Scalable One-Step Synthesis of Graphene/Polyaniline Films via Dual-Functional HSO for Supercapacitor Electrodes.

Supercapacitors serve as an important complement to batteries in sustainable energy storage and utilization systems, necessitating the efficient preparation of high-performance electrodes for practical applications. Here, we present a scalable one-step strategy for fabricating integrated graphene/polyaniline electrodes directly on current collectors, enabled by the dual functionality of HSO in a rapid 20 min process. Initially, dilute HSO acts as a protonation medium to facilitate the oxidative polymerization of aniline by ammonium persulfate.

New insights into cadmium-modulated relationships of phosphorus-nitrogen functions under herbicide disturbance in cornfields.

Metallic micronutrients probably mediate the nutrient functions in soils with long-term herbicide application. However, will hazardous metal cadmium have a synergistic effect with herbicides, which amplifies the interference on soil nitrogen and phosphorus cycling functions? This study conducted a nationwide investigation to characterize the accumulation patterns of two typical herbicides (atrazine and nicosulfuron), cadmium, and metal micronutrients (iron, manganese, copper, and zinc) in maize fields. It specifically elucidated the individual disruptive effects of herbicides, the interaction mechanisms between herbicides and metals (particularly cadmium), and the key pathways and drivers influencing soil nitrogen-phosphorus functional linkages.

Multiscale energetics and submesoscale instabilities of eddy shedding at the Kuroshio loop current in the South China Sea.

The multiscale energetics and submesoscale instabilities after the eddy shedding of Kuroshio Loop Current (KLC) intrusion into the South China Sea (SCS) remain ambiguous. Here, a typical KLC eddy shedding process is well simulated using a downscaled submesoscale-permitting model. Then, energy and dynamics diagnostics are employed to investigate the cross-scale interactions between mesoscales and submesoscales during and after this process.

Tandem Organic Solar Cells with 21.5% Efficiency.

Tandem organic solar cells (OSCs) offer a promising strategy for enhancing light utilization and reducing energy loss, presenting significant potential in achieving high power conversion efficiency (PCE). Herein, a narrow bandgap acceptor, BTA-4F, featuring a 2-methyl-2H-benzotriazole (BTA) central core, is fabricated, which is designed for the rear sub-cell of tandem OSCs. Systematic characterizations demonstrate that incorporating strong electron donating groups BTA into central core unit can narrow the bandgap and enhance the electroluminescence external quantum efficiency.

Variable-Temperature X-Ray Scattering Unveils the Solution Aggregation Structures and Processing Resiliency of High-Efficiency Organic Photovoltaics with Iodinated Electron Acceptors.

Polymer photovoltaics are promising for low-cost, flexible, and lightweight power supplies. Their performance is heavily influenced by the morphology of the polymer: acceptor blend, where the aggregation structures of both components play a crucial role in charge generation, transport, and overall device performance. This study probes and resolves the solution aggregation behavior and processing resilience of high-efficiency polymer photovoltaics incorporating an iodinated electron acceptor, BO-4I, using variable-temperature small-angle X-ray scattering and neutron scattering.

Warming-induced unstable microbial community metabolically lowers straw-carbon sequestration in paddy soils.

Introduction: Growing academic attention has been given to the crucial role of soil microorganisms in the net loss of soil organic carbon (SOC) under climate warming and the effectiveness of straw-C sequestration to replenish the SOC stock. However, the lack of empirical investigations in anaerobic paddy soils hinders accurate estimation of the global soil C-climate feedback and development of countermeasures.

Objectives: This study aimed to unravel the impact of warming on the complexity of the microbial community network of the paddy soil in response to warming, and correspondent changes of microbial metabolic functions relevant to the transformation of straw-C in SOC pools.

Mechanism Directed Toxicity Testing and Instrumental Analysis Make Key Toxicant Identification More Targeted and Efficient: A Case in the Yangtze River.

Current toxicant identification mainly relies on subjective and blind toxicity testing and compound screening. This could overlook the sensitive toxicity end point and key toxicants due to the random experiment selection, or it might incur high expenditures due to toxicity testing of multiple end points. In this context, a key toxicity-mechanism-based new effect-directed analysis strategy was established.

Evaluating statistical consistency for the ocean component of earth system models using physics informed convolutional autoencoder.

Model verification is a crucial step in the development and optimization of Earth system models (ESMs). Recently, a deep learning approach in evaluating statistical consistency for the atmosphere component of ESMs (A-ESM-DCT) has been proven effective in model verification. However, due to the longer timescales required for the ocean to adjust compared to the atmosphere, achieving an efficient method for evaluating the consistency of ocean models necessitates extending model integration time while reducing ensemble simulation size.

A Designed Zn Sensor Domain Transmits Binding Information to Transmembrane Histidine Kinases.

Generating stimulus-responsive allosteric signaling is a significant challenge in protein design. In natural systems like bacterial histidine kinases (HKs), signal transduction occurs when ligand binding initiates a signal that is amplified across biological membranes over long distances to induce large-scale rearrangements and phosphorylation relays. Here, we ask whether our understanding of protein design and multidomain, intramolecular signaling has progressed sufficiently to enable engineering of a HK with tunable components.

Euedaphic Rather than Hemiedaphic or Epedaphic Collembola Are More Sensitive to Different Climate Conditions in the Black Soil Region of Northeast China.

Soil biodiversity is profoundly affected by variations in climate conditions and land use practices. As one of the major grain-producing areas in China, the belowground biodiversity of the black soil region of the Northeast is also affected by the variations in climate conditions and land use types. However, most of the previous studies have focused on aboveground biodiversity, and the research of soil biodiversity is limited.

Deep Learning for Ocean Forecasting: A Comprehensive Review of Methods, Applications, and Datasets.

As a longstanding scientific challenge, accurate and timely ocean forecasting has always been a sought-after goal for ocean scientists. However, traditional theory-driven numerical ocean prediction (NOP) suffers from various challenges, such as the indistinct representation of physical processes, inadequate application of observation assimilation, and inaccurate parameterization of models, which lead to difficulties in obtaining effective knowledge from massive observations, and enormous computational challenges. With the successful evolution of data-driven deep learning in various domains, it has been demonstrated to mine patterns and deep insights from the ever-increasing stream of oceanographic spatiotemporal data, which provides novel possibilities for revolution in ocean forecasting.

Alternating electrodeposition fabrication of graphene-buffered nickel-cobalt layered double hydroxide supercapacitor electrodes with superior rate capability.

Combining pseudocapacitive materials with carbon materials, such as graphene, is a promising strategy to enhance their performance. In this study, we present a novel and feasible approach involving the alternating electrodeposition of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and nickel-cobalt layered double hydroxide (NiCo-LDH) onto carbon cloth (CC) current collectors to fabricate binder-free supercapacitor electrodes with a layered LDH/rGO/LDH/rGO/CC architecture. The rGO layers are not only coated on CC substrate to regulate the electrodeposition of LDH nanosheets, but also interposed between the LDH layers to further enhance conductivity and provide buffering effects.

Fluid Control of Dip Coating for Efficient Large-Area Organic Solar Cells.

As a classical low-cost technique, dip coating has not been used for printable electronics. Here, the study demonstrates large-area organic solar cells can be made by dip coating. The correlation is revealed among Van der Waals forces in precursor film, aggregation state of polymer, and fibrous orientation in active layer; the relationship is also expounded between fluid mechanics of the confined liquid in polymer scaffold and the continuity of the acceptor phase.

Manipulating Aggregation Kinetics toward Efficient All-Printed Organic Solar Cells.

The power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of all-printed organic solar cells (OSCs) remain inferior to those of spin-coated devices, primarily due to morphological variations within the bulk heterojunction processed via diverse coating/printing techniques. Herein, cyclohexyl is introduced as outer side chains to formulate a non-fullerene acceptor, BTP-Cy, aimed at modulating the molecular aggregation in solution and subsequent film formation kinetics during printing. Investigations demonstrate that BTP-Cy molecule with cyclohexyl side chains exhibits enhanced intermolecular π-π stacking, optimal solution aggregation size, and favorable phase separation.

In-Depth Analysis of Soil Microbial Community Succession Model Construction under Microplastics Stress.

Although microplastics (MPs) toxicity to soil microorganisms has been preliminarily explored, the underlying reasons affecting the direction of microbial community succession are unclear. This study aimed to investigate the impacts of MPs infer community assembly mechanisms through phylogenetic bin-based null model analysis, network models, and protein function prediction in five typical Northeast China five typical soils. The results show that microbial communities in soils with high organic matter exhibit a stronger response to MPs, with enhanced protein functionality, network regulation, and assembly processes.

A deep-learning-based consistency test approach for Earth system models on HPC systems.

Evaluating climate consistency is a critically important step in the development and optimization of Earth system models (ESMs) on the high-performance computing (HPC) systems. We have developed an Earth system model deep-learning consistency test, referred to as ESM-DCT. The ESM-DCT is based on the unsupervised bidirectional gate recurrent unit-autoencoder (BGRU-AE) model to study the features from the ESM simulation ensembles and adopts the reconstruction errors to evaluate the consistency.

Intensification of future subsurface marine heatwaves in an eddy-resolving model.

A shift in depth range enables marine organisms to adapt to marine heatwaves (MHWs). Subsurface MHWs could limit this pathway, yet their response to climate warming remains unclear. Here, using an eddy-resolving Earth system model forced under a high emission scenario, we project a robust global increase in subsurface MHWs driven by rising subsurface mean temperatures and enhanced temperature variability.

Phase separation of chimeric antigen receptor promotes immunological synapse maturation and persistent cytotoxicity.

Major challenges of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy include poor antigen sensitivity and cell persistence. Here, we report a solution to these issues by exploiting CAR phase separation. We found that incorporation of an engineered T cell receptor CD3ε motif, E, into the conventional 28Z or BBZ CAR induced self-phase separation through cation-π interactions.

TVT-Based New Building Block with Enhanced π-Electron Delocalization for Efficient Non-Fused Photovoltaic Acceptor.

To address the high-cost issue that impedes the large-scale fabrication and industrialization of organic solar cells (OSCs), it is crucial to design low-cost photovoltaic materials with simplified synthesis procedures. In this study, a novel fully non-fused acceptor, ATVT-BO, featuring a triisopropylbenzene-substituted (E)-1,2-di(thiophen-2-yl)ethene (TVT) unit as the central core is designed and synthesized. A control acceptor, A4T-BO, with the same alkyl chains but a bithiophene central core, is also synthesized for comparison.

Sulfamethoxazole exposure shifts partial denitrification to complete denitrification: Reactor performance and microbial community.

This study elucidated the influence on a partial denitrification (PD) system under 0-1 mg/L sulfamethoxazole (SMX) stress in a sequencing batch reactor. The results showed that the nitrite accumulation rate (NAR) significantly (P ≤ 0.01) decreased from 68.

Identification of Key Toxic Substances Considering Metabolic Activation: A Combination of Transcriptome and Nontarget Analysis.

There have been numerous studies using effect-directed analysis (EDA) to identify key toxic substances present in source and drinking water, but none of these studies have considered the effects of metabolic activation. This study developed a comprehensive method including a pretreatment process based on an in vitro metabolic activation system, a comprehensive biological effect evaluation based on concentration-dependent transcriptome (CDT), and a chemical feature identification based on nontarget chemical analysis (NTA), to evaluate the changes in the toxic effects and differences in the chemical composition after metabolism. Models for matching metabolites and precursors as well as data-driven identification methods were further constructed to identify toxic metabolites and key toxic precursor substances in drinking water samples from the Yangtze River.

Miniaturized Active-Frequency Selective Surfaces for Low-Power Internet of Things Devices.

With the proliferation of smart devices, the Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly expanding. This study proposes a miniaturized controllable metamaterial with low control voltage for achieving low-power and compact designs in IoT node devices. Operating at a target frequency of 2.

High-Efficiency Effect-Directed Analysis Leveraging Five High Level Advancements: A Critical Review.

Organic contaminants are ubiquitous in the environment, with mounting evidence unequivocally connecting them to aquatic toxicity, illness, and increased mortality, underscoring their substantial impacts on ecological security and environmental health. The intricate composition of sample mixtures and uncertain physicochemical features of potential toxic substances pose challenges to identify key toxicants in environmental samples. Effect-directed analysis (EDA), establishing a connection between key toxicants found in environmental samples and associated hazards, enables the identification of toxicants that can streamline research efforts and inform management action.