Silicon has been regarded as an attractive high-capacity anode material for next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, Si anodes suffer from huge volume variation during cycling, which poses a critical challenge for stable battery operation. Compared with Si, Si suboxide (SiO x ) is one of the most promising candidates for high-energy-density LIBs because of its alleviated swelling and highly stable cycling performance. Whereas, the poor electronic conductivity and low (initial) Coulombic efficiency of SiO x anodes severely hinder practical applications for LIBs. Herein, for the first time, these issues are successfully solved through rationally designing hollow-structured SiO x @carbon nanotubes (CNTs)/C architectures with graphitic carbon coatings and in situ growth of CNTs. When applied as anodes in LIBs, the SiO x @CNTs/C anodes exhibit high reversible capacity, high initial Coulombic efficiency (88%), outstanding cycling performance, and extraordinary mechanical strength during the calendaring process (200 MPa). This work paves the way for developing SiO x -based anode materials for high-energy-density LIBs.

Abstract. Individuals accepting an idea may intentionally or unintentionally impose influences in a certain neighborhood area, making it less likely or even impossible for other individuals within the area to accept competing ideas.Depending on whether such influences strictly prohibit neighborhood individuals from accepting other ideas or not, we classify them into exclusive and nonexclusive influences, respectively. Our study reveals, for the first time, the rich and complex dynamics of two competing ideas with neighborhood influences in scale-free social networks: depending on whether they have exclusive or nonexclusive influences, the final state varies from multiple co-existence to founder control to exclusion, with different sizes of population accepting each of the ideas, respectively. Such results provide helpful insights for better understanding of the spread (and the control of the spread) of ideas in human society.

Predictions of changes of the land monsoon rainfall (LMR) in the coming decades are of vital importance for successful sustainable economic development. Current dynamic models, though, have shown little skill in the decadal prediction of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) LMR (NHLMR). The physical basis and predictability for such predictions remain largely unexplored. Decadal change of the NHLMR reflects changes in the total NH continental precipitation, tropical general circulation, and regional land monsoon rainfall over northern Africa, India, East Asia, and North America. Using observations from 1901 to 2014 and numerical experiments, it is shown that the decadal variability of the NHLMR is rooted primarily in (i) the north–south hemispheric thermal contrast in the Atlantic–Indian Ocean sector measured by the North Atlantic–south Indian Ocean dipole (NAID) sea surface temperature (SST) index and (ii) an east–west thermal contrast in the Pacific measured by an extended El Niño–Southern Oscillation (XEN) index. Results from a 500-yr preindustrial control experiment demonstrate that the leading mode of decadal NHLMR and the associated NAID and XEN SST anomalies may be largely an internal mode of Earth’s climate system, although possibly modified by natural and anthropogenic external forcing. A 51-yr, independent forward-rolling decadal hindcast was made with a hybrid dynamic conceptual model and using the NAID index predicted by a multiclimate model ensemble. The results demonstrate that the decadal changes in the NHLMR can be predicted approximately a decade in advance with significant skills, opening a promising way forward for decadal predictions of regional land monsoon rainfall worldwide.