In a paper published in National Science Review, an international team of scientists present a novel microstructure modulation strategy that efficiently enhances both the mechanical and thermoelectric performance of bismuth telluride alloy. The improved bismuth telluride demonstrates the capability to fabricate efficient Peltier microcoolers suitable for chip-scale refrigeration.

In a paper published in Science Bulletin, a Chinese team of scientists conducted a GFP-activation assay screening 13 Cas12b nucleases for mammalian genome editing, identifying five active candidates. Candidatus hydrogenedentes Cas12b (ChCas12b) was found to recognize a straightforward WTN (W = T or A) proto-spacer adjacent motif (PAM), thereby dramatically expanding the targeting scope. Upon optimization of the single guide RNA (sgRNA) scaffold, ChCas12b exhibited activity comparable to SpCas9 across a panel of nine endogenous loci. Additionally, the team identified nine mutations enhancing ChCas12b specificity. More importantly, they demonstrated that both ChCas12b and its high-fidelity variant, ChCas12b-D496A, enabled allele-specific disruption of genes harboring single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These data position ChCas12b and its high-fidelity counterparts as promising tools for both fundamental research and therapeutic applications.

In a paper published in Science Bulletin, Chinese scholars (Chao Yang and Qingquan Li) from Shenzhen University, together with more than ten domestic and foreign institutions, used scenario assumptions to estimate the potential carbon sink of roof greening in 102 major Chinese cities, indicating that roof greening in these cities possibly afford a large potential carbon sink and benefits to China's carbon neutrality goals.

In a paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Chemistry, two ion-intercalated iso-structural silver(I)-based coordination networks were prepared, with counterions/intercalants as the sole influencing factor, to clarify their effects for the electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction.

In a paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Chemistry, a series of thermodynamically stable 2D cluster-based metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) Fe_n-(pyz) (n = 1~6) with room-temperature ferrimagnetism has been proposed based on first principles calculations. The strong d–p spin exchange interactions between the clusters and pyrazine ligands lead to robust ferrimagnetic ordering. Interestingly, altering the size of Fe_n clusters in Fe_n-(pyz) (n = 1~6) MOFs results in diverse functional spintronic properties, including bipolar magnetic semiconductors (BMS), half semiconductors (HSC) and Dirac half metals (HM).

In a paper published in Science Bulletin, an international team of scientists studied the effects of China’s two-phase clean air actions, namely the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (APPCAP) in 2013-2017 and the Blue-Sky Defense War (BSDW) in 2018-2020, on the temporal trend of Beijing’s ambient concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and human exposure to PAHs in healthy young adults who traveled from Los Angeles to Beijing. The results demonstrated the superb effectiveness of long-term air pollution control in reducing population exposure to PAHs.