A revolutionary quantum sensing project that could transform cancer treatment by tracking how immune cells interact with tumours has been awarded a prestigious £2 million Future Leaders Fellowship.

The four-year fellowship, funded by UK Research and Innovation, focuses on a critical problem: immune cells often fail when they encounter cancer tissue because the tumour environment disrupts their metabolism. The pathbreaking project could enable the development of improved patient-tailored cancer therapies and provide tools for earlier diagnosis and evaluation of anti-cancer drugs.

The proliferation of 5G communication technology and the miniaturization of electronic devices have made protection against human electromagnetic radiation an urgent global public health issue. Concurrently, intensifying great power arms races are driving electromagnetic warfare environments towards full-spectrum capabilities and intelligentization. Microwave (300 MHz–300 GHz) and terahertz wave (0.1–10 THz) technologies, as core frequency bands in electromagnetic spectrum engineering, have deeply penetrated critical fields such as communications, military, healthcare, and industrial inspection. Consequently, electromagnetic wave absorption and shielding have become imperative problems to solve. However, traditional absorbing materials face numerous challenges, such as singular loss mechanisms, a lack of adaptive cross-band regulation capability, and excessive thickness. These limitations severely restrict their application in complex electromagnetic compatibility scenarios.

All-solid-state lithium–sulfur batteries promise high theoretical energy density and inherent safety, but their full capacity delivery is seriously hindered by incomplete sulfur conversion. Here, researchers from Tianjin University, Zhengzhou University and Soochow University propose a tandem catalysis strategy to segment the reaction pathway, flatten reaction energy barriers and thus realize deep sulfur conversion in ASSLSBs, which they demonstrate by cobalt single-atom catalysts anchored on a conductive MXene substrate.