New 2026 Chinese guidelines introduce a groundbreaking multidimensional severity assessment for alopecia areata (AA) that moves beyond simple scalp involvement. Covering 3.49 million Chinese patients, the guidelines integrate psychosocial impact and extra-scalp features to guide personalized care, establishing JAK inhibitors as first-line systemic therapy for severe cases and addressing long-unmet clinical needs.

Lineage tracing is a powerful tool to study development, tissue homeostasis, aging, and disease progression. Over the past decades, lineage tracing techniques have progressed substantially by employing new genetic engineering tools. However, due to their invasive nature, these approaches are difficult to apply to humans. Although endogenous DNA mutations can be used for in vivo lineage tracing in humans, their extremely low mutation rate presents substantial technical challenges. Mitochondrial DNA mutations are an alternative, but their inheritance may suffer from neutral drift or undergo both positive and negative selection, and their analysis is plagued by excessive data noise. Thus, developing non-invasive, high-resolution lineage tracing methods for human tissues is crucial.

Over the past decades, lineage tracing has been fundamental to unraveling how diverse cell types arise during development and how tumors evolve through clonal expansion. Traditional approaches largely depend on exogenous DNA barcodes, fluorescent proteins, or CRISPR-based recorders engineered into model organisms. However, these synthetic strategies require genetic manipulation, making them difficult to apply to native human clinical samples. Thus, developing versatile, non-invasive methods that can reconstruct the genealogical history of individual cells directly from patient tissues is crucial. The ideal approach should leverage endogenous, heritable markers that accumulate naturally within cells.

This study optimizes immunohistochemical protocols for four key neurodegenerative markers—p‑Tau, β‑amyloid, α‑synuclein, and p‑TDP43—on post‑mortem human brain tissue. By systematically adjusting antigen retrieval conditions (buffer pH, heating time, formic acid pretreatment), the optimized protocols achieve staining quality comparable to the global leader Netherlands Brain Bank, providing a unified standard for reliable neuropathological diagnosis across China’s brain banking network.

All-PbS quantum dot (QD) tandem solar cells (TSC), modified with D18-Cl interfacial passivation, achieve a record 13.15% efficiency and superior stability boosted by enhanced carrier extraction in semi-transparent wide-bandgap top cells.

Researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology have developed an IRS-assisted UAV FSO system that unifies intermittent jamming, composite channel effects, and performance–cost optimization, slashing outage probability tenfold within budget for military, disaster response, and 6G applications.

Turning carbon dioxide into clean fuels just got more efficient. A new study in Engineering explores a promising technique that removes water vapor during CO₂ hydrogenation, helping reactions run better at lower pressures. The method supports methane, methanol, and dimethyl ether (DME) production using green hydrogen and captured CO₂. While challenges in materials and reactor design remain, this approach could make low-carbon synthetic fuels more practical for industry and energy transition.

Superhydrophobic wearable strain sensors represent an emerging frontier in flexible electronics, offering the potential to bridge the gap between laboratory prototypes and practical applications in humid, corrosive, or underwater environments. However, their widespread adoption is hindered by insufficient robustness against chemical, mechanical, and wetting state failures. The current literature lacks systematic insights into coupled multimode failures and integrated optimization frameworks, and standardized protocols for robustness evaluation remain absent. This review systematically summarizes strategies for material selection, structural design, and functional integration in superhydrophobic systems, with a focus on analyzing failure mechanisms across chemical, mechanical, and interfacial state dimensions. Key quantitative benchmarks—including resistance drift, contact angle retention, and cyclic stability—are established. We introduce a “failure-mechanism-oriented robustness optimization” framework and summarize corresponding testing standards. Finally, we discuss key future challenges and potential breakthroughs, most urgently the development of eco-friendly low-surface-energy modifiers and unified testing protocols, providing a theoretical framework and technological roadmap for the next generation of robust amphibious flexible sensing systems.

Liquid ammonia is drawing growing attention as a promising carbon-neutral fuel for engines. A new review in Engineering summarizes recent advances in liquid-ammonia injection, spray, and combustion technologies, while highlighting key challenges such as low reactivity, high latent heat, and increased nitrogen-based emissions. It also evaluates dual-fuel solutions, improved ignition methods, and engine applications, pointing out a feasible path toward low-carbon transport and power systems.