Researchers tested a "sunflower" antenna layout on AAVS3, a full-scale prototype station built for the SKA-Low radio telescope. Computer simulations predicted the layout would lose sensitivity directly overhead at around 125 MHz. Real sky observations confirmed this loss and traced the problem to the layout's repeating geometry. As a result, the Observatory decided not to adopt the design for the telescope's final configuration and selected a modified layout instead.

Thousands of rapidly evolving aphid proteins initially resisted both conventional sequence comparisons and AlphaFold2. By sequencing closely related aphid species and supplying the missing evolutionary context, researchers uncovered a shared structural blueprint across approximately 2,400 proteins and established a method that may help scientists study other fast-evolving proteins involved in immunity, host-parasite interactions, and agriculture.

China’s agriculture has long faced three major problems: excessive chemical fertilizer application, residual mulch film pollution, and low utilization rates of livestock and poultry manure. Excessive fertilizer input leads to soil acidification and compaction, and nutrient use efficiency continues to decline. Traditional polyethylene (PE) mulch film is difficult to degrade, and its year-by-year accumulation forms microplastic pollution, damaging soil microbial communities and arable land health. At the same time, livestock waste such as cow manure is large in volume and widely distributed, but its resource utilization pathways are limited, and crop-livestock cycling is not smooth. The green transformation of agriculture urgently needs integrated technologies that simultaneously ensure stable yields, reduce fertilizer use, reduce plastic pollution, and improve soil fertility.

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