How does the host immune system recognize candidalysin, a key toxin secreted by Candida albicans? A new study reveals that TREM2 on macrophages directly binds candidalysin, activating the DAP12/Syk/NF-κB pathway to rapidly produce TNF-α, which orchestrates antifungal responses including enhanced phagocytosis, neutrophil NETosis, and appropriate modulation of IL-17 signaling. This work fills a critical gap in understanding fungal immunology and host-pathogen coevolution, and opens new avenues for antifungal therapy and vaccine development.

A new study in National Science Review presents the first comprehensive 3D mapping of China's lakes. Researchers found that 65% of the nation's natural lake freshwater is stored in deep lakes of the remote western interior, rather than the water-abundant east. This discovery highlights a severe geographic imbanlance with population distribution, underscoring the vital role of artificial reservoirs and the need for region-specific water governance strategies.

Sulfur-doped NiFe layered double hydroxides (S-NiFe-LDH) were synthesized via an in-situ hydrothermal approach. The resulting catalyst delivered outstanding urea oxidation reaction (UOR) activity, stemming from an optimized electronic structure and the evolution of active sites from Fe³⁺/Ni²⁺ to high-valence Ni³⁺. Sulfur incorporation markedly lowers the thermodynamic barrier, synergistically boosting reaction kinetics and enabling energy-efficient hydrogen generation. Sulfur-doped NiFe layered double hydroxides (S-NiFe-LDH) were synthesized via an in-situ hydrothermal approach. The resulting catalyst delivered outstanding urea oxidation reaction (UOR) activity, stemming from an optimized electronic structure and the evolution of active sites from Fe³⁺/Ni²⁺ to high-valence Ni³⁺. Sulfur incorporation markedly lowers the thermodynamic barrier, synergistically boosting reaction kinetics and enabling energy-efficient hydrogen generation.

A global meta-analysis shows that carbon farming, through legume cover crops or vermicompost, enhances agroecosystem multifunctionality. Soil biota abundance was strongly linked to multifunctionality and showed more frequent win–win relationships with other functions than species richness. Across agroecosystems, abundance was primarily associated with local soil properties and climate factors. The study identified site-specific management strategies that align carbon inputs with local environmental conditions in global croplands to enhance multifunctionality.

A new international study, published in Nature Geoscience, provides a quantification of the air-sea global carbon cycle and how it might change in a warming climate.

Inspired by the rock-paper-scissors game in ecosystem, researchers have established an active thermal transport model, revealing robust topological temperature localization phenomenon and topological phase transition. This work unveils new physics in non-equilibrium heat transfer and offers a new paradigm for thermal regulation and management.

Despite its high speed and parallel processing ability, optical encryption is vulnerable at the back-end. To address this, researchers developed a programmable dual-band photodetector with a color image encryption scheme, where the detector serves as both detector and decryption key. This detector-dependent security effectively prevents back-end eavesdropping, enabling a new pathway for highly secure optical encryption in information warfare.

Natural polysaccharides with different structural features and closely similar molecular sizes are often isolated together as a mixture using current purification methods and then are identified to be one complex structure. The current purity tests mainly focus on molecular size and ion-exchange property and therefore are weak to identify this impurity risk. Researchers have now developed the existing "enzyme diagnosis" method which usually indicates structure feature to an upgraded "enzyme diagnostic criteria" for purity test in order to expose these hidden mixtures. This new criterion may effectively solve the concern regarding the poor repeatability of polysaccharide structure identification by offering truly pure and much simpler polysaccharides.

Researchers developed DGMoE, a mixture-of-experts framework that better handles individual differences in EEG signals and improves emotion recognition across unseen users. Tested on three public datasets, it achieved state-of-the-art accuracies of 79.5%, 59.1%, and 57.9%, showing a more practical path toward robust affective brain-computer interfaces.