Both biotic factors (microbial biomass and leaf nutrients) and abiotic factors (climate, soil properties, and elevation) play important roles in shaping how sensitive forest soil respiration (Q₁₀) is to temperature changes. By analyzing 766 soil Q₁₀ values from forests around the world, researchers found that microbial biomass carbon is the strongest single predictor, with plant traits like leaf phosphorus content also having a clear impact. The findings highlight the need to consider both biotic and abiotic influences when managing forests and improving carbon cycle models in a warming climate.

Unmanned Swarm Systems (USS) have transformed key fields like disaster rescue, transportation, and military operations via distributed coordination, yet trajectory prediction accuracy and interaction mechanism interpretability remain major bottlenecks—issues that existing methods fail to address by either ignoring physical constraints or lacking explainability. A recent breakthrough from Northwestern Polytechnical University solves this: Dr. Shuheng Yang and Prof. Dong Zhang developed the Swarm Relational Inference (SRI) model, an unsupervised end-to-end framework integrating swarm dynamics with dynamic graph neural networks. This model not only enhances interpretability and physical consistency but also drastically reduces long-term prediction errors, marking a critical step toward reliable autonomous collaboration for real-world USS applications.

For decades, aerospace engineers have confronted the life-threatening challenge of reigniting aircraft engines in high-altitude, low-pressure environments. Traditional spark ignition systems, limited by short discharge time and low energy efficiency, consistently fail to ignite lean kerosene-air mixtures in some difficult conditions. Although, gliding arc plasma ignitor offers improvements, its dependence on external gas sources prevents compatibility with combustor wide flight envelopes. This critical bottleneck has impeded next-generation aerospace propulsion systems.

Performance of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in providing positioning, velocity estimation, and timing services in urban environments often suffers significant degradation due to multipath effects and Non-Line-of-Sight signal reception. Traditional Fault Detection and Exclusion methods face technical bottlenecks, including high computational complexity and insufficient exclusion accuracy caused by the complex and diverse nature of fault modes. This study proposed a novel fault detection and correction method for Doppler-observable-based velocity estimation: GS-LASSO (Grouping-Sparsity Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator). Experiment results demonstrated that the GS-LASSO method could provide high-precision velocity estimates at the decimeter-per-second (dm/s) level in complex urban environments with limited computational resources.

Researchers in China have developed a magnesia supported rhodium catalyst that enables the selective growth of ultrathin carbon nanotubes only 0.61 nanometer wide—the smallest stable nanotubes known.

An international research team has advanced an imaging method to capture nanoscale “spin maps” of chiral perovskites for the first time, revealing how these materials control electron spin at room temperature. The study also identifies a new type of spin-sensitive junction at the interface with metals. The findings, recently published in National Science Review, could guide the design of next-generation spintronic devices.

Crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells, though dominating the photovoltaic market, are nearing their theoretical power conversion efficiencies (PCE) limit of 29.4%, necessitating the adoption of multi-junction technology to achieve higher performance. Among these, perovskite-on-silicon-based multi-junction solar cells have emerged as a promising alternative, where the perovskite offering tunable bandgaps, superior optoelectronic properties, and cost-effective manufacturing. Recent announced double-junction solar cells (PSDJSCs) have achieved the PCE of 34.85%, surpassing all other double-junction technologies. Encouragingly, the rapid advancements in PSDJSCs have spurred increased research interest in perovskite/perovskite/silicon triple-junction solar cells (PSTJSCs) in 2024. This triple-junction solar cell configuration demonstrates immense potential due to their optimum balance between achieving a high PCE limit and managing device complexity. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of PSTJSCs, covering fundamental principles, and technological milestones. Current challenges, including current mismatch, open-circuit voltage deficits, phase segregation, and stability issues, and their corresponding strategies are also discussed, alongside future directions to achieve long-term stability and high PCE. This work aims to advance the understanding of the development in PSTJSCs, paving the way for their practical implementation.