Four years of monitoring after the 2019 Brumadinho tailings dam collapse show that Brazil's Paraopeba River has not returned to a stable state. Bottom-dwelling invertebrate communities were reshuffled continuously at every site, and the reaches that received tailings show no sign of settling. Tributaries held most of the species, including many found nowhere else, and act as reservoirs that resupply the damaged channel. Protecting them is now the priority for restoring the basin.

In a major step forward in wearable technology, researchers have used machine learning to reveal how stretching flexible materials impacts their electrical performance. The study shows that pulling a material in one direction can boost conductivity by over 50%, while pulling it in another can hinder it, providing a crucial design guide for future electronic skin and sensors.

A review of over 200 studies reveals that bacteria—especially when partnered with plants—can effectively break down herbicide and petroleum hydrocarbon pollution. The research highlights promising new techniques including rhizoremediation, metagenomics, and CRISPR, while showing that herbicides are generally easier for bacteria to degrade than petroleum hydrocarbons.

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 Peking University team has automated cataract screening from routine IOL Master 700 scans. Their "lens average density" biomarker achieved an AUC of 0.975 and correlated strongly with the clinical LOCS III standard (ρ = 0.804). The study revealed that highly myopic eyes (axial length ≥26 mm) carry a distinct nuclear cataract signature—83% prevalence versus 40% in normal-length eyes—emerging roughly 12 years earlier. The approach could embed early screening into existing workflows without extra patient burden.

Cancer immunotherapy offers long-term remissions but struggles with primary resistance, complex progression, and severe side effects. A landmark review in Science Bulletin highlights how multimodal AI integrates multi-scale data—from spatial omics and pathology to imaging and health records—to transform patient stratification. Tracing AI's evolution into foundation models and "virtual cells," the authors outline a clinical roadmap balancing efficacy, toxicity, and disease dynamics.