The polar regions of the Sun remain among the least-explored territories in solar physics, yet they play a crucial role in driving the solar magnetic cycle, generating the fast solar wind, and shaping space weather throughout the heliosphere. Limited by the Earth’s position in the ecliptic plane, past missions have only provided oblique views of the poles, leaving their behavior and evolution poorly understood. This observation gap has left three top-level scientific questions unanswered: How does the solar dynamo work and drive the solar magnetic cycle? What drives the fast solar wind? How do space weather processes globally originate from the Sun and propagate throughout the solar system? The Solar Polar-orbit Observatory (SPO), scheduled for launch in January 2029, aims to address this gap by achieving the first direct imaging observation of the Sun’s poles from high heliolatitudes. Using multiple Earth flybys and a Jupiter gravity assist, SPO will reach an orbital inclination of up to 75° (80° in an extended mission), with a 15-year lifetime (including the 8-year extended mission) covering an entire solar cycle. In order to achieve its scientific goals, SPO will carry a suite of remote-sensing and in-situ instruments to measure the vector magnetic fields and Doppler velocity fields in the photosphere, to observe the Sun in the extreme ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths, to image the corona and the heliosphere up to 45 solar radii, and to perform in-situ detection of magnetic fields and charged particles in the solar wind. The mission’s vantage point will allow extended observation periods above ±55° latitude, including during the next solar maximum around 2035, when a polar magnetic field reversal is expected. By directly imaging the poles, SPO will provide invaluable insights, revolutionizing our understanding of the Sun and the space weather processes.

Continuous cyclohexanone production via green phenol hydrogenation using nanoparticle catalysts has suffered from catalyst-product separation challenges. To address this, a flexible, nitrogen-doped, and hierarchically porous carbon nanofiber catalytic membrane (Pd/CNFM) was developed through electrospinning, controlled co-etching, and subsequent Pd loading. This novel approach, pioneering a continuous fiber-based catalytic membrane for phenol hydrogenation in a flow-through reactor, effectively integrated catalysis and separation.

Research team from Fudan University has made a breakthrough in revealing the three-dimensional electronic structure of LiV₂O₄ and the mechanism of its 3d orbital heavy fermion behavior.

A new study has revealed how tiny microbes in rivers and wetlands across China help clean up excess nitrogen pollution, offering fresh insights into the health of freshwater ecosystems and the global nitrogen cycle.

Deakin University researchers find biochar-enriched potting mix can enhance basil cultivation while supporting carbon storage.

What happens when cows graze, carbon vanishes from soil, and climate change looms large? Scientists have a plan—and it involves a black, brainy material called biochar that’s transforming how we think about soil health in some of the planet’s most delicate landscapes. A powerful new study—published on July 7, 2025, in Carbon Research—has cracked the code on how to protect and even boost soil carbon in karst ecosystems, the stunning limestone-rich regions that stretch across southern China and beyond. 

The Jingjing Wu group at the National Key Laboratory of Synergistic Materials Creation/Frontier Science Center for Transformative Molecules (FSCTM) at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in collaboration with the Xiaosong Xue group at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, recently reported a novel biomimetic Schenck-ene/Hock/aldol tandem rearrangement reaction mediated by singlet oxygen and its synthetic applications. Using this tandem reaction, they synthesized four natural products, alstoscholarinoid A, masterpenoid D, leontogenin, and marsformoxide B, in a clustered, one- to four-step process from readily available, inexpensive naturally resourced molecules. The mild reaction conditions and high functional group tolerance suggest that this strategy could serve as a novel approach for molecular backbone editing of natural products. Computational chemistry studies further revealed the mechanistic details of the rearrangement reaction and the factors that control the different rearrangement pathways of the key intermediate hydroperoxide. This study, published in CCS Chemistry, provides new insights into the synthesis of related natural products and molecular backbone editing and reconstruction 

A team of researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China and the Zhongguancun Institute of Artificial Intelligence has developed SciGuard, an agent-based safeguard designed to control the misuse risks of AI in chemical science. By combining large language models with principles and guidelines, external knowledge databases, relevant laws and regulations, and scientific tools and models, SciGuard ensures that AI systems remain both powerful and safe, achieving state-of-the-art defense against malicious use without compromising scientific utility. This study not only highlights the dual-use potential of AI in high-stakes science, but also provides a scalable framework for keeping advanced technologies aligned with human values.