Researchers developed a palladium-engineered nickel phosphide catalyst for selective bio-oil upgrading. In anisole tests at 200 ℃, NiPdP achieved near-complete conversion and 97.28% selectivity to cyclohexane; with m-cresol at 250 ℃, selectivity to methylcyclohexane reached 95.72%. Palladium altered catalyst formation, lattice strain and electronic structure, helping suppress unwanted carbon–carbon bond cleavage, sintering and coke formation while supporting reuse over 10 cycles.

The present study investigated the disease burden and associated productivity losses attributable to T2DM among adults, while also forecasting the disease burden through 2050. The study adopted a quantitative approach and drew upon datasets obtained from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2021 database, the World Bank, the United Nations, and the International Labor Organization. Projections based on the BAPC model indicate that the ASDR will rise to 2243.12 per 100,000 population by 2050. The estimated annual productivity loss attributable to T2DM in the region exceeds 220 billion U.S. dollar (USD). Comprehensive and sustainable interventions, including health policies, educational initiatives, and social protection measures, are needed to reduce disparities associated with T2DM.

We are pleased to present a curated collection of our recent cover articles, featuring breakthroughs ranging from enzyme–chemical interaction prediction, genome-scale modeling and novel biosensor development to metabolic engineering of industrially relevant microbial hosts and next-generation gene-editing tools. These studies highlight the field's rapid evolution from fundamental tool discovery to translational industrial applications.

Researchers developed WiFo-2, a wireless foundation model for heterogeneous future wireless systems. Pretrained on 11.6 billion CSI points, it surpassed fully supervised task-specific models in three zero-shot reconstruction tasks and used 1% of labeled data for nine downstream tasks. Its confidence estimates support reliable operation. A prototype validated three tasks across indoor and outdoor scenarios and bands spanning sub-6 GHz and millimeter-wave.

A recent study published in National Science Review has revealed that the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), traditionally regarded as a single climate mode, consists of two distinct types with different physical mechanisms and climate impacts. The findings advance the understanding of Indian Ocean variability and provide new insights into how IOD events influence regional climate.

Improving the subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) forecast skill for East Asian winter cold surges remains a grand challenge in operational meteorology. Using ECMWF hindcast data, a research team systematically identified the "high-skill windows" of week-3 cold surge forecasts. They found that a "warm-west/cold-east" sea surface temperature dipole over the mid-latitude North Pacific emerges as a consistent precursor of these windows under both El Niño and La Niña conditions, but that the dipole alone is not enough: high skill emerges only when the SST anomalies in all the key regions, including the Barents-Kara Seas, the Indian Ocean and the tropical Pacific, meet their thresholds at the same time. This makes it possible to pre-screen a subseasonal forecast's reliability before it is issued. The work was published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences.