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High-quality single crystals of the noncollinear antiferromagnet Mn3Sn are synthesized, and a non-saturating magnetostriction exceeding 400 ppm under 57 T is observed, surpassing the giant magnetostriction materials such as FeGa. The theoretical analyses indicate that this pronounced non-saturating magnetostriction stems from an exotic exchange striction mechanism, which facilitates a linear relationship between strain output and applied magnetic field.

Abstract

Magnetostriction, discovered by Joule in 1842, refers to the mechanical strain that a material undergoes in the presence of a magnetic field. Conventionally, it originates from the spin-orbit coupling and has been predominantly explored in ferromagnets. In this work, a giant magnetostriction effect is reported in the high-quality single crystal of a noncollinear antiferromagnet Mn3Sn. Non-saturating magnetostriction exceeding 400 ppm is obtained, which is even larger than the saturation values of the well-known Fe-based giant magnetostriction ferromagnetic materials such as FeGa. Theoretical calculations reveal that the large non-saturating magnetostriction results from a sophisticated exchange striction effect of the noncollinear antiferromagnetic spin structure, leading to a nearly linear dependence of the strain output on the applied magnetic field. This work provides an unprecedented strategy to design next-generation magnetoelastic materials with noncollinear compensated spin structures.

This research introduces an innovative octahedron-like cobalt structure embedded in hierarchical porous nanofibers, significantly optimizing hydrogen peroxide production in acidic environments. Achieving 80% faradaic efficiency at 400 mA cm−2 and maintaining stable operation over 120 h at 100 mA cm−2, this approach provides a scalable and sustainable pathway to enhance industrial hydrogen peroxide generation.

Abstract

Electrochemically generating hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) from oxygen offers a more sustainable and cost-effective alternative to conventional anthraquinone process. In alkaline conditions, H2O2 is unstable as HO2 −, and in neutral electrolytes, alkali cation crossover causes system instability. Producing H2O2 in acidic electrolytes ensures enhanced stability and efficiency. However, in acidic conditions, the oxygen reduction reaction mechanism is dominated by the inner-sphere electron transfer pathway, requiring careful consideration of both reaction and mass transfer kinetics. These stringent requirements limit H2O2 production efficiency, typically below 10–20% at industrial-relevant current densities (>300 mA cm−2). Using a multiscale approach that combines active site tuning with macrostructure tuning, this work presents an octahedron-like cobalt structure on interconnected hierarchical porous nanofibers, achieving a faradaic efficiency exceeding 80% at 400 mA cm−2 and stable operation for over 120 h at 100 mA cm−2. At 300 mA cm−2, the optimized catalyst demonstrates a cell potential of 2.14 V, resulting in an energy efficiency of 26%.

Self or non-self? Detection of nucleic acids in the endolysosome

This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Thursday 1 May 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)

Speaker: Professor Veit Hornung, Gene Center and Department of Biochemistry, University of Munich

Title: ‘Self or non-self? Detection of nucleic acids in the endolysosome’

Abstract: A central function of our innate immune system is to detect microbial pathogens by the presence of their nucleic acid genomes or their transcriptional or replicative activity. In mammals, a receptor-based system – represented by pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) – is primarily responsible for the detection of “non-self” nucleic acids. In recent years, tremendous progress has been made in identifying the key sensing and signaling components required for this complex task. The first group of PRRs identified as nucleic acid sensing receptors are the toll-like receptors (TLRs). TLRs are expressed as transmembrane receptors with their ligand binding domain facing either the extracellular space or the luminal compartment. A distinct evolutionary subset of TLRs is located in the endolysosomal compartment, which in the human system includes TLR7 , TLR8 and TLR9 . While TLR9 recognizes single-stranded DNA with unmethylated CG motifs, which are indeed suppressed in the host genome, TLR7 and TLR8 have evolved to recognize RNA degradation products. Although there has been considerable research on RNA -sensing TLRs, our understanding of their capability to differentiate between non-self and self-RNA remains limited, particularly considering the prevalence of self-RNA in the endolysosomal compartment. In this talk, I will provide an update on our recent work on this topic and present some novel insights into how TLR7 and TLR8 discriminate self from non-self.

Host: Felix Randow, MRC -LMB, Cambridge

Refreshments will be available following the seminar.

• Speaker: Prof. Dr. Veit Hornung, Gene Center Munich
• Thursday 01 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
• Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.

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Democratizing Carbon Markets: A Blockchain-Based Emission Trading System for Small and Large-Scale Stakeholders in Brazil

Abstract

The integration of blockchain technology into carbon markets offers a unique opportunity to create more transparent, inclusive, and efficient trading mechanisms. This presentation introduces a novel Blockchain Emission Trading System (BETS) model designed to align with Brazil’s new carbon market legislation (Law 15042/2024), ensuring that both large landholders and small rural producers can participate fairly. Our approach leverages official land registries, such as SICAR , to create spatially and temporally verifiable carbon credits, preventing fraud and double counting while enabling greater accessibility for smaller stakeholders who often struggle to enter regulated markets. By decentralizing the issuance and trading of carbon credits, our model aims to reduce intermediaries, lower costs, and promote broader participation, ultimately fostering a more equitable environmental and economic transition. Through a systematic mapping study, we identify key challenges and research directions for blockchain-based carbon markets and propose a framework that ensures compliance with national and international standards while prioritizing social and economic inclusivity.

Bio

I am a professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in Brazil, specializing in information security, blockchain technology, and electronic documents. I hold a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, where my research focused on cryptographic protocols and secure execution of code. Over the years, I have worked extensively on the development of blockchain-based solutions, particularly in the areas of digital identity, electronic signatures, and regulatory compliance. My recent work explores the use of blockchain to improve transparency, security, and inclusivity in digital ecosystems, including its application in carbon markets and sustainable finance.

• Speaker: Jean Martina, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
• Friday 28 March 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: GS15, William Gates Building. Zoom link: https://cl-cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/4361570789?pwd=Nkl2T3ZLaTZwRm05bzRTOUUxY3Q4QT09&from=addon .
• Series: Energy and Environment Group, Department of CST; organiser: lyr24.

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Energy Environ. Sci., 2025, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D4EE04845H, Paper Open Access &nbsp This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.Fuyuki Ando, Takamasa Hirai, Abdulkareem Alasli, Hossein Sepehri-Amin, Yutaka Iwasaki, Hosei Nagano, Ken-ichi Uchida
A novel functional material named “multifunctional composite magnet” has been created, which simultaneously exhibits record-high transverse thermoelectric generation performance and permanent magnet features.
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Energy Environ. Sci., 2025, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/D5EE00281H, PaperCaikang Wang, Xiangrui Wu, Hao Sun, Zhe Xu, Chang Xu, Xuan Wang, Meng Li, Yu Wang, Yawen Tang, Jianchun Jiang, Kang Sun, Gengtao Fu
Proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) is a promising technology for sustainable hydrogen production; however, the slow deprotonation of oxo-intermediates on RuO2 during the acidic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) limits...
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry

Energy Environ. Sci., 2025, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/D5EE00203F, PaperYuetao Ma, Likun Chen, Yuhang Li, Boyu Li, Xufei An, Xing Cheng, Hai Su, Ke Yang, Guanyou Xiao, Yang Zhao, Zhuo Han, Shaoke Guo, Jinshuo Mi, Peiran Shi, Ming Liu, Yan-Bing He, Feiyu Kang
An excellent interfacial compatible PVA coating layer with PVDF facilitates the uniform dispersion of PVA@STO, forming finer spherulites with more interfaces that create Li+ transport pathways for high ionic conductivity.
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Energy Environ. Sci., 2025, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/D5EE00615E, PaperXun Jiao, Li Tan, Xiaoxia Tang, Cheng Tong, Tao Wang, Minhua Shao, Bin Liu, Cunpu Li, Zidong Wei
Lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) form soluble polysulfides (LiPSs) during discharge, leading to decline of cycling performance, especially the failure of pouch batteries. The failure may be since conventional sulfur hosts can...
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry

Energy Environ. Sci., 2025, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/D5EE00342C, PaperZhiyang Xu, Runnan Yu, Tangyue Xue, Qiang Guo, Qianglong Lv, Chen Zhang, Erjun Zhou, Zhan'ao Tan
Flexible perovskite solar cells (f-PSCs) have garnered increasing research interest owing to their high power-to-weight ratio and ability to integrate into buildings. However, the mismatch of the thermal expansion coefficient...
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Energy Environ. Sci., 2025, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/D4EE05759G, PaperLi Wan, Haijun Wang, Biao Zeng, Wenwen Wang, Xinzheng Liu, Yubin Hu, Lixin Cao, Zhongyu Cui, Bohua Dong
Electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) under neutral condition is of great importance but remains challenging for achieving practical hydrogen production due to additional water dissociation and low proton supply rate....
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Energy Environ. Sci., 2025, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/D4EE05818F, PaperJunru Wu, Ziyao Gao, Zhiqiang Fu, Lili Lin, Xianshu Wang, Yun Zhao, Lele Peng, Feiyu Kang, Zhenyu Guo, Maria-Magdalena Titirici, Yunlong Zhao, Xiulin Fan, Baohua Li
Raising the cut-off voltage to 4.6 V can boost the energy density of lithium metal batteries (LMBs) with LiCoO2 cathode. However, the unfavorable cathode electrolyte interphase (CEI) formed on high-voltage...
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Title to be confirmed

Chaired by Julian Parkhill

• Speaker: Kelsey Lowman, Department of Veterinary Medicine
• Friday 16 May 2025, 08:45-10:00
• Venue: LT2.
• Series: Friday Morning Seminars, Dept of Veterinary Medicine; organiser: Fiona Roby.

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Title to be confirmed

Chaired by Julian Parkhill

• Speaker: Julieth Murillo Silva, Department of Veterinary Medicine
• Friday 16 May 2025, 08:45-10:00
• Venue: LT2.
• Series: Friday Morning Seminars, Dept of Veterinary Medicine; organiser: Fiona Roby.

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Investigating the relationship between inflammatory markers in peripheral blood and clinical presentation of intervertebral disc extrusions in canids

Ruweena graduated from Cambridge vet school in June 2024 and has stayed on to continue her research into IVDE with the neurology department, specifically looking at the inflammatory markers IL-6, IL-1β, MMP -9 & extracellular vesicles in the blood plasma of dogs presented to the QVSH for IVDE .

Chaired by Andrew Conlan

• Speaker: Ruweena Perera, Department of Veterinary Medicine
• Friday 02 May 2025, 08:45-10:00
• Venue: LT2.
• Series: Friday Morning Seminars, Dept of Veterinary Medicine; organiser: Fiona Roby.

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The global epidemiology of Streptococcus canis identifies genomic features of host adaptation, virulence and antimicrobial resistance

Speaker bio: • 2012-2018: Studies of Veterinary medicine, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Foundation, Germany • 2018-2021: PhD in Microbiology at the Institute for Microbiology, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Foundation, Germany: Investigation of virulence and fitness factors of Streptococcus suis • 2022-2024: PostDoc at the Institute for Microbiology, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Foundation and two-month research visit in the group of Dr Lucy Weinert at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge: Further education in bioinformatics, analysis of genome sequences of Streptococcus suis, teaching responsibilities • Since October 2024: PostDoc (DAAD fellowship) at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, Institute of Microbiology and Epizootics, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany and Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge: Genome studies of the epidemiology, virulence and host adaptation of Streptococcus canis, supervision: Dr Lucy Weinert and Prof Dr Marcus Fulde (Berlin)

Chaired by Andrew Conlan

• Speaker: Muriel Dresen, Department of Veterinary Medicine
• Friday 02 May 2025, 08:45-10:00
• Venue: LT2.
• Series: Friday Morning Seminars, Dept of Veterinary Medicine; organiser: Fiona Roby.

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High-aspect-ratio cationic nanocellulose self-assembles into mechanically robust nanomesh architectures at oil-water interfaces through charge-directed assembly. The resulting structures feature uniform “breathing holes” (≈34 nm) enabling efficient mass transfer. When applied to oxidative desulfurization, the system achieves >90% thiophene removal under ambient conditions with exceptional catalyst stability through multiple cycles.

Abstract

Liquid–liquid interfaces present unique opportunities for sustainable biphasic catalysis, yet concurrent amplification of molecular transport and reactivity at these boundaries remains challenging. Here it is demonstrated that high-aspect-ratio cationic nanocellulose (HNC+) spontaneously self-assembles into mechanically robust nanomesh architectures at oil-water interfaces through charge-directed assembly. This assembly is driven by electrostatic attraction between the cationic nanofibers and the intrinsic negative charge at hydrophobic-aqueous interfaces (σ ≈−0.3 C m−2), generating sufficient excess attractive force (ΔU ≈−1,200 kBT) to overcome image charge repulsion. The resulting nanomesh exhibits uniform “breathing holes” (≈34 nm) and exceptional stability under extreme conditions (pH 2–13, 1.8 m NaCl, and 90 °C). When applied to oxidative desulfurization, the system achieves >90% thiophene removal under ambient conditions with exceptional atom economy (E-factor < 1.1) and catalyst stability through multiple cycles. This breakthrough strategy for interfacial engineering using renewable materials opens new possibilities for green chemical manufacturing while providing fundamental insights into charge-mediated assembly at liquid interfaces. These findings establish a viable pathway for sustainable heterogeneous catalysis that aligns with circular economy principles.

Similarity-based Methods for Language Model Analysis and Prediction

In natural language, there are usually many ways to say the same thing: the answer to a question can be said multiple ways, and there are many good translations of the same sentence. As a result, language models (LMs) trained on large corpora often spread probability mass across a vast number of generations, containing mostly minor variations. This raises problems for LM applications; for prediction, probability is loosely correlated with quality, so various heuristics must be added to beam search to achieve adequate results. For uncertainty quantification, commonly used measures like Shannon entropy can overestimate uncertainty when probability is spread across functionally equivalent texts. In this talk, I will present my PhD thesis work which addresses these shortcomings using methods which incorporate measurements of semantic similarity. In prediction, returning a “protoypical” prediction according to semantic similarity outperforms high probability predictions. In uncertainty quantification, generalizing the classic Shannon entropy with semantic similarity leads to a more trustworthy measure. Lastly, we apply Bayesian optimization to translation reranking, which uses kernel similarity to efficiently search for high quality translations.

You can also join us on Zoom

• Speaker: Julius Cheng (University of Cambridge)
• Tuesday 18 March 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building.
• Series: Artificial Intelligence Research Group Talks (Computer Laboratory); organiser: Mateja Jamnik.

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This review comprehensively elaborates on functional groups-regulated OSCs that enhance photocatalytic H2O2 production performance, such as cyano, imine, hydroxyl, carboxyl, anthraquinone, sulfonic acid, halogen, etc. Functional groups containing O, N, and S elements contribute to increased charge separation and lower energy barriers for intermediate formation, ultimately enhancing the rate of photocatalytic H2O2 production.

Abstract

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is an environmentally friendly reagent, and organic semiconductors (OSCs) are ideal photocatalysts for the synthesis of H2O2 due to their well-defined molecular structure, strong donor-acceptor interactions, and efficient charge separation. This review discusses the regulatory mechanisms of functional group modifications in tuning the photocatalytic performance of OSCs, highlighting the relationship between functional group structure and catalytic performance. For example, electron-regulating groups, such as cyano and halogen, induce molecular dipoles, facilitating the migration of photogenerated electrons. Fluorine groups optimize the band structure and prolong carrier lifetime due to their high electronegativity. π-Conjugated extension groups, like anthraquinone and thiophene, expand conjugation, improve visible light capture, and stabilize intermediates through redox cycles. Hydroxyl groups enhance surface hydrophilicity and promote H2O activation, while imine bond protonation adjusts charge distribution and improves selectivity and cycle stability. Multi-active site functional groups, such as sulfonic acid and amide, accelerate reaction kinetics and inhibit H2O2 decomposition. Functional groups enhance light absorption, charge separation, and surface reactions through electronic structure regulation, intermediate adsorption optimization, and proton-electron transfer. Future work should integrate machine learning to identify optimal functional group combinations and develop green functionalization strategies for efficient H2O2 photocatalyst synthesis.

Nature Materials, Published online: 18 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02176-z

A conference on classical and quantum technologies using silicon carbide, held in Germany in July 2024, brought together key researchers from academia, industry and funding agencies.

Nature Energy, Published online: 18 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41560-025-01736-6

The use of organic photoactive materials in direct solar water-splitting devices has been limited by recombination losses and their instability in aqueous media. Daboczi et al. report that stable and efficient devices based on organic photoactive layers can be achieved through the application of catalyst-functionalized protective graphite sheets.