EP-WXT Pathfinder, the experimental version of a module that will eventually be part of the wide-field X-ray telescope (WXT) aboard the astronomical satellite Einstein Probe (EP), released its first results Aug. 27 from an earlier test flight. These include an 800-second X-ray time-lapse photograph of a region of the Galactic center, a dense area at the core of our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

A research team led by Dr. DU Xuemin from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, has reported a new slippery material with superior light-induced charge regeneration capability, enabling photocontrol of droplets in various working scenarios.

Evolutionary chromosomal changes may take a million years in nature, but researchers are now reporting a novel technique enabling programmable chromosome fusion that has successfully produced mice with genetic changes that occur on a million-year evolutionary scale in the laboratory. The result may provide critical insight into how rearrangements of chromosomes – the tidy packages of organized genes, provided in equal number from each parent, which align and trade or blend traits to produce offspring – influence evolution.

An international research team has now estimated the comprehensive impact of climate change and extreme climate events on global wheat supply and the demand chain in a 2 ℃ warmer world by using a novel climate-wheat-economic ensemble modelling approach.

Prof. BAI Haiyang from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has recently shown the existence of liquid-like atoms in metallic glasses. These atoms inherit the dynamics of high-temperature liquid atoms, revealing the nature of metallic glasses as part-solid and part-liquid.

An international research team led by Dr. ZHANG Huaqiao from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) has used hundreds of new fossil specimens to clarify the anatomy and evolutionary affinity of Saccorhytus, originally thought to be a deuterostome.