Ulinastatin (UTI), a protein naturally found in human urine, exerts hepatoprotective effects by attenuating inflammation, oxidative stress, and cell death, and modulating immunity and hemostasis. This review synthesizes existing evidence on UTI's therapeutic potential across seven liver conditions, from sepsis-induced hepatic injury to liver cancer.

Photoacoustic computed tomography can provide rich optical contrast over extended penetration depth of biological tissues. However, its capability of multi-scale multi-contrast structural and functional imaging is limited by the inherent size-dependent sensitivity, narrow bandwidth and high material rigidity of the state-of-the-art piezoelectric transducer arrays. The team from Jinan University has proposed a novel sheet-like focusing dual-frequency fiber ultrasound transducer, avoiding the use of multiple transducers to simultaneously capture photoacoustic signals of different frequencies. This design enables deep penetration, high resolution, and precise functional imaging at the entire brain scale and also screening for malignant brain tumors.

Commercialization of sodium-ion batteries depends on the advancement of high-performance hard carbon (HC) anodes. Their complex microstructure, composed of graphitic nanodomains, nanopores, and defects, fundamentally governs sodium storage. However, most design of HC is hampered by a fragmented research approach focusing on single-point optimization. Isolated improvements in the precursor selection, pyrolysis, or post-treatment often produce unsatisfactory results due to overlooked synergistic effects across the entire fabrication chain. This review addresses this challenge by proposing a holistic, full-process engineering perspective. We first clarify how the core structural features of HC collectively determine the storage mechanism. We then systematically examine the roles of pretreatment, mid-process control, and post-treatment in microstructural manipulation. We also critically assess and comparatively evaluate these strategies by identifying their respective strengths, shortcomings, and interdependencies. Our analysis emphasizes that treatments at one stage precondition outcomes at another, highlighting key coupling points for synergistic optimization. How to coordinate these strategies in industrial production to obtain batch performance stable HC has also been discussed. Finally, we put forward future research directions, focusing on establishing quantitative microstructure–property relationships through advanced characterization and modeling, developing cross-stage co-design strategies, and evaluating process scalability and sustainability. This review aims to guide the transition of HC anode development from exploratory confusion toward rational, predictive engineering.

Biomass-derived materials are emerging as powerful enablers for sustainable solid-state batteries (SSBs), offering structurally tunable, chemically versatile, and environmentally benign alternatives to conventional battery components. This review critically examines recent advances in the use of bio-derived carbons, polymers, and composites across key SSBs elements, including electrodes, solid electrolytes, binders, and separators. Biomass-derived carbons produced via pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonization, and molten-salt methods provide hierarchical porosity and controllable graphitization, enabling efficient ion transport, catalytic activity, and mechanical buffering in electrode architectures. Biopolymers such as cellulose, lignin, and chitosan serve as functional matrices for solid polymer and gel electrolytes, enhancing ionic conductivity, interfacial stability, and mechanical integrity, while their intrinsic microstructures can also template low-tortuosity inorganic ceramic electrolytes. In addition, bio-based binders, separators, and electrolyte additives help address critical challenges, including dendrite growth, polysulfide shuttling, and interfacial degradation. Remaining barriers, such as feedstock variability, impurity control, multifunctional performance trade-offs, and scalable processing, are discussed alongside emerging opportunities enabled by artificial intelligence-assisted materials design. By synthesizing fundamental design principles and recent progress, this review highlights how biomass-derived materials can accelerate the development of high-performance, safe, and truly sustainable next-generation SSBs.

Zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs) represent a promising class of post-lithium energy storage systems. However, their practical deployment is impeded by critical interfacial instabilities, such as uncontrolled growth of zinc dendrites, adverse parasitic interfacial reactions, and cathode material dissolution. Atomic layer deposition (ALD), renowned for its atomic-scale precision and exceptional conformality, offers a pivotal strategy to mitigate these challenges. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of ALD applications in ZIBs, with a central focus on a critical paradigm shift: from the use of simple passive physical barriers toward multifunctional coatings capable of actively regulating interfacial chemistry and ion transport. It elucidates the mechanisms through which ALD-derived coatings (e.g., Al2O3, ZnO, Fe2O3) regulate Zn2+ flux, suppress hydrogen evolution reactions (HERs), and induce preferential zinc deposition along specific crystallographic orientations (e.g., the Zn (002) plane) to inhibit dendrite formation. Furthermore, it covers ALD strategies for enhancing cathode structural stability against dissolution and collapse, as well as for functionalizing separators to achieve selective ion transport. Finally, it presents critical perspectives on overcoming the cost-scalability trade-off and deepening the mechanistic understanding of structure-property relationships, aiming to guide the rational design of durable and high-performance ZIBs. This paradigm shift represents a fundamental transition in interface design philosophy for high-performance ZIBs.

High-resolution phase imaging is vital for nanomanufacturing and bioimaging, but is often limited by the trade-off between resolution and field of view. Scientists in China have developed L²-CPI, a computational phase imaging technique that achieves an arbitrary field of view with diffraction-limited resolution. By integrating a pixelated acquisition strategy with dynamic vibration compensation, this system enables seamless, high-throughput 3D inspection of semiconductors and biological samples without the errors of traditional image stitching.

Accurately predicting how terrestrial ecosystems will respond to global change is essential for assessing and projecting the land carbon sink, and with it the pace of future climate change. It has become one of the central problems in global change science, yet neither of the field's two main tools can solve this endeavor on its own. Field experiments that deliberately manipulate global change drivers (e.g., CO₂ concentration) supply direct empirical evidence, but cover only a few years and a limited number of experimental sites. Process-based models that simulate how ecosystems work can project across the globe and centuries ahead, but rest on simplified, sometimes competing assumptions that leave their forecasts uncertain. The emerging solution is to couple the two, an approach known as data-model integration, in which experiments test and refine the assumptions inside models, while models in turn guide the design of more informative experiments.

Prof. Ben Zhong Tang of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) and Professor Anjun Qin of South China University of Technology, together with a number of scholars who have long been engaged in research on organic room-temperature phosphorescence, aggregation-induced emission, theoretical calculations, and organic/polymer optoelectronic functional materials, jointly authored a review article entitled "Organic room-temperature phosphorescence materials."