A new study published in Science China Earth Sciences presents a comprehensive plan for scientific ocean drilling in the Huatung Basin, a key region in the western Pacific. Researchers propose a four-site drilling strategy for China’s new drilling vessel, Mengxiang, to resolve long-standing debates about the basin's age and the origin of the adjacent Gagua Ridge. The plan aims to determine if the Huatung Basin is a remnant of Mesozoic oceanic crust and to clarify the region's tectonic evolution, marking a potential shift for China’s role in leading international ocean drilling.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Carnegie Mellon University have unveiled a breakthrough technology that allows for highly accurate 3D motion capture using only standard video cameras, eliminating the need for expensive, specialized hardware and the iconic skin-tight motion capture suits covered in reflective markers. They named their system MAMMA – Markerless Accurate Multi-person Motion Acquisition. This system is capable of accurately capturing human motion without the need for markers, making it easy and cheap for everyone to create high-end animations and virtual avatars.

A research team has identified the odor-active compounds responsible for the soapy and metallic off-flavors when cold-pressed rapeseed oil undergoes alkali refining. 

A new review study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research published by JMIR Publications shows that adapting existing language models is the key to ensuring they can safely and effectively assist with clinical diagnoses, patient triaging, and treatment planning in real-world health care settings.

A research team has identified a purified fucoidan fraction from the edible brown alga Laminaria japonica that shows strong anti-allergic activity in laboratory cell models. 

With the accelerated advancement of lunar and Mars exploration programs, long-term human habitation on extraterrestrial bodies faces the severe challenge of extreme diurnal temperature variations. Phase change materials (PCMs), owing to their ability to store or release substantial latent heat during solid–liquid phase transitions while maintaining a nearly constant temperature, have become an ideal solution for space thermal control systems. However, in the microgravity environment of space, the ground-dominant natural convection tends to disappear, and thermocapillary convection may become the prevailing heat transfer mechanism; in low-gravity environments such as those on the Moon and Mars, the coexistence and competition between these two convective regimes remain unclear. Existing studies have predominantly focused on either Earth's gravity or pure microgravity conditions, with a notable scarcity of research on the coupled effects of thermocapillary and natural convection at intermediate gravity levels. The melting dynamics of two typical organic PCMs, succinonitrile and n-octadecane, under low-gravity conditions have not yet been systematically elucidated. Therefore, clarifying the roles of thermocapillary convection under varying gravity levels and container geometries holds significant engineering guidance for the design of efficient space thermal control systems.

An Osaka Metropolitan University-led research team investigated the prevalence and characteristics of mcr-positive Enterobacteriaceae in retail meat in Thailand following the national ban on prophylactic colistin use in food producing animals.