News from Science China Press

A 360-million-year-old fossil plant named Ganiopteris from Jiangxi Province, China, is the earliest seed plant with ovules borne directly on leaves. The fossil preserves complete megasporophylls with ovules on their undersides; these megasporophylls form a strobilus terminating the axis. The discovery reveals that the evolutionary shift from axial- to leaf-borne ovules occurred at least 40 million years earlier than previously known and offers insights into the origin of Permian glossopterids.

Researchers have developed a directly synthesized p-type PbS quantum dot (QD) ink that can form uniform short-wave infrared imaging films on 6-inch silicon wafers. The ink avoids a common post-treatment step (ligand exchange process) that can crack films and make pixels uneven. Prototype imagers made with the ink produced more uniform images and helped vehicle recognition under foggy conditions.

The discovery of twisted graphene moiré superlattices has opened new avenues for exploring low-dimensional quantum states of matter. This review summarizes recent experimental and theoretical advances in twisted graphene systems, focusing on electron correlation, unconventional superconductivity, and topological states emerging from moiré flatbands, while highlighting their underlying mechanisms, characterization techniques, key open questions and future research directions.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma often progresses through metastasis, yet its cellular basis remains unclear. This study maps the pan-metastatic landscape of HNSCC and identifies a WDR54-driven cell identity reshaping axis. WDR54 epigenetically activates TGF-β-mediated pEMT, enhancing invasion, immune evasion and metastatic potential, offering new insight into prognosis and precision therapy.

Researchers from Zhejiang University and Northeast Forestry University have developed an exhalation-responsive optoelectronic clip that turns human breath into a clear optical ON/OFF signal. The wearable device combines optical microfibers with nanocellulose films and can be used for touch-free alerts, coded communication, and respiratory monitoring.

Topological corner states are protected against defects and structural imperfections that is beneficial for robust information or power transmission. In turn, vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum can act as key carriers for information encoding. The integration of such states may enable robust topological photonic devices with large transmission capacity, yet fundamental barriers exist: zero-dimensional corner states reported so far in higher-order topological insulators with single-mode waveguides cannot readily accommodate vortices. In their article in Science Bulletin, a joint team of researchers from China and Russia has integrated them successfully and has shown that such states can exist in both linear and nonlinear regimes. According to the study, these corner vortex states exhibit outstanding robustness over a wide power range. Unlike vortex solitons in trivial lattices, they form without any power threshold, breaking the limitations of conventional vortex soliton generation. This work opens new avenues for topologically protected information transfer and wavefront control in topological photonics.