News from Science China Press

Halide cathode materials are reshaping all-solid-state lithium batteries (ASSLBs) by enabling multi-electron reactions that dramatically boost energy density. A new review traces their evolution from liquid to solid-state systems, spotlighting single-phase electrode designs that eliminate inactive components and the rational design of multi-electron cathode materials. Looking ahead, it highlights AI-driven material discovery and integrated architectures to overcome energy challenges, charting a course toward cheaper, higher-energy ASSLBs.

Shaping electromagnetic waves at will is a long-standing goal in modern science and engineering. Programmable metasurfaces offer a promising route, but existing schemes are often too simple and fixed for real-time, task-oriented, and diverse control. A team from Zhejiang University has now developed a deep-learning-enabled temporal sequencing framework that maps target illusion patterns to modulation sequences, enabling rewritable and customizable electromagnetic illusions in experiments. This work is published in National Science Review.

A team led by Academician Ge Junbo and Professor Sun Aijun at Fudan University reveals that environmental eustress attenuates doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity while enhancing antitumor effects via a hypothalamus-heart-tumor axis. Eustress upregulates hypothalamic BDNF, which activates TrkB receptors on cardiac resident macrophages to inhibit CCL2 secretion, thereby reducing pro-inflammatory Ly6C^high monocyte/macrophage infiltration into heart tissue. In hepatocellular carcinoma models, eustress also downregulates tumor microenvironment CCL2, decreasing immunosuppressive G-MDSCs and M2 macrophages while increasing cytotoxic CD8+ T cells and M1 macrophages. CCL2 is identified as a core dual target for cardio-oncology intervention, providing a safe and accessible non-pharmacological strategy for preventing chemotherapy-related cardiac toxicity in cancer patients.

Eye AI is moving fast, but will it work for people living at high altitude? In a study accepted by Science Bulletin, Dr. Wu Yuan’s team found that leading ophthalmic foundation models can lose accuracy across high-altitude retinal image cohorts. The team developed MIXFound, a lightweight way to combine several models and make AI diagnosis more robust in underrepresented settings.

A 360-million-year-old fossil plant named Ganiopteris from Jiangxi Province, China, is the earliest seed plant with ovules borne directly on leaves. The fossil preserves complete megasporophylls with ovules on their undersides; these megasporophylls form a strobilus terminating the axis. The discovery reveals that the evolutionary shift from axial- to leaf-borne ovules occurred at least 40 million years earlier than previously known and offers insights into the origin of Permian glossopterids.

Researchers have developed a directly synthesized p-type PbS quantum dot (QD) ink that can form uniform short-wave infrared imaging films on 6-inch silicon wafers. The ink avoids a common post-treatment step (ligand exchange process) that can crack films and make pixels uneven. Prototype imagers made with the ink produced more uniform images and helped vehicle recognition under foggy conditions.

The discovery of twisted graphene moiré superlattices has opened new avenues for exploring low-dimensional quantum states of matter. This review summarizes recent experimental and theoretical advances in twisted graphene systems, focusing on electron correlation, unconventional superconductivity, and topological states emerging from moiré flatbands, while highlighting their underlying mechanisms, characterization techniques, key open questions and future research directions.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma often progresses through metastasis, yet its cellular basis remains unclear. This study maps the pan-metastatic landscape of HNSCC and identifies a WDR54-driven cell identity reshaping axis. WDR54 epigenetically activates TGF-β-mediated pEMT, enhancing invasion, immune evasion and metastatic potential, offering new insight into prognosis and precision therapy.