Wood, once regarded primarily as a structural material, possesses rich physicochemical complexity that has long been underexplored. In the context of industrialization and carbon imbalance, it is now emerging as a renewable and multifunctional platform for green nanotechnologies. Recent advances in wood nanotechnology have enabled the transformation of natural wood into programmable substrates with tailored nanoarchitectures, establishing it as a representative class of bio-based nanomaterials. This review systematically categorizes wood-specific nanoengineering strategies—including thermal carbonization, laser-induced graphenization, targeted delignification, nanomaterial integration, and mechanical processing—highlighting their mechanisms and impacts on wood’s multiscale structural and functional properties. Importantly, these functionalization strategies can be flexibly combined in a modular, “Lego-like” manner, enabling wood to be reconfigured and optimized for diverse application scenarios. We summarize recent progress in applying functionalized wood to sustainable technologies such as energy storage (e.g., metal-ion batteries, Zn–air systems, supercapacitors), water treatment (e.g., adsorption, photothermal filtration, catalytic degradation), and energy conversion (e.g., solar evaporation, ionic thermoelectrics, hydrovoltaics, and triboelectric nanogenerators). These studies reveal how nanoengineered wood structures can enable efficient charge transport, selective adsorption, and enhanced light-to-heat conversion. Finally, the review discusses current challenges—such as scalable fabrication, material integration, and long-term environmental stability—and outlines future directions for the development of wood-based platforms in next-generation green energy and environmental systems.

This  editorial continues our highlights of the highest independently confirmed yearly efficiencies of mainstream solar cell technologies including silicon, perovskite and organic, and analyzes the progress of each cell technology. The year 2025 was unusual for the photovoltaic (PV) industry, characterized by low costs and fierce competition, redefining competition toward extreme efficiency optimization. All single-junction silicon, perovskite, and organic solar cells, as well as tandem solar cells in various combinations, achieved new world-record power conversion efficiencies in 2025.

Duan and co-workers developed a phosphorus-carbon-bridged cyclization strategy for MR-TADF emitters, addressing the challenge of balancing narrowband emission and efficient RISC. It rigidifies skeletons to suppress high-frequency vibrations and leverages P/S heavy-atom effects to enhance spin-orbital coupling. Two blue emitters, BCzBN-PO (467 nm, 19 nm FWHM) and BCzBN-PS (474 nm, 18 nm FWHM), were synthesized. BCzBN-PS achieved a k_RISC of 8.5×10⁵ s⁻¹ (8-fold higher than BCzBN-PO). Non-sensitized OLEDs showed FWHM < 30 nm and EQE > 20%, while TADF-sensitized devices exhibited higher EQE (43.0% vs. 41.2%) and lower roll-off (25.9% vs. 30.1% at 1000 cd m⁻²) for BCzBN-PS. This work establishes a paradigm balancing color purity and exciton utilization, advancing narrowband electroluminescence.

Bird migration is awe-inspiring. Animals mostly made of feathers take to the sky and complete round-trip journeys up to 40,000 kilometers long. The extremists migrate nonstop. Some fast the entire way. Most migratory species, however, engage in what ornithologists refer to as “stopovers” to refuel, rest, and wait out storms. A new literature review published in the Journal of Raptor Research emphasizes the need for more investigation into the importance of these stopover sites, newly defined in the review as places where individuals “pause their migratory movements for at least twenty-four hours.” Raptors are top predators with far-reaching impacts on their surrounding habitat, and they respond quickly to environmental change, making them effective bioindicators. Bolstering our knowledge of which areas are most crucial to the success of these long-distance journeys is therefore necessary, and increasingly possible as tracking technology improves. 

Researchers from the Center of Excellence in Marine Biotechnology at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), in collaboration with Macro Algae Industries, have launched a pilot seaweed farm near the Al Sawadi Islands in Barka to evaluate the commercial feasibility of cultivating native seaweed species in Omani waters.

A study published in The Journal of Engineering Research (TJER) at Sultan Qaboos University presents an advanced intrusion detection system (IDS) designed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of identifying cyber-attacks. The proposed model combines a double feature selection technique with a stacked ensemble machine learning approach to enhance detection performance while reducing computational complexity.