A research paper just published in Science China Life Sciences reveals how microbes and soil properties respond to drought stress and subsequent recovery in the urban green space. Researchers found that while drought significantly altered microbial communities and enhanced multifunctionality, the drivers of the multifunctionality shifted fundamentally during recovery. Regulation transits from biotic factors during drought to soil properties after rehydration. This insight is vital for managing urban ecosystem resilience against climate change.

A research team from Huazhong University of Science and Technology has developed a novel orbital modulation strategy to suppress anti-site defects in NASICON-type Na₃MnTi(PO₄)₃ cathode for sodium-ion batteries. By Li doping to construct Li–O–Mn configuration, the strategy effectively enhances Mn–O covalent interaction and elevates Mn defect formation energy, thus eliminating voltage hysteresis caused by anti-site defects. The optimized Na_2.97Li_0.03MnTi(PO₄)₃ cathode achieves ultra-long cycling stability, excellent rate performance and wide-temperature adaptability, and the assembled pouch-type full cell further verifies its practical application potential. This study provides a new electronic structure regulation approach for the design of high-performance sodium-ion battery cathodes, paving the way for the development of low-cost and sustainable energy storage technologies.

What if nature’s tiny wonders—waterspider legs and fish scales—hold the key to better energy storage? Researchers have turned these biological structures into a Janus air electrode, unlocking zinc-air batteries with 239.3 mW cm⁻² peak power density and exceptional cycling stability.

Magnetically steerable guidewires enable remote, minimally invasive navigation and precise tip control in complex vasculature. Scientists at Nankai University developed a dual-coil magnetic guidewire robot with independently driven distal microcoils that switch among three modes. Dual-attraction and dual-repulsion provide large-range curvature tuning and better axial force transmission for smoother advancement, while the spoon-shaped mode delivers gradual, continuous bending for safer branch entry. The approach enables reliable, controllable robotic endovascular navigation.

A new study reveals that astrocytes—star-shaped support cells traditionally viewed as passive partners of neurons—play a previously underappreciated role in the maturation of coordinated movement. A research team led by Director C. Justin LEE and Senior Research Fellow HONG Sungho of the Center for Memory and Glioscience within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), in collaboration with Professor Erik DE SCHUTTER from the Compational Neuroscience Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), Japan, has uncovered how astrocytes regulate inhibitory signaling in the cerebellum during development, enabling the emergence of flexible and precise motor coordination.

Researchers present a comprehensive review of frontier AI applications in computational structural analysis from 2020 to 2025, focusing on graph neural networks (GNNs), sequence-to-sequence (Seq2Seq) and Transformer-based architectures, and physics-informed methods. Published in Smart Construction, their work offers a valuable guide for researchers and engineers to understand fundamental concepts, current research status, existing challenges, and future application prospects.

This March, join the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology (Alliance) and the Alliance Foundation Trials (AFT) in spotlighting colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States, behind only lung cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. Last year, an estimated 155,000 Americans received a diagnosis of colon or rectal cancer, and about 53,000 died from the disease. Alliance has 10 active trials focused on improving treatments for colorectal cancers as well as others aimed at ways to prevent the disease or catch it very early when symptoms are most easily and effectively treated.