Research teams from The University of Hong Kong, led by Professor Chunyi Zhi, have provided a focused review of aqueous Zn-based flow batteries for long-duration energy storage. The review identifies Zn anode reversibility loss and active-species crossover/shuttle as two coupled bottlenecks, and summarizes design strategies that integrate electrolyte regulation, interfacial engineering, electrode architecture, species chemistry, and membrane design.

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has completed a month-long flight-test campaign in Germany with Singapore’s first indigenously designed, engineered and built electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The prototypes, comprising 8-metre and 3-metre wingspan variants, are research technology demonstrators, currently not designed to carry passengers. Working with flight-test experts from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the NTU team flew the larger 8-metre wingspan demonstrator to heights above 90 metres, while the 3-metre wingspan demonstrator reached speeds of more than 120 km/h. The flights generated critical data on the aircraft’s performance. The flights mark a historic first for Singapore, demonstrating the country’s ability to design, engineer, build, integrate and fly a complete electric aircraft. The milestone adds a new capability to Singapore’s established aerospace sector and lays the groundwork for further research into electric aviation.

Researchers from the University of Osaka have developed a fast computational framework that predicts the optical performance of quantum color centers without being restricted to a specific host material. By replacing computationally intensive calculations with simple theoretical formulas and procedures, the method enables rapid screening of promising quantum materials spanning ultraviolet to telecommunication wavelengths.

Tide levels can vary by almost a metre across a single bay, according to a new study that uses decades of satellite images to measure tides at the scale of individual beaches.

Researchers at Technische Universität München and the University of Oxford have led the development of a new technique that can estimate tides along the coast at intervals of just 100 metres. This provides a level of local detail that is difficult to capture using existing tide gauges and satellite measurements.

The study has been published today (25 August) in Nature Communications: Earth and Environment.