fracture, delamination, and melting, resulting in shielding mechanisms that differ significantly from those of traditional Whipple shields. However, the currently predominant ballistic limit equations lack accuracy and generalizability for different advanced configurations, making them unsuitable for direct comparison of shielding performance. Hypervelocity impact experiments are costly and cannot be performed for every configuration, while existing numerical studies have mostly focused on the macroscopic morphology of debris clouds, with insufficient quantitative analysis of the hazardous fragments within them. Therefore, how to establish a method capable of quantitatively evaluating and comparing the shielding performance of different advanced Whipple shields has become a critical technical issue urgently to be addressed in the field of spacecraft space debris protection.

Circularly polarized light (CPL) carries spin angular momentum information and holds great promise for magnetic recording, spin optical communication, biological sensing and quantum computation. Conventional CPL detectors rely heavily on bulky and complex external optical components, which restrict device integration and miniaturization. Chiral organic semiconductors possessing an intrinsic capability for direct CPL discrimination, have emerged as promising candidates for CPL detectors. However, their development faces an intrinsic trade-off between charge carrier mobility and absorption dissymmetry factor.

Encouragingly, tremendous efforts have been devoted to resolving this contradiction, contributing to the development of a series of high-performance chiral organic semiconductors and thereby CPL detectors. Now, writing in Science Bulletin, researchers at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, systematically review representative progress of chiral organic semiconductors with a particular emphasis on the planarity-helicity dilemma and spectral tailoring. The review further highlights advances in CPL detectors and emerging applications, and discusses key challenges and future opportunities toward high-performance, miniaturized, and integrated CPL detection technologies.

A new artificial intelligence (AI) framework that combines ultrasound (US) with digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) may improve breast-level risk classification by raising specificity while preserving sensitivity. 

A multicenter study of 2,746 patients with acute pancreatitis (AP) introduces ORACLE, an artificial intelligence model that predicts organ failure from CT imaging. The model achieved AUCs of 0.81–0.89, outperforming conventional scoring systems, and provided a median early warning of 3.5 hours before clinical onset. Its 97.2% negative predictive value may help clinicians stratify risk.A multicenter study of 2,746 patients with acute pancreatitis (AP) introduces ORACLE, an artificial intelligence model that predicts organ failure from CT imaging. The model achieved AUCs of 0.81–0.89, outperforming conventional scoring systems, and provided a median early warning of 3.5 hours before clinical onset. Its 97.2% negative predictive value may help clinicians stratify risk.

Researchers have realized nonreciprocal dynamic degeneracy splitting in a gyromagnetic non-Hermitian photonic crystal. By engineering different lifetimes for opposite momentum channels at the same real frequency, the system turns loss into a directional selector, enabling momentum-selective bulk transmission and directional imaging.

Lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO₂, LCO) stands as one of the most representative cathode materials in lithium-ion batteries. The improvement in energy density of LiCoO₂ is essentially achieved by increasing the charge cut-off voltage. However, under high-voltage conditions, the electrolyte solvent molecules undergo severe oxidative decomposition at the cathode interface. Moreover, a series of issues including transition metal dissolution, oxygen release, and deteriorated thermal stability, have become bottlenecks that severely restrict its practical application.

To address this challenge, Prof. Yang Sun (Sun Yat-sen University), Associate Researcher Maolin Yang (Xiamen University), Professors Qiaobao Zhang (Xiamen University), Yu Qiao (Xiamen University), and Academician Shi-gang Sun (Xiamen University) have proposed a novel strategy to stabilize high-voltage LiCoO₂ cathodes by coating them with a conformal zeolite layer using a scalable high-speed solid-phase mechanofusion technique. The sub-nano channels of zeolite enable complete Li⁺ desolvation, creating a locally supersaturated electrolyte that suppresses solvent decomposition. The Zeolite@LCO cathode achieves ~83% capacity retention after 300 cycles at 4.8 V and stable operation at 5.0 V, with significantly enhanced thermal safety. This work provides a translatable paradigm for high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries. This work was recently published online in Science Bulletin.