Here we conducted a large-scale genetic association analysis of educational attainment in a sample of approximately 1.1 million individuals and identify 1,271 independent genome-wide-significant SNPs. For the SNPs taken together, we found evidence of heterogeneous effects across environments. The SNPs implicate genes involved in brain-development processes and neuron-to-neuron communication. In a separate analysis of the X chromosome, we identify 10 independent genome-wide-significant SNPs and estimate a SNP heritability of around 0.3% in both men and women, consistent with partial dosage compensation. A joint (multi-phenotype) analysis of educational attainment and three related cognitive phenotypes generates polygenic scores that explain 11-13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7-10% of the variance in cognitive performance. This prediction accuracy substantially increases the utility of polygenic scores as tools in research.

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Diamond‐like compounds are a promising class of thermoelectric materials, very suitable for real applications. However, almost all high‐performance diamond‐like thermoelectric materials are p‐type semiconductors. The lack of high‐performance n‐type diamond‐like thermoelectric materials greatly restricts the fabrication of diamond‐like material‐based modules and their real applications. In this work, it is revealed that n‐type AgInSe2 diamond‐like compound has intrinsically high thermoelectric performance with a figure of merit (zT) of 1.1 at 900 K, comparable to the best p‐type diamond‐like thermoelectric materials reported before. Such high zT is mainly due to the ultralow lattice thermal conductivity, which is fundamentally limited by the low‐frequency Ag‐Se “cluster vibrations,” as confirmed by ab initio lattice dynamic calculations. Doping Cd at Ag sites significantly improves the thermoelectric performance in the low and medium temperature ranges. By using such high‐performance n‐type AgInSe2‐based compounds, the diamond‐like thermoelectric module has been fabricated for the first time. An output power of 0.06 W under a temperature difference of 520 K between the two ends of the module is obtained. This work opens a new window for the applications using the diamond‐like thermoelectric materials.

High-throughput (HTP) calculations are a highly promising direction for the discovery of novel functional materials. Here we use an HTP framework to investigate the electronic structures and p-type thermoelectric properties of the ABX2 compounds with diamond-like structures. We show application of HTP both to identify compounds and also to identify underlying trends. A total of 65 entries out of 84 908 in the Materials Informatics Platform are selected for this study. The electronic structures and chemical-bonding analyses reveal that there exists a general conductive network consisting of the anion X sublattice, which dominates the electrical transport properties of the compounds. Electrical and thermal transport properties of the 41 pnictide and chalcogenide compounds with sufficient band gaps are studied. Pnictide compounds have relatively smaller Seebeck coefficients than the chalcogenide compounds. This is due to the smaller effective masses around the valence band maxima. The electrical conductivities and power factors, however, are better in pnictide compounds. This is because pnictide compounds have high electronic group velocities and electronic relaxation times. Combined with the predictions of lattice thermal conductivities based on the Slack model, 12 novel p-type and n-type ABX2 materials with high ZT values are predicted.

The understanding of the Earth's space environment has grown exponentially over the centuries since the step into space age (Jacchia, 1959). The so-called space weather, which describes the "weather" changes in solar-terrestrial connections, has shown broad influences in civilian life, commerce, and national security, including communication, navigation, electric grids and satellite operations (