Tender tea shoots are where many of tea’s most valued sensory compounds are made, transported, and transformed. 

Genomic tools are beginning to change how perennial fruit trees are bred, offering a way to identify promising seedlings before years of field evaluation. 

A University of Florida-led study of 1,051 Floridians finds strategic environmental communication significantly boosts public support for roadside pollinator habitat, with agricultural benefit frames driving the strongest attitudinal shifts.

Breast cancer can remain dormant in the bone marrow for decades before reactivating, resulting in cancer relapse. A study published in Bone Research unveils the critical role of Notch2 signaling pathway in promoting this dormant state. The study explains how dormant cancer cells mimic healthy stem cells and activate stress pathways to survive in the bone marrow—paving the way for innovative targeted therapies against dormant cancer cells.

CardioNVT is an end-to-end deep learning platform for rapid, immunostaining-free assessment of cardiomyocyte nuclear ploidy in situ. Using only DAPI-stained heart sections, it segments cardiomyocyte nuclei, tracks them across z-stack planes, reconstructs 3D nuclear volumes, and infers ploidy from volume measurements, enabling scalable studies of cardiac development, remodeling, and repair.

The goal of merging intelligent computers directly with the human body, whether for continuous health monitoring or controlling advanced prosthetics, has long been stalled by a fundamental physical conflict. A new review article in the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing details how purely rigid architectures are shifted toward soft, brain-inspired electronics that can sense, store, and process information while mechanically conforming to biological tissues.

Hard carbons are emerging as the most viable anodes for the commercialization of Na-ion batteries. However, their performance limits are far from being disclosed because of ambiguous Na-storage mechanism. Here, we report that nano-space confinement regulates heterogeneous nucleation of quasi-metallic Na clusters in closed pores, uncovering a coupled “intercalation-pore filling” and stage-wise storage mechanism for high capacities. Theoretical studies reveal that the energy barrier for Na-cluster growth decreases as the nanocavity size decreases; however, it remains energetically unfavorable at potentials (V vs. Na/Na⁺) > 0. Interestingly, in the coupled storage, Na-ion intercalation in nanoconfined orifices triggers stepwise pre-nucleation, reducing energy barriers for spontaneous Na-cluster growth in progressively larger cavities at positive potentials, thus enabling Na-cluster deposition into previously unused closed pores. This understanding guides the rational design of stage-wise closed pores, resulting in superior performance of 500 mAh g⁻¹ at 50 mA g⁻¹ and 344 mAh g⁻¹ at 2000 mA g⁻¹. Mechanistic studies further identify a new stage, where confined nano-spaces at 0.4–0.6 nm facilitate pre-desolvation and enhance Na-ion transport kinetics for high-rate capabilities. This work identifies the origin governing Na-storage behavior in the closed pores of hard carbons, boosting their overall performance beyond prior expectations.