News from Science China Press

Titanium is widely used in marine engineering and biomedical implants because of its excellent corrosion resistance. Researchers have discovered that marine electroactive bacteria can weaken titanium’s protective oxide layer through flavin-mediated extracellular electron transfer. The findings reveal a previously unknown bioelectrochemical corrosion pathway and provide new insights for designing titanium materials with improved resistance to microbiologically influenced corrosion.

Instead of being discarded after seawater desalination, concentrated brine can gain a second life as a chemical feedstock. Researchers have developed a solar-driven offshore continuous-flow platform that couples freshwater production with selective methane conversion by directly reusing desalination brine as the chlorine source. The integrated system simultaneously produces freshwater and chloromethane, offering a strategy for the in situ utilization of offshore natural gas resources and introducing a new approach to solar-driven offshore chemical manufacturing.

This new review interrogates how bacterial persisters survive antibiotic exposure and drive the development of chronic, recurrent, and difficult-to-treat infections. The work distinguishes the difference among persistence, tolerance and resistance. It further synthesizes current understanding of persister pathobiology, as well as interactions between persister populations, the host, and co-occurring pathogens. Additionally, this review outlines emerging persister detection methods and promising therapeutic strategies to eradicate persister cells, including combination antibiotic therapies, metabolic targeting interventions, and host-directed anti-persister approaches.

Researchers have developed a programmable macrophage engineering strategy that rapidly equips immune cells with pathogen-specific recognition and antibacterial functions through membrane interface modification. The engineered macrophages efficiently capture and eliminate bacteria while simultaneously reshaping the immune microenvironment, providing a promising therapeutic approach for severe bacterial infections occurring under immunosuppressed conditions.

Researchers from Beihang University, Truth Memory Corporation, Aix-Marseille University and Université Paris-Saclay has successfully transitioned the emerging physics concept of "orbitronics" from theoretical study to practical application in next-generation magnetic random-access memory (MRAM). By designing a highly efficient ruthenium-tungsten write electrode, the researchers demonstrated ultrafast writing of MRAM devices with a pulse of 28.7 ps, and solved critical industrial bottlenecks in MRAM yield and area penalty, paving the way for ultra-low-power memories.

Landau quantization is a cornerstone of quantum Hall effects. However, controlling Landau-level spacing and the spatial profiles of Landau modes through complex-valued gauge fields has remained largely unexplored. Now, a collaborative team from Beijing Institute of Technology, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, University of Exeter, and The University of Hong Kong, writing in Science Bulletin, demonstrates a mechanism for tuning Landau quantization. By constructing a real pseudo-magnetic field and an imaginary pseudo-electric field, the researchers enlarge the Landau-level spacing and enhance mode localization. These findings establish a versatile framework for tailoring non-Hermitian Landau levels and may advance applications in mode-selective filtering, field concentration, and wave-based sensing.

A recent study by Lanzhou University's Center for Pan-Third Pole Environment has revealed a climate-sensitive, multi-sphere bacterial metacommunity on the Tibetan Plateau, reshaping our understanding of microbial connectivity across alpine ecosystems. Analyzing 3,373 samples from five habitats, the team identified precipitation as a key driver with dual effects—homogenizing most ecosystems while enhancing microbial uniqueness in glaciers. The breakthrough calls for integrating microbial monitoring into plateau ecological security assessments.

A synthesis of ground surveys across Southwest China finds that soil thickness explains nearly 70% of the spatial variation in woody vegetation growth potential, far more than climate or soil nutrient concentrations. Below a 57.5-centimeter threshold, limited soil volume becomes the dominant constraint, where vegetation becomes less related to soil nutrient concentrations and more closely associated with climate variability.