Enabling High-Performance Hybrid Solid-State Batteries by Improving the Microstructure of Free-Standing LATP/LFP Composite Cathodes.

The phosphate lithium-ion conductor LiAlTi(PO) (LATP) is an economically attractive solid electrolyte for the fabrication of safe and robust solid-state batteries, but high sintering temperatures pose a material engineering challenge for the fabrication of cell components. In particular, the high surface roughness of composite cathodes resulting from enhanced crystal growth is detrimental to their integration into cells with practical energy density. In this work, we demonstrate that efficient free-standing ceramic cathodes of LATP and LiFePO (LFP) can be produced by using a scalable tape casting process.

Periodical cicadas disrupt trophic dynamics through community-level shifts in avian foraging.

Once every 13 or 17 years within eastern North American deciduous forests, billions of periodical cicadas concurrently emerge from the soil and briefly satiate a diverse array of naive consumers, offering a rare opportunity to assess the cascading impacts of an ecosystem-wide resource pulse on a complex food web. We quantified the effects of the 2021 Brood X emergence and report that more than 80 bird species opportunistically switched their foraging to include cicadas, releasing herbivorous insects from predation and essentially doubling both caterpillar densities and accumulated herbivory levels on host oak trees. These short-lived but massive emergence events help us to understand how resource pulses can rewire interaction webs and disrupt energy flows in ecosystems, with potentially long-lasting effects.

Multidimensional responses of grassland stability to eutrophication.

Eutrophication usually impacts grassland biodiversity, community composition, and biomass production, but its impact on the stability of these community aspects is unclear. One challenge is that stability has many facets that can be tightly correlated (low dimensionality) or highly disparate (high dimensionality). Using standardized experiments in 55 grassland sites from a globally distributed experiment (NutNet), we quantify the effects of nutrient addition on five facets of stability (temporal invariability, resistance during dry and wet growing seasons, recovery after dry and wet growing seasons), measured on three community aspects (aboveground biomass, community composition, and species richness).