How do plants regulate these two pathways? Recently, a review article published by Professor Lin Zhang’s team at China Agricultural University pointed out that plants balance carbon expenditure with phosphorus acquisition efficiency. When soil phosphorus is scarce, plants increase investment in their root systems, allocating more carbon resources to the roots to search for limited phosphorus through the direct pathway. Conversely, when soil phosphorus is relatively abundant, plants reduce carbon allocation to the mycorrhizal symbiotic system.

Scientists have found that when tomato plants are infected with the late blight pathogen, neighboring healthy plants connected via the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) network can activate the defense genes related to jasmonic acid (JA) and salicylic acid (SA) within 24 hours, and this process is completely dependent on the direct connection of the hyphae.

Mechanically durable transparent electrodes are essential

for achieving long-term stability in flexible optoelectronic devices. Furthermore, they are crucial for applications in the fields of energy, display, healthcare, and soft robotics. Conducting meshes represent a promising alternative to traditional, brittle, metal oxide conductors due to their high

electrical conductivity, optical transparency, and enhanced mechanical flexibility. In this paper, we present a simple method for fabricating an ultra-transparent conducting metal oxide mesh electrode using selfcracking-assisted templates. Using this method, we produced an electrode with ultra-transparency (97.39%), high conductance (Rs = 21.24 Ω sq⁻¹), elevated work function (5.16 eV), and good mechanical stability. We also evaluated the effectiveness of the fabricated electrodes by integrating them into organic photovoltaics, organic light-emitting diodes, and flexible transparent memristor devices for neuromorphic computing, resulting in exceptional device performance. In addition, the unique porous structure of the vanadium-doped indium zinc oxide mesh electrodes provided excellent flexibility, rendering them a promising option for application in flexible optoelectronics.

Anion-exchange membrane water electrolyzers (AEMWEs) for green hydrogen production have received intensive attention due to their feasibility of using earth-abundant NiFe-based catalysts. By introducing a third metal into NiFe-based catalysts to construct asymmetrical M-NiFe units, the d-orbital and electronic structures can be adjusted, which is an important strategy to achieve sufficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performance in AEMWEs. Herein, the ternary NiFeM (M: La, Mo) catalysts featured with distinct M-NiFe units and varying d-orbitals are reported in this work. Experimental and theoretical calculation results reveal that the doping of La leads to optimized hybridization between d orbital in NiFeM and 2p in oxygen, resulting in enhanced adsorption strength of oxygen intermediates, and reduced rate-determining step energy barrier, which is responsible for the enhanced OER performance. More critically, the obtained NiFeLa catalyst only requires 1.58 V to reach 1 A cm⁻² in an anion exchange membrane electrolyzer and demonstrates excellent long-term stability of up to 600 h.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) play a crucial role in antigen processing and presentation, essential for linking innate and adaptive immunity. While balanced ROS levels promote immune function, excess ROS can disrupt antigen recognition, resulting in immune dysfunction. Targeted therapies to regulate ROS present new avenues for enhancing immunotherapy.

A recent study published in Nature has explored how the South Asian Summer Monsoon (SASM) responds to warming under six climate scenarios, spanning from the past to the future. Led by researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the study develops a unified framework based on thermodynamic (moisture-driven) and dynamic (wind-driven) processes that govern changes in the SASM, suggesting that insights from past warm climates can inform our understanding of the future SASM.

A team of researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health and the Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science uncovered a surprising new way that the body interacts with gut microbes to help maintain intestinal health.

The increasing frequency of once-in-a-decade agricultural and ecological drought has underscored the urgency of studying hydrological changes. A research team from the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-informatics of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has collaborated with international experts to analyse the estimated changes in land water storage over the past 40 years by utilising space geodetic observation technology and global hydrological change data. This innovative method has revealed a rapid depletion in global soil moisture, resulting in a significant amount of water flowing into the oceans, leading to a rise in sea levels. The research provides new insights into the driving factors behind the alarming reduction in terrestrial water storage and rise in sea levels. The findings have been published in the international journal Science.

Here, researchers from Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, CAS, fabricated customized micropatterns consisting of hydrogel core-shell nanoparticles via the femtosecond laser maskless optical projection lithography (Fs-MOPL) technique for the first time.

Their work offers an approach to fabricating hydrogel core-shell nanoparticles without high temperature or multiple steps.

Despite being a promising and efficient methodology for producing green hydrogen as a novel energy vector, anion exchange membrane water electrolyzers (AEMWEs) have yet to achieve significant commercial success. This is primarily due to the sluggish and complex oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at the anode, which remains the main bottleneck for this technology. To enhance the OER kinetics with minimum overpotentials, scarce and overpriced noble metal-based electrocatalysts are largely utilized, making the AEMWEs practically unaffordable. Recently, amorphous NiFe mixed oxides with variable Ni/Fe ratios have been synthesized using a simple and affordable sol–gel method, successfully enhancing both the OER activity and operational durability in AEMWEs. This work was published in Industrial Chemistry & Materials in March 2025.