Biodegradation of polystyrene (PS) and polypropylene (PP) by deep-sea psychrophilic bacteria of Pseudoalteromonas in accompany with simultaneous release of microplastics and nanoplastics.

Plastics dumped in the environment are fragmented into microplastics by various factors (UV, weathering, mechanical abrasion, animal chewing, etc.). However, little is known about plastic fragmentation and degradation mediated by deep-sea microflora.

Continuous generation and release of microplastics and nanoplastics from polystyrene by plastic-degrading marine bacteria.

Plastic waste released into the environments breaks down into microplastics due to weathering, ultraviolet (UV) radiation, mechanical abrasion, and animal grazing. However, little is known about the plastic fragmentation mediated by microbial degradation. Marine plastic-degrading bacteria may have a double-edged effect in removing plastics.

Built-In Electric Field-Driven Ultrahigh-Rate K-Ion Storage via Heterostructure Engineering of Dual Tellurides Integrated with TiCT MXene.

Exploiting high-rate anode materials with fast K diffusion is intriguing for the development of advanced potassium-ion batteries (KIBs) but remains unrealized. Here, heterostructure engineering is proposed to construct the dual transition metal tellurides (CoTe/ZnTe), which are anchored onto two-dimensional (2D) TiCT MXene nanosheets. Various theoretical modeling and experimental findings reveal that heterostructure engineering can regulate the electronic structures of CoTe/ZnTe interfaces, improving K diffusion and adsorption.

Comprehensively Understanding the Role of Anion Vacancies on K-Ion Storage: A Case Study of Se-Vacancy-Engineered VSe.

Anion vacancy engineering (AVE) is widely used to improve the Li-ion and Na-ion storage of conversion-type anode materials. However, AVE is still an emerging strategy in K-ion batteries, which are promising for large-scale energy storage. In addition, the role of anion vacancies on ion storage is far from clear, despite several proposed explanations.

Eutectic Crystallization Activates Solid-State Zinc-Ion Conduction.

Solid-state zinc (Zn) batteries offer a new candidate for emerging applications sensitive to volume, safety and cost. However, current solid polymeric or ceramic electrolyte structures remain poorly conductive for the divalent Zn , especially at room temperature. Constructing a heterogeneous interface which allows Zn percolation is a viable option, but this is rarely involved in multivalent systems.

Frontier Orbital Energy-Customized Ionomer-Based Polymer Electrolyte for High-Voltage Lithium Metal Batteries.

The development of gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs) is considered to be an effective strategy to drive practical applications of high-voltage lithium metal batteries (HLMBs). However, rare GPEs that can satisfy the demands of HLMBs have been developed because of the limited compatibility with lithium anodes and high-voltage cathodes simultaneously. Herein, a novel strategy for constructing polymer matrixes with a customized frontier orbital energy for GPEs is proposed.

A Polymer-Reinforced SEI Layer Induced by a Cyclic Carbonate-Based Polymer Electrolyte Boosting 4.45 V LiCoO /Li Metal Batteries.

Lithium (Li) metal batteries (LMBs) are enjoying a renaissance due to the high energy densities. However, they still suffer from the problem of uncontrollable Li dendrite and pulverization caused by continuous cracking of solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layers. To address these issues, developing spontaneously built robust polymer-reinforced SEI layers during electrochemical conditioning can be a simple yet effective solution.

Palmprint Recognition Across Different Devices.

In this paper, the problem of Palmprint Recognition Across Different Devices (PRADD) is investigated, which has not been well studied so far. Since there is no publicly available PRADD image database, we created a non-contact PRADD image database containing 12,000 grayscale captured from 100 subjects using three devices, i.e.

Multiscale distance matrix for fast plant leaf recognition.

In this brief, we propose a novel contour-based shape descriptor, called the multiscale distance matrix, to capture the shape geometry while being invariant to translation, rotation, scaling, and bilateral symmetry. The descriptor is further combined with a dimensionality reduction to improve its discriminative power. The proposed method avoids the time-consuming pointwise matching encountered in most of the previously used shape recognition algorithms.