GBD 2021 data were used to assess trends, SDI-related distributions and DALY drivers from 1990 to 2021. Cardiovascular diseases had the highest mortality and DALY rates in 2021. Communicable, maternal, neonatal and nutritional (CMNN) burdens remained concentrated towards lower-SDI settings but gradients weakened, whereas NCD burdens remained concentrated towards higher-SDI settings and gradients strengthened. Population growth and ageing mainly drove the 577 million rise in NCD-related DALYs.

Researchers at Soochow University have demonstrated a perovskite/silicon tandem solar cell with a lab efficiency of 34.0%. An independently certified device achieved a steady-state efficiency of 33.5% and an open-circuit voltage of 2.014 V. Discrete zirconia nanoparticles at the buried interface promoted uniform, void-free perovskite growth and suppressed non-radiative recombination through field-effect passivation without hindering charge extraction. The encapsulated device retained 84% of its initial efficiency after 2000 h of continuous operation.

Solar-driven water splitting offers a carbon-neutral path to green hydrogen, but its reliance on freshwater has long raised sustainability concerns. Seawater — covering 97% of Earth’s water — presents an abundant alternative, yet its chloride ions have traditionally been seen as a major obstacle, causing corrosive side reactions and sluggish kinetics. Now, a team led by researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has turned this challenge into an opportunity. They developed a noble-metal-free photocatalyst — MnOₓ(OH)_y/GaN nanowires supported by a silicon wafer — that splits natural seawater efficiently under sunlight, achieving a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 6.15% without any sacrificial agents. The catalyst delivers a hydrogen production rate of 15.2 mol g⁻¹ h⁻¹ in natural seawater and operates stably for over 360 min. Surprisingly, the team discovered that chloride ions in seawater are not detrimental but actively beneficial: they reduce the Coulomb attraction energy between photogenerated electrons and holes, and simultaneously lower the energy barrier for water oxidation. Meanwhile, the hydroxyl groups inherent to the manganese oxyhydroxide cocatalyst undergo dynamic exchange with water molecules, further accelerating the formation of key reaction intermediates. Outdoor tests under concentrated natural sunlight confirmed the system’s practical feasibility.

Researchers developed a nanophotonic processor via monolithicly integrating symmetry-broken quasi-bound states in the continuum (BIC) metasurfaces with GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum wells (MQWs). By leveraging light-matter interaction, the leaky mode of quasi-BIC makes the vertical-field light absorption possible in MQW. A nonlinear photoresponse is driven by changing asymmetry parameter, while linear scenario by incident angle and bias voltage. Implementing multifunctional BIC-MQWs into an artificial neural network provides a new hardware paradigm for machine vision applications.

Researchers led by Prof. DENG Dehui and Associate Prof. LIU Yanting from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) proposed a "seawater to hydrogen and fresh water (STHW)" route that couples alkaline water electrolysis (AWE) with low-temperature vacuum distillation desalination.

Researchers at the University of Arizona and Stanford University developed a dual-view Bessel two-photon projection microscopy that records neuronal activities at 100 volumes per second with synaptic-scale resolution. Combined with two-photon glutamate uncaging, the method tracks fast 3D calcium dynamics across extended neuronal structures, offering a new way to study how structure and dynamics of dendritic networks give rise to the neural computational power.

Large livestock and poultry operations can generate manure containing a mixture of emerging contaminants, including antibiotic residues, antibiotic resistance genes and microplastics. A new review suggests that these pollutants should not always be considered separately. Microplastics may act as mobile carriers that concentrate antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes, creating hotspots where antibiotic resistance can persist and spread more easily.

Intensive vegetable farming can produce large harvests, but it often comes with heavy fertilizer use and low nitrogen use efficiency. A new field study in Southern China suggests that adding the right amount of biochar could help farmers grow more vegetables while making better use of nitrogen fertilizer and improving soil quality.