Viscosity is a fundamental property that determines how easily a material flows, affecting systems from industrial materials to the Earth's deep interior. Yet, scientists have rarely considered whether viscosity has an upper limit because high-viscosity materials are usually rock-forming minerals outside fluid dynamics studies. Now, a Japanese researcher has combined Earth observations, laboratory experiments, and numerical simulations to estimate a physically meaningful upper viscosity bound of 10^30±2 Pa s, with implications for geophysics and materials.

Researchers at the University of Osaka have used machine learning to develop a systematic framework for structural descriptors in supercooled water. A neural network model was used to quantitatively assess the performance of 16 structural descriptors in differentiating between two states of water, a high-density liquid and a low-density liquid. The framework could be used to further our understanding of the anomalous behavior of water.

The formation of supramolecular polymers within living cells is an emerging strategy for regulating cellular functions, and lipid droplets (LDs) are promising environments for such processes. LDs are cellular organelles composed mainly of neutral lipids, such as triacylglycerols and cholesterol esters, and are deeply involved in cellular functions. However, the self-assembly of supramolecular polymers in neutral lipid-rich environments, such as LDs, is not well understood. To this end, researchers from WPI-ITbM at Nagoya University in Japan have achieved programmable construction of supramolecular polymers in triolein (TO), one of the most abundant lipid components of LDs.

As artificial intelligence drives demand for faster and more energy-efficient hardware, ferroelectric memristors are attracting growing attention. A new review outlines how these devices combine memory, computation, and learning capabilities in a single platform, offering new opportunities for intelligent computing beyond the traditional von Neumann architecture.

Researchers at Tohoku University have discovered a promising strategy that converts harmful carbon dioxide into valuable fuels and chemicals by precisely altering nanoclusters made of copper.

The abundance of sulfur not only makes lithium-sulfur batteries cheaper to manufacture, but they also boast superior energy-storage capacity to current lithium-ion technologies. But one problem preventing practical deployment is polysulfide shuttling—when polysulfides formed during battery cycling escape the cathode and drift into unwanted areas and cause the battery to erode. Now, a group of researchers from Tohoku University has solved this problem with a molecularly designed covalent organic framework (COF)–graphene interlayer. Like a security checkpoint that both identifies threats and efficiently streams people where they need to go, the interlayer combines chemical trapping, rapid charge transport, and sulfur-conversion promotion. 

In a comprehensive review published in Earth and Planetary Physics, researchers from Wuhan University synthesize recent advances in the climatological variations and complex driving mechanisms of the equatorial electrojet (EEJ). The study highlights how the daytime EEJ responds to E-region conductivity, atmospheric tides, and intense mid- and high-latitude electrodynamic disturbances.

A research team led by Profs. CHEN Xingqiu and SUN Yan from the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Prof. NIU Haiyang from Northwestern Polytechnical University, has uncovered a previously unknown phase transformation mechanism in monolayer molybdenum telluride (MoTe₂).