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Planetary science is a rapidly growing research field in China. In March 2025, many hundreds of early-career planetary scientists gathered in Huangshan, China, to exchange the latest findings on this topic.

The study shows a significant gender gap in scholarly self-promotion on Twitter, finding that women are about 28% less likely to promote their own academic papers compared to men, a disparity which is even more pronounced among highly productive women at prestigious institutions. Women’s self-promotion efforts tend to yield fewer overall mentions and visibility online compared to men, highlighting systematic gender biases in digital scholarly communication.

Adverse events resulting from COVID-19 vaccination are a public health concern and it is not known whether pre-existing conditions may impose an increased risk. Here, using electronic health records from Hong Kong, the authors show that adverse events are rare for all groups, and there is no evidence of risk modification due to multimorbidity.

Ultrafast electron sources are essential for time-resolved electron microscopy techniques, but they usually suffer from limited stability and short lifetimes. Here, the authors report the fabrication of ultrafast hot-electron sources consisting of graphene films integrated on a single-mode optical fibre, showing enhanced stability and longevity.

Freestanding membranes of hafnium zirconium oxide can be created using pulsed laser deposition method and used as the top-gate dielectric in molybdenum disulfide transistors.

Epstein-Barr virus is associated with increased cancer risk. Here, the authors analysed two population-based prospective cohorts in Southern China to examine the association between increased seropositivity and the risk of multiple cancer types.

Combining antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) and tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) targeting HER2 has been shown to improve efficacy in patients with advanced HER2+ breast cancer. Here, the authors report a randomised phase 2b trial comparing neoadjuvant ARX788 (HER2 ADC) plus pyrotinib (HER1, HER2 and HER4 TKI) against neoadjuvant standard of care (docetaxel, carboplatin, trastuzumab, and pertuzumab) for the treatment of HER2+ breast cancer.

Detecting small molecules is pivotal across many fields. Here, authors leverage a split crRNA mode to construct spatially blocked split CRISPR-Cas12a system. This approach establishes a low-background, highly sensitive platform for small molecule detection.

This work shows an iron molecular catalyst for water oxidation, a critical reaction for renewable energy technologies. The excellent performance of the catalyst is attributed to an intermediate dinuclear structure formed via spin crossover.

How spatial gene expression patterns are orchestrated by enhancers is not fully elucidated. Here the authors present a computational framework called eSpatial revealing a “spatial enhancer code,” where divergent enhancer combinations regulate spatial gene expression during development and diseases.

Hong-Xuan Lin, Ji-Ping Gao, Jun-Xiang Shan and colleagues show that natural variation in a proteasome α2 subunit gene contributes to thermotolerance in African rice. Their follow-up studies suggest that the variant allele protects cells from heat stress by enhancing the elimination of cytotoxic denatured proteins and maintaining heat-response processes.

Model simulations suggest that cropland expansion since industrialization has reduced atmospheric biogenic secondary organic aerosol by 10% and its associated radiative cooling effect by 11%.

Luo et al. conducted a multinational cohort study examining the trends in mortality risk among 1,272,495 individuals with incident dementia between 2000 and 2018. There is a consistent decline in mortality risk following dementia diagnosis in the UK, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, indicating potential advancements in dementia care.

Tao et al. study the role of TRMT6 in colorectal cancer, where it is upregulated and show that TRMT6 supports histone biosynthesis by stabilizing tRNA-Lys-TTT-1-1. Targeting TRMT6 reduced histone mRNA translation in a codon-biased manner.

A nanofluidic intracellular delivery (NanoFLUID) patch provides a versatile, biocompatible and efficient method for the targeted delivery of payloads to internal organs for therapeutic purposes and for biomolecular investigations.

Hydroxysafflor yellow A, a quinochalcone di-C-glycoside, is clinically used for acute ischemic stroke. Here, authors elucidate its biosynthetic pathway, revealing that CtCGT and Ct2OGD1 coordinately catalyze di-C-glycosylation and dearomatization in the final step.

Artificial intelligence-based studies for breast cancer magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) predominantly rely on single sequences and have limited validation. Here, the authors develop a mixture-of-modality-experts model (MOME) that integrates multiparametric breast cancer MRI information within a unified structure, which shows reliable performance in a large cohort.

Efficient adenine base editors for mitochondrial DNA are achieved with evolved TadA deaminases.

Biosynthesis of antimicrobial phytoalexin glyceollins in soybean is complicated and elusive. Here Xie et al. report a plant chassis for high-yield isoflavonoid production, leading to the identification of six P450s that complete the 15-step biosynthesis of diverse glyceollins, which are critical compounds for plant defense.

Liu et al. report the multi-site chelate effect using quercetin for Sn²⁺ and retarding crystallisation in FASnI₃-based optoelectronic synapse. 12 × 12 real-time NIR imaging array enables spatiotemporal information fusion for object recognition, enhancement, and motion perception in complex conditions.

Hu and colleagues present a machine learning-powered NIR-II fluorescent nanosensor that enables real-time, non-invasive monitoring of plant stress by visualising internal signalling, thereby allowing for the identification of different types of stress.

Man, Gao and colleagues find that methylphenidate treatment in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is associated with reduced risk of physical abuse.

Li et al. demonstrate the critical role of skeletal muscle stem cells (MuSCs) in actively shaping their niche in dystrophic muscle through YY1-CCL5-CCR5 axis mediated cellular interaction with macrophages.

Toxic methylmercury in soil can accumulate in rice grains. Here, the authors use DNA stable-isotope probing and metagenomics to identify soil microbes and pathways potentially involved in methylmercury degradation.

The luminescence efficiency of lanthanide-doped nanoparticles is limited by surface-related energy losses. Here the authors show how coordination of small organic molecules can increase the material brightness over a broad temperature range.

Traditional lithographic techniques could damage organic semiconductor crystals due to high-energy beams or solvents. Here, authors employ a chemical-free nanoimprint crystallography method for fabrication of independent complex 2D patterns that exhibit good lasing performance and reproducibility.

Shape morphing is crucial for soft robotics, but conventional methods often induce unwanted in-plane strain and rigidity. Authors propose pneumatic torsion strips inspired by Möbius strips, enabling localized, strain-free bending with tunable elastic energy for shape morphing.

Nano-groove traps at grain triple junctions significantly affect cation homogeneity in formamidinium–caesium perovskite films. Shallowing these traps improves interfacial properties and enhances solar cell performance.

LipidIN is an advanced framework designed for flash platform-independent lipid annotation. Featuring a comprehensive 168.5-million lipid fragment library with the intelligent models, LipidIN improves annotation accuracy, speed, and coverage.

Developing tactile sensors that can interact with the environment and withstand mechanical stress is challenging. Here, the authors introduce a flexible tactile sensor inspired by insect antennae, enhancing robotic manipulation, navigation, and environmental recognition.

In complex high-dimensional systems like power grids or COVID-19 transmission, both causal dependencies and temporal information of key variables are essential for dissecting the underlying mechanisms governing system dynamics. This paper presents Causal-oriented Representation Learning Predictor, a neural network framework designed to jointly conduct causal analysis and multistep forecasting.

Cancer cells exploit altered metabolic pathways to dynamically regulate epigenetic methylations. Here, the authors show the canonical metabolic and nonmetabolic functions of PRPS2 in enhancing ATP utilization and SAM biosynthesis, promoting RNA m⁶A methylation for lung tumorigenesis and metastasis.

The significance of precatalyst activation and its impact on electrolyte properties in water electrocatalysis is crucial but often overlooked. The authors report an efficient transition metal catalyst for hydrogen production by manipulating both precatalyst reconstruction and electrolyte composition.

A challenge in the selective functionalization of ubiquitous C-H bonds is to increase the turnover numbers (TONs) for catalytic C-H functionalization reactions, and the selective functionalization of less reactive primary C-H bonds. Here, the authors report iridium porphyrin-catalysed asymmetric carbene insertions into primary N-adjacent C–H bonds, with up to 99% ee and product TON > 1000000.

Here the authors investigated DHX36-induced RNA structurome changes by conducting Structure-seq and uncovered that DHX36 binding-induced 3’UTR structural accessibility enhances m6A dependent YTHDF1 binding to promote target mRNA degradation.

Prussian blue analogues are promising for aqueous batteries but interstitial water effects remain underexplored. Here, authors develop a cation-self-shielding strategy with dihydroxyacetone to stabilize water-rich Prussian blue analogues for application in K-ion batteries.

Here the authors develop topological polarization singular lasers that feature paired radiation channels carrying distinct topological properties which leads to single mode lasing with high external quantum efficiency.

Testicular aging affects male reproductive health. Here, the authors show that impaired ketogenesis in Leydig cells drives testicular aging, and boosting ketogenesis or supplementing with the ketone body BHB can help mitigate testicular aging.

Microresonator frequency combs are versatile tools for sensing, data transmission and quantum applications. In this work the authors present the generation of low-noise frequency combs at repetition rates of 100 GHz by utilizing a cascaded forward-propagating Brillouin scattering process to seed soliton frequency comb generation.

A gene-edited pig liver transplanted into a human recipient remains functional after 10 days and indicates that porcine organs could help meet the growing demand for liver transplants.

Developing skeletal editing tools, especially to realize the single-atom transmutation in a ring system without altering the ring size is challenging. Here, the authors introduce a skeletal editing strategy that enables polycyclic arenols to be readily converted into N-heteroarenes through carbon–nitrogen transmutation.

The advance in improving the operational lifetime of organic solar cells is currently limited. Here, the authors report a radical scavenger capped zinc oxide nanoparticles as the electron transport layer, achieving operationally stable devices with efficiency of 19.47%.

The primary challenge in commercializing perovskite solar cells stems from the fragile and moisture-sensitive nature of perovskite materials. Here, authors propose a multi-functional asynchronous cross-linking strategy and achieve high-performance and stable devices with mere 0.30 voltage deficit.

Semi-aquatic robots rely on surface tension for propulsion, which implies that breaking the water surface is a limitation. Here, the authors developed a soft robot with a superhydrophobic body, achieving high jumping height and take-off velocity.