Biological Diversity has opened submissions for its special issue themed on resilient nature under global change, guest‑edited by Professor Qing Ye, Professor Hui Liu and Professor Feilong Li. Against mounting anthropogenic pressures including climate disruption, land‑use shift and biological invasion, the issue targets research untangling links between biodiversity, ecosystem function, stability and resilience. It welcomes basic theories, technical advances, long‑term monitoring data, assessments and practical restoration cases, spanning multi‑stressor effects, ecological tipping points, diverse restoration strategies, soil‑microbiome recovery, smart restoration evaluation and adaptive governance. APCs are fully waived. Authors need to select the corresponding special‑issue option in the submission system, and all manuscripts are due by 31 August 2027.

A new analysis of Senegalese croplands using an artificial intelligence developed at the University of Cambridge shows how technological benefits enjoyed by industrial agriculture could be brought to smallholder farms in Senegal and other countries in the Global South.

Sultan Qaboos University researchers developed micro- and nanoscale surfaces that reduced bacterial and microalgal attachment under laboratory conditions. The findings offer a promising step toward developing more effective antifouling materials for marine and industrial applications.

In the era of artificial intelligence and machine learning, all-optical computing has garnered renewed attention for its intrinsic advantages in processing speed, energy efficiency, and parallelism. Scientists have developed a new class of metasurface optical differentiators capable of simultaneously performing arbitrary-order optical differentiation and high-resolution imaging in a standalone single-layer configuration. The technique provides a realistic path towards realization of ultracompact all-optical computing devices with potential applications in biological imaging, advanced information processing, and beyond.

- Researchers from KAIST, UNIST, and POSTECH vertically stack semiconductor devices with different response speeds to process fast and slow signal changes together

- The devices were fabricated on 4-inch wafers and flexible substrates and could be used in electronics that attach to the skin

Rutgers engineers have developed a smart shoe that automatically analyzes how a person walks, a technology that someday could help monitor people with Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, and other movement disorders.

The prototype analyzes movement with 95.4% accuracy while counting steps and estimating calories burned.

The research, led by Simiao Niu, a biomedical engineer at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, was published in Science Advances.