Metals, semiconductors and insulators are fundamental components of modern electronics. However, efforts to improve device performance have largely focused on semiconductor quality, while metal crystallinity has received far less attention. As transistor dimensions continue to shrink, though, structural disorder in metals and at metal-semiconductor interfaces increasingly impedes carrier injection
Research#Chinese Academy of Sciences#Research News
Standard DNA barcodes are widely used in fields such as biodiversity protection and traceability due to their advantages of strong universal primer adaptability and low sequencing costs. For closely related species, complex taxa with frequent hybridization and recent radiation evolution, standard DNA barcodes cannot meet the needs of accurate identification due to limited sequence variation and insufficient resolution. Although the strategy of shallow genome sequencing to obtain the complete plastid genome (super barcoding) has improved the identification rate of some difficult taxa, the uniparental inheritance characteristics of the plastid genome make it limited in the analysis of introgressed taxa.
Boron plays an important role in glass and ceramic manufacturing, agricultural production and other fields. Although the salt lakes in Qinghai and Tibet are rich in liquid boron ore, the high-salt environment and the reactive inertness of boric acid molecules make efficient and selective extraction of boron challenging.
Harmful algal blooms are an important environmental problem facing aquatic ecosystems, and nutrient levels are considered to be the core factor driving algal blooms. Research in recent years has found that serious algal bloom events may not occur in high-nutrient lakes, indicating that their formation is affected by complex environmental regulation and ecological feedback mechanisms.
Deep learning models have excellent performance when the distribution of training data and test data are consistent. However, in practical applications such as brain-computer interfaces and medical imaging, they will be affected by factors such as individual differences in subjects, electrode/sensor drift, changes in acquisition equipment and clinical environment, and the data distribution will shift, resulting in a significant decline in model performance. In recent years, academic circles have developed a series of domain generalization algorithms using distribution alignment, adversarial training, and invariant risk minimization. However, most mainstream methods focus on matching edge distributions or gradient statistics between different domains, which can easily lead to alignment instability or even collapse under limited samples, restricting the cross-domain discrimination ability of deep learning models in real target domains.
As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, America’s rising generation is grappling with a profound sense of estrangement from traditional national pride. Rather than embracing uncritical flag-waving, young Americans view the present state of the union with deep skepticism—even while carving out enduring grounds for optimism rooted in community action, mutual care, and inclusive democratic values.
Research#American University#Research News#Research · September 2#research
According to a study by researchers from the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their domestic and international collaborators, forest recovery on land affected by fires, harvesting, and other disturbances has been the main contributor to China's forest carbon sink over the past three decades. The study was published in Nature Geoscience on August 17. A
Carbon Neutrality#Chinese Academy of Sciences#Research News#Carbon Neutrality
As residents' daily living standards continue to improve, the demand for high-quality protein in farming and other fields has increased significantly, and the supply is insufficient. At the same time, urban food waste production is large, and traditional disposal processes have high carbon emissions, low resource conversion efficiency, and high energy consumption. The protein supply gap and the problem of food waste disposal are superimposed, and there is an urgent need to build efficient and coordinated resource solutions.
Two-dimensional transition metal borides have broad application prospects in the field of electrochemical energy storage due to their unique electronic structure, high conductivity and rich surface chemical properties. Molybdenum boride (MoB) can be obtained by selectively etching away the aluminum (Al) layer in layered molybdenum aluminum boron (MoAlB). However, this method often faces problems such as incomplete removal of Al and re-stacking of MoB layers after etching, making it difficult to fully peel off the two-dimensional nanosheets. This will reduce the available surface area of the material and prevent electrolyte ions from entering the interlayer active sites, thus restricting the performance of MoB in high-rate energy storage devices.
A new study published in PNAS on August 21 reveals that a distinct population of macrophages can directly "eat" scar-forming material in the liver and promote the reversal of liver fibrosis. The finding reveals an unrecognized mechanism by which macrophages help clear fibrotic tissue: not by secreting factors, but by physically removing the extracellular matrix (ECM). The study was jointly conduct
Medical ResearchHealthBioengineering#Chinese Academy of Sciences#Research News#Health#Bioengineering#medical research#clinical research
Soil salinization poses a serious threat to global rice production. At present, the natural‑variation‑based genetic basis of rice salt tolerance remains poorly understood, and only a handful of major genes related to salt tolerance have been functionally characterized. It is critical to identify key gene modules in salt signaling pathways. In a study published in Developmental Cell on August 28, a
Life SciencesSustainable Development#Chinese Academy of Sciences#Research News#Sustainable Development#genomics#biology
The first cell fate decision of a fertilized mammalian egg is a core scientific issue in developmental biology and is also relevant to embryo quality assessment in assisted reproduction. Although previous studies have revealed that the two-cell stage non-coding RNA LincGET mediates fate bias, the key protein factors that regulate this process have not yet been identified.
Recently, the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has conducted research on the problem of determining the surface geometric parameters of the coronal magnetic field source. It analyzed the forward and inverse problems of the potential field source surface model (PFSS) from the perspective of free boundary problems and shape optimization, and combined with the near-solar in-situ observations of the PSP satellite to construct a source surface radius optimization algorithm. This study used ACE satellite observations for independent verification to reveal the overall trend of optimal source surface radius changes with solar activity and the trade-off relationship between different observation indicators.
Recently, the Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has made progress in the research of high-performance molybdenum alloys. By designing a solid-state reaction, the research team used HfB 2 to react with impurity oxygen in molybdenum powder to form high-density, highly thermally stable and evenly distributed nano-Hf particles inside the molybdenum grains. This solved the problem of traditional dispersed particles being prone to agglomeration and coarsening, and achieved a synergistic improvement in the strength, plasticity and high-temperature stability of molybdenum alloys.
Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) possess the capacity for self-renewal and multilineage differentiation, along with high genome stability. Maintaining high-level ribosome biogenesis is essential for ESCs to sustain their identity, and this process begins with RNA polymerase I-mediated transcription of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes. In ESCs, rDNA loci exhibit a hyperactive chromatin state, characterized by
Life Sciences#Chinese Academy of Sciences#Research News#genomics#biology
A research team led by Prof. REN Wencai from the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has achieved the wafer-scale epitaxial growth of monolayer MoSi 2 N 4 single crystals, a high-performance p-type two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor. Their findings, published on July 8 in Nature Materials , mark a significant step toward realizing complementary metal-oxide-semicond
Chemical Engineering#Chinese Academy of Sciences#Research News#Chemical Engineering
The Euphorbia section Monadenium comprises approximately 90 species that are restricted to tropical Africa, with the greatest diversity found in East Africa. Members of this section range from geophytes and perennial herbs to succulent shrubs and small trees, many of which are endemic to arid or seasonally dry habitats. However, their evolutionary and biogeographical history remains poorly underst
Biodiversity#Chinese Academy of Sciences#Research News#biodiversity
Balsa wood is one of the world's fastest-growing and most commercially valuable tropical timber species. Renowned as the lightest commercial timber, it has experienced soaring global demand. However, traditional propagation techniques, such as tissue culture and cuttings, have proven difficult due to the species' abundant leaf hairs and mucilage secretion. This makes controlled hybridization the m
Biodiversity#Chinese Academy of Sciences#Research News#biodiversity
New research involving more than one million Australian feedlot cattle has found that the strongest predictors of death from bovine respiratory disease (BRD) are established before animals even enter the feedlot, highlighting the importance of preventive measures on source properties.
ResearchMedical Research#Adelaide University#Adelaide#medical research#clinical research
Honey bees have long been the model species for studying insect vision. However, new research shows that several smaller bee species might actually have sharper eyesight.
Physicists from the University of Amsterdam have developed a method to print three-dimensional structures in ice. Last December, the work gathered a lot of attention when the researchers 3D-printed a Christmas tree. In the scientific publication that came out this week, the researchers also show how small pillars can be printed under an angle, making it possible to print arbitrary profiles in ice that don’t need any additional support.
