Using 15.5 million tree records and a forest dynamics model, researchers examined harvesting strategies in China through 2100. Compared with current management, carefully timed and targeted harvesting could increase total forest and wood-product carbon storage by 4.2% and timber production by 38%, while reducing losses from tree mortality. The findings suggest that protecting forest carbon and supplying wood need not always be competing goals.

A new review in Medicine Plus reframes cGAS-STING as a context-sensitive signaling network rather than a simple immune switch. It explains how DNA source, cell type, signal duration and downstream pathway activation can shift the pathway from host defense and tumor surveillance to chronic inflammation, autoimmunity, fibrosis and cancer progression, and surveys emerging oral, CNS-accessible, metal-based and targeted protein-degradation strategies.

A large UK Biobank study shows that a cumulative score integrating 15 social determinants of health is associated with higher risks of incident chronic kidney disease (CKD), cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality among people with CKD. Exploratory multi-omics analyses suggest that plasma metabolomic and proteomic signatures may partly explain these associations, with the proteomic signature showing the more consistent mediation signal. The score may help identify high-risk groups for earlier monitoring, but it is not a diagnostic tool.

A review published in Science China Materials provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in lanthanide-based luminescence thermometry, covering fundamental photophysics, materials design, and emerging applications. Spanning six classes of materials, the review highlights strategies for overcoming thermal quenching and approaches to comprehensive performance evaluation, while outlining key challenges and future perspectives for the development of reliable luminescent thermometers.

A new review proposes Functional Food Microecology, an interdisciplinary framework connecting functional foods, gut microbes and host health. It describes how probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, synbiotics and fermented foods influence gut-organ signaling, and how multi-omics, AI and synthetic biology could enable precision nutrition. The authors argue that microbiome-targeted diets could reduce antibiotic dependence and support sustainable food systems within One Health.

An eight-year multicenter study of 163,714 hospitalized children in China reveals the broad clinical and economic burden of enterovirus infections beyond hand, foot and mouth disease. Infants and toddlers accounted for most admissions, while rare complications such as encephalitis, meningitis and myocarditis were associated with longer hospital stays and higher costs. The findings highlight the need for age-targeted prevention, broader surveillance and early recognition of severe enterovirus-associated disease.

The intestine engages in communication with various distant organs through neural, immune, and endocrine pathways. This systemic interconnection mechanism is referred to as the gut-organ axis, in which gut microbiota play a central role. The therapeutic landscape is rapidly evolving, with next-generation probiotics, postbiotics, and engineered strains now enabling precise, targeted remodeling of the gut ecosystem to restore host homeostasis and treat multi-organ diseases. This review articulates how the gut microbiota integrates environmental cues into a multi-organ regulatory network, underscoring its potential as a therapeutic target for systemic diseases.

Major advances in neuroscience are not simply isolated discoveries, suggests a review led by Professor Limin Rong's team at The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, China. Published in the Journal of Brain and Spine, the review examines 16 years of The Brain Prize (2011–2026), drawing on the work of 51 laureates. The authors propose five interacting modes of scientific progress, spanning experimental technologies, multiscale mechanistic insights, computational approaches, disease-oriented translation, and collective discovery. The review offers a historical perspective on how scientific ideas, methods, and research communities come together to shape lasting breakthroughs.

Researchers at Shandong University have developed a pathway-independent gene regulation system that acts like an automatic timer in bacteria. It does not need extra inducers; instead, it switches on different genes at different times based on the bacteria's own growth state. Using this method to produce 3-hydroxypropionic acid increased yield by 27% over traditional methods and improved bacterial growth. This study provides a universal platform for multidimensional dynamic regulation of complex metabolic networks.

A research team at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has used scanning nitrogen-vacancy microscopy and vector magnetic field reconstruction to demonstrate at the nanoscale that zigzag graphene nanoribbons embedded in hexagonal boron nitride exhibit strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The work was published in the Journal of Functional Materials and Devices.

In a paper published in Earth and Planetary Physics,a research team of seismologists explores strong earthquake hazards along major active faults on the western Ordos margin using multiple seismological methods. The sparse earthquake segments overlapping low b-value anomalies mark stress-loaded locked fault patches, interpreted as potential seismogenic asperities. Theoretical magnitudes estimated from the spatial extents of these sparse segments along the faults are broadly consistent with the magnitude range of historical strong earthquakes.

A Chinese research team has shown that a self-developed, transportable cold atom gravimeter can measure the strength of Earth's gravity as accurately as the world's mainstream laser-interferometer instruments. During a two-month comparison organized by China's Crustal Movement Observation Network (CMONOC) in Wuhan, the atom-based instrument, WAG-H5-2#2508, was tested side by side with eight conventional absolute gravimeters. Its result differed from the group consensus value by only 1.4 microGal, about one billionth of the surface gravity, confirming that mechanically wear-free atom interferometry is now ready for high-precision, long-term gravity monitoring.

In a comprehensive review published in Earth and Planetary Physics, researchers from Wuhan University synthesize recent advances in the climatological variations and complex driving mechanisms of the equatorial electrojet (EEJ). The study highlights how the daytime EEJ responds to E-region conductivity, atmospheric tides, and intense mid- and high-latitude electrodynamic disturbances.

A research team at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed a method for optimizing superconducting integrated circuits based on “time scaling”. By constructing a dual-active-device layer within a single wafer, the researchers successfully transformed key logic paths from planar structures into vertically compressed ones, significantly reducing pulse propagation time and paving a new path for superconducting computing in the post-Moore’s Law era.