The research team of Xumu Zhang and Genqiang Chen at Southern University of Science and Technology has achieved a new breakthrough in the synthesis and application of benzoxoxetine ligands. They efficiently and modularly constructed benzoxoxetine ligands through a tandem nucleophilic addition S_NAr reaction. The related findings, titled "Redox-Free and Modular Access to Oxacyclic Phosphines Enabled by a Robust Ambiphilic Phosphine Reagent," were recently published as an open access Reserach Article in CCS Chemistry.

Precocial animals, the ones that move autonomously within hours after hatching or birth, have many biases they are born with that help them survive, finds a new Royal Society paper led by Queen Mary University of London. The new model proposed by the researchers suggest that naïve animals like newborn turtles and chicks are not blank slates but are supported by the presence of multiple biases that interact. 

In collaboration with the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN), Oshima College, the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) succeeded in developing a new regenerator material composed solely of abundant elements, such as copper, iron, and aluminum, that can achieve cryogenic temperatures (approx. 4 K = −269°C or below) without using any rare-earth metals or liquid helium. By utilizing a special property called "frustration" found in some magnetic materials, where the spins cannot simultaneously satisfy each other's orientations in a triangular lattice, the team demonstrated a novel method that replaces the conventional rare-earth-dependent cryogenic cooling technology. The developed material holds promise for responding to the lack of liquid helium as well as for application to stable cooling in medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and quantum computers, which is expected to see further growth in demand. This research result was published in UK scientific journal, Scientific Reports, on December 22, 2025.