In a lush revelation from the forest floor, a new study published in Carbon Research (as an Open Access Rapid Communication) shows that mosses, those quiet, green carpet-weavers beneath our feet—are climate champions in their own right. Led by Dr. Zhe Wang from the China-Croatia “Belt and Road” Joint Laboratory on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, CAS Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shanghai Normal University, alongside Dr. Weikai Bao, also of the Chengdu Institute of Biology, this research flips the script on how we view forest carbon storage. Spoiler: mosses matter—big time.

Associate Professor Jing Yu (Tsinghua University), Professor Huajian Gao (Tsinghua University), and Dr. Quan Chen (Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences) recently developed a class of supramolecular elastomerswith high mechanical properties and efficient chemical recovery, called BNOSE, that are based on boron-nitrogen (B–N) and boron-oxygen (B–O) dynamic bonds. The dynamic B–N and B–O bonds in BNOSE provide robust interchain forces and degradation in mild ethanol solvents, resulting in a material with excellent mechanical properties and chemical recovery. Having a tensile strength of over 43 MPa and a toughness above 121 MJ/m³, BNOSE outperforms the vast majority of commercial elastomers and existing chemically recovered thermoplastic elastomers. BNOSE offers a sustainable solution without sacrificing mechanical performance, demonstrating potential in a variety of fields, such as soft robotics and flexible electronics. In addition, its scalable design approach can be extended to other polymer systems to meet the growing demand for recyclable high-performance materials. This work was published in CCS Chemistry.

Researchers led by Prof. GAO Caixia from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with their collaborators, uncovered the molecular innovation that led to the origin of Type V CRISPR-Cas immune systems.

A new study applying multi-omics techniques and machine learning identified 33 plasma proteins that differ significantly in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The findings suggest ALS could be detected up to 10 years before symptoms appear, offering promise for reliable diagnostic biomarkers.

The integration of advanced high-throughput sequencing technologies, such as whole genome sequencing (WGS) for the early detection of rare diseases, such as ALS, could give clinicians and patients a critical window for medical intervention, ultimately improving outcomes.

A research paper by scientists at The Chinese University of Hong Kong proposed a 3D radar-based control scheme that realizes the navigated locomotion of microswimmers in 3D space with multiple static and dynamic obstacles.

The new research paper, published on Jun. 2 in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, presented a 3D hierarchical radar with a motion sphere and a detection sphere is firstly developed. Using the radar-based avoidance approach, the desired motion direction for the microswimmer to avoid obstacles can be obtained, and the coarse-to-fine search is used to decrease the computational load of the algorithm. Three navigation modes of the microswimmer in 3D space with dynamic conditions are realized by the radar-based navigation strategy that combines the global path planning algorithm and the radar-based avoidance approach.