Researchers have uncovered a surprising mechanism that allows plants to carefully coordinate the formation and growth of new leaf parts. The study shows that the hormone auxin regulates different phases in organ formation by oppositely affecting the activity of another hormone, gibberellin, to trigger the formation of new leaf structures before reversing course and boosting gibberellin to drive their expansion. The findings offer new insight into how plants build complex organs and could eventually help scientists develop crops with improved growth and architecture.

Kogakuin University (Japan) and the Indian Institute of Technology (ISM) Dhanbad (India) have initiated a collaborative research framework to advance the development and fundamental understanding of next-generation multifunctional glass-ceramic materials for energy-related applications.

Researchers have developed a series of Ce-doped BiOI catalysts via a one-pot solvothermal method for the cycloaddition of CO₂ with epoxides to produce cyclic carbonates. Ce doping facilitates the formation of oxygen vacancy-mediated Lewis acid-base pairs, where Oᵥ–Ce³⁺ sites enhance epoxide adsorption and ring-opening, while Bi–Oᵥ sites supply CO₂ adsorption sites. The optimized Ce₀.₁Bi₀.₉OI catalyst achieves a butylene carbonate yield of 91 % under solvent- and cocatalyst-free conditions, with an apparent activation energy of 70.67 kJ·mol⁻¹ – 35 % lower than that of undoped BiOI.

Researchers have developed a data-driven framework to analyze structure-performance relationships and identify optimal scale-up patterns for modular CO₂ reduction microreactors. Using extreme gradient boosting combined with SHAP analysis, the study reveals that cost is primarily governed by substrate-level features, while reaction performance and carbon footprint are dictated at the stack level. A classification model identifies Pareto-optimal designs with over 90 % accuracy, and K-means clustering uncovers four distinct scale-up patterns: small- and large-sized single-stack and few-stack parallel modules. These findings provide practical design rules for industrial-scale modular devices.

Researchers have systematically quantified temperature-induced measurement errors in electrical capacitance tomography for high-temperature gas-solids fluidized beds. Numerical simulations across a broad geometric matrix (outer diameters from 27 to 1067 mm) combined with high-temperature experiments reveal that while normalized sensitivity distributions remain exceptionally stable, raw capacitance measurements are highly susceptible to thermal perturbations. Crucially, increasing wall thickness drastically amplifies errors for adjacent electrode pairs. Excluding adjacent measurements effectively suppresses thermal deviations, extending the permissible operating range at the cost of fine-scale boundary resolution. A theoretical equivalence between thermal distortions and inherent noise enables direct application of noise-based criteria to define operational limits.

Researchers have developed hierarchical porous carbon nanosheets (CMK‑700) derived from coal tar pitch via a space‑confinement and activation strategy. The optimized material features a high specific surface area of 2223.9 m²·g⁻¹ and a maximized ultramicroporous volume of 0.4836 cm³·g⁻¹. A unique dual‑ion relay storage mechanism was unraveled: larger [Zn(H₂O)₆]²⁺ ions are stored in larger micropores (>1 nm), while smaller hydrated protons (H₃O⁺) act as “charge relays” to penetrate ultramicropores (<1 nm) via reversible chemical hydrogen adsorption/desorption. The assembled device delivers a specific capacity of 368.1 mAh·g⁻¹ at 0.5 A·g⁻¹ and retains 86.39 % capacity after 21,000 cycles.