Nowadays, plastic wastes have seriously endangered human health and ecological safety. Recycling plastics is a promising ap-proach to achieve multiple uses of carbon resources. In this review, photocatalysis is introduced for the conversion of plastics into various valuable chemicals. The state-of-the-art photocatalytic techniques for plastics conversion are divided into two categories of direct and indirect photoconversion. Researchers summarize in detail the photocatalytic small organic molecules conversion from polyeth-ylene terephthalate (PET), polylactic acid (PLA) and polyethylene (PE) through the alkaline-assistant and hydrothermal pretreat-ments. Then, they overview the effective strategies of direct photoconverting PE, PLA and polyvinyl chloride into chemicals via the two-step process, amination strategy, and single reactive oxygen species-assistant strategy. Finally, they present some outlooks of the current challenges and propose some potential solutions in the future.

Nanomaterials with catalytic properties that are derived from Chinese herbs are called ‘herbzymes’. Herbzymes are nanomaterials from Chinese herbs that mimic natural enzymes like peroxidase (POD), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GPx). For a deeper understanding of herbzymes, researchers from China present a comprehensive review of different types of herbzymes and their mode of synthesis, while detailing their biomedical applications, current challenges faced, and potential directions for their development. 

Buzz pollination, a process where bees vibrate flowers to release pollen, occurs in more than 20,000 plant species, including tomatoes and blueberries. The most extreme cases occur in Pedicularis (Orobanchaceae) wildflowers, whose “Elephant-Nose” shaped flowers depend on bumblebees’ buzzing them for pollination. Although different elephant nose species bloom together and share the same bumblebees, hybridization among co-blooming Pedicularis species is rare. How do bumblebees harvest pollen from elephant-nose flowers? In a multidisciplinary research article published in SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences, researchers from the Kunming Institute of Botany (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Sun Yat-sen University, along with researchers from the United States and Sweden, unveiled the biomechanical secrets behind their fascinating interactions.

Terahertz (THz) devices, owing to their distinctive optical properties, have achieved myriad applications in diverse domains including wireless communication, medical imaging therapy, hazardous substance detection, and environmental governance. Concurrently, to mitigate the environmental impact of electronic waste generated by traditional materials, sustainable materials-based THz functional devices are being explored for further research by taking advantages of their eco-friendliness, cost-effective, enhanced safety, robust biodegradability and biocompatibility. This review focuses on the origins and distinctive biological structures of sustainable materials as well as succinctly elucidates the latest applications in THz functional device fabrication, including wireless communication devices, macromolecule detection sensors, environment monitoring sensors, and biomedical therapeutic devices. We further highlight recent applications of sustainable materials-based THz functional devices in hazardous substance detection, protein-based macromolecule detection, and environmental monitoring. Besides, this review explores the developmental prospects of integrating sustainable materials with THz functional devices, presenting their potential applications in the future.

Enhancing the firefighting protective clothing with exceptional thermal barrier and temperature sensing functions to ensure high fire safety for firefighters has long been anticipated, but it remains a major challenge. Herein, inspired by the human muscle, an anisotropic fire safety aerogel (ACMCA) with precise self-actuated temperature monitoring performance is developed by combining aramid nanofibers with eicosane/MXene to form an anisotropically oriented conductive network. By combining the two synergies of the negative temperature-dependent thermal conductive eicosane, which induces a high-temperature differential, and directionally ordered MXene that establishes a conductive network along the directional freezing direction. The resultant ACMCA exhibited remarkable thermoelectric properties, with S values reaching 46.78 μV K^-1 and κ values as low as 0.048 W m^-1 K^-1 at room temperature. Moreover, the prepared anisotropic aerogel ACMCA exhibited electrical responsiveness to temperature variations, facilitating its application in intelligent temperature monitoring systems. The designed anisotropic aerogel ACMCA could be incorporated into the firefighting clothing as a thermal barrier layer, demonstrating a wide temperature sensing range (50–400 °C) and a rapid response time for early high-temperature alerts (~ 1.43 s). This work provides novel insights into the design and application of temperature-sensitive anisotropic aramid nanofibers aerogel in firefighting clothing.

In a paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences, a team of researchers analyzed spatiotemporal distribution, organizational modes of severe convective wind (SCW) events during the warm season (May to September) in North China. In addition, the environmental conditions before the occurrence of SCW convective systems and non-SCW convective systems were compared. It provides valuable insights to enhance the forecasting accuracy of severe convective weather events in this region.

Biological cells exhibit nearly transparent characteristics with weak absorption properties in the visible light spectrum, resulting in extremely low optical contrast between cells and the surrounding medium under traditional bright-field microscopy. To enhance imaging contrast, conventional methods rely on chemical staining or fluorescent labeling, introducing exogenous absorption/fluorescence probes to visualize cellular structures. However, these approaches suffer from drawbacks such as phototoxicity, photobleaching, and poor biocompatibility, severely limiting long-term dynamic observation of living cells. Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) utilizes the inherent physical property of cellular phase (thickness) as an endogenous “probe”, resolving cellular thickness, refractive index, and 3D topography with nanoscale accuracy. It provides a new avenue for dynamic observation of living cells and nanoscale biological studies.

As a significant branch of QPI technology, differential phase contrast (DPC) has attracted considerable attention due to its advantages of being non-interferometric and low-cost. However, its theoretical framework relies on the “weak object approximation”, linking intensity images to sample phase through a linear model. This simplified model introduces two fundamental limitations. First, the phase reconstruction result is highly dependent on the precise modeling of the phase transfer function (PTF) under an ideal pupil. In practical optical systems, however, wavefront aberrations couple with the sample phase, leading to significant reconstruction errors. Second, the conventional half-circle illumination suffers from the problem of PTF response cancellation, resulting in the loss of low-frequency phase information and making it difficult to accurately reconstruct the fine structure of weak phase objects. These limitations significantly compromise the robustness of DPC in non-ideal optical environments and restrict its practical applicability in frontier biological research, such as cellular morphology characterization and tracking of subcellular dynamic processes.

NANJING, China – In a revolutionary one-two punch, Chinese research teams have successfully engineered the human spleen into a living bioreactor capable of curing diabetes and growing functional organs – achievements published back-to-back in Science Translational Medicine and Diabetes this month. This convergence of discoveries positions the long-underestimated spleen as a game-changing platform for regenerative medicine.