Citrus fruit flavor depends largely on citric acid, the main organic acid determining its sourness and market appeal. Researchers have now identified CsAIL6, an AP2/ERF transcription factor that directly suppresses citric acid accumulation in citrus fruits. Overexpressing CsAIL6 in citrus or tomato significantly lowered fruit acidity, whereas silencing it led to higher citric acid levels. The study further revealed that CsAIL6 physically interacts with the WD40 protein CsAN11, a component of the MBW regulatory complex responsible for vacuolar acidification. This discovery unveils a new molecular mechanism controlling citrus acidity and provides a promising target for breeding and biotechnological strategies to enhance fruit flavor and quality.

International students contribute to the academic and economic vitality of US higher education while facing exacerbated mental health challenges. Little is known about national trends in anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and mental health service utilisation in this population. This study examined national trends in the prevalence of clinically significant anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and service utilisation among international students in US higher education from 2015 to 2024.

Researchers at KAUST have unveiled a powerful way to tailor the lasing behavior of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) using simple geometry changes. By reshaping the VCSEL cavity into non-circular geometries, they achieved unprecedented improvements in power, coherence, and polarization control. Their findings open new paths for high-speed communication, speckle-free imaging, sensing, and physical random number generation—without altering the core VCSEL fabrication process, offering a low-barrier route to advanced VCSEL-based technologies.

A new study has identified a key enzyme that modulates tea plant immunity by regulating salicylic acid (SA), a critical plant defense hormone. The enzyme, CsUGT74B5, catalyzes the conversion of SA into a glucosylated form, salicylic acid 2-O-β-D-glucoside (SAG). This process reduces free SA levels, diminishing the plant’s resistance to anthracnose—a devastating fungal disease affecting tea crops worldwide. Experimental evidence showed that overexpressing CsUGT74B5 in tea leaves and model plants increased disease susceptibility, while applying SA externally enhanced pathogen defense. The findings reveal a previously unknown glucosylation mechanism that fine-tunes immune balance in tea plants.

Cold stress severely limits grapevine survival and fruit production. In this study, scientists discovered that the transcription factor VaWRKY65 plays a pivotal role in helping Vitis amurensis withstand freezing temperatures. The gene enhances cold tolerance through a dual mechanism: promoting the breakdown of starch into soluble sugars and stimulating the detoxification of reactive oxygen species (ROS). These combined effects improve cellular stability and energy balance under stress. The research also identified VaBAM3 and VaPOD36 as key downstream genes activated by VaWRKY65. This work uncovers how sugar metabolism and ROS scavenging are transcriptionally coordinated to strengthen cold resilience in grapevine.

Recently, a research group led by Prof. LI Xiangyang from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have made a new discovery: a single organic molecule can induce the Kondo effect in a magnetic atom, challenging the long-standing belief that this quantum phenomenon requires a vast sea of metallic electrons.

The coupled effect of dynamics and nucleation during supercooled droplet’s collision on superhydrophobic surface plays an important role in the anti-icing capability of different superhydrophobic surface, however, without any method to evaluate it. In this work, the impact-freezing behaviors of supercooled droplets on surfaces with different wettability, including two typical hydrophobic surfaces, were investigated experimentally. The morphology, size, velocity, and nucleation rate of freezing on each surface at different temperatures were extracted, based on which emphasis was put on discussing the discrepancy of freezing processes and the formation mechanism of freezing morphologies on different superhydrophobic surfaces. The main findings are: (1) The freezing morphology on superhydrophobic surface was independent of contact angle and supercooling degree, but depended on the surface roughness; (2) the interaction between the fast motion of unfrozen water and the generation of ice nucleus dominates in the formation of freezing morphology, while the ice growth process has less influence. On smooth surface, multiple ice nucleus generating before bounce impeded the fast retraction of droplet, forming irregular-hill freezing shape whose size enlarged with decreasing temperature. On rough surface, because of the later nucleation after retraction process finished, the freezing morphology showed convergent sphere shape with supercooling-independent freezing size; (3) considering more complicated impact dynamics, including breaking and bouncing, on different superhydrophobic surfaces, an impact-freezing model was established and could be used to estimate the average frozen spreading ratio.

A research team led by Prof. LIANG Xu at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed an ultra-compact excimer laser—roughly the size of a thermos bottle.

Pollen viability is essential for plant fertility, yet the genetic mechanisms ensuring pollen wall integrity remain poorly understood. This study reveals that two NAC transcription factors, SlNOR and SlNOR-like1, act redundantly to regulate pollen development in tomato. Loss of both genes leads to collapsed, nonviable pollen and complete male sterility. The findings show that these transcription factors activate critical genes involved in lipid metabolism and pollen wall formation, such as SlABCG8/9/23, SlCER1, and SlGRP92. By controlling sporopollenin and wax biosynthesis, SlNOR and SlNOR-like1 maintain pollen wall stability, offering new insight into the transcriptional regulation of male fertility in flowering plants.

UCLA researchers demonstrate diffractive optical processors as universal nonlinear function approximators using linear materials. They realized arbitrary sets of bandlimited nonlinear functions, including multi-variate and optically-cascadable complex-valued functions, as well as some of the activation functions used in neural networks. Researchers further demonstrated, through optical simulations, the parallel computation of one million distinct nonlinear functions, executed at wavelength-scale output density. An experimental validation was also demonstrated by executing tens of distinct nonlinear functions simultaneously.