Sperm carry far more than DNA. As they develop in the testis and mature in the epididymis, they also carry a shifting set of chemical marks on RNA — a molecular layer that may help shape fertility and influence how paternal experiences are passed to the next generation.

Now, researchers have produced a detailed map of this changing “sperm RNA modification code.” In a study published in Science China Life Sciences, the team profiled 27 types of RNA modifications across mouse testis development, purified spermatogenic cells, sperm collected from different regions of the epididymis and a typeⅡdiabetes mellitus mouse model. The work reveals that sperm RNA modifications are not static labels, but a dynamic program that is written, erased and reorganized as sperm move toward maturity.

As artificial intelligence drives demand for faster and more energy-efficient hardware, ferroelectric memristors are attracting growing attention. A new review outlines how these devices combine memory, computation, and learning capabilities in a single platform, offering new opportunities for intelligent computing beyond the traditional von Neumann architecture.

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 led by Prof. Zhen Gao at Southern University of Science and Technology has achieved the first experimental observation of the three-dimensional (3D) photonic quantum Hall effect of Fermi arcs and its hallmark feature, the one-sided chiral hinge states, in a 3D inhomogeneous magnetic Weyl photonic crystal.

A research team at Peking University proposed an optoelectronic distributed computing system based on an on-chip all-optical supernode. By integrating high-speed silicon photonic transceiver chips, low-loss optical circuit switching (OCS) chips and multiple computing nodes, the system enables intermediate data between different layers of a deep neural network to be directly transmitted and switched through an on-chip high-speed all-optical supernode. This approach reduces latency overheads associated with conventional data movement, packet scheduling and buffering.

As artificial intelligence expands from cloud computing into robots, autonomous vehicles and other real-world systems, conventional electronic architectures face increasing challenges in latency, bandwidth and energy consumption. Researchers from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology propose Brain-like Optical Computing (BOC), a new photonic framework integrating sensing, memory and computation for future edge and embodied intelligence.