With the advancement of deep-space missions such as crewed lunar exploration and Mars exploration, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are being increasingly embedded into aerospace engineering management processes, and managers' AI competency has become a critical factor affecting mission delivery performance and safety compliance. However, traditional project management competency models have been primarily constructed around process control and redundancy design within deterministic systems, failing to explicitly address governance challenges introduced by AI integration—including black-box opacity, accountability allocation, traceable review of AI outputs, and accountability mechanisms for assisted decision-making. Although existing NASA and ESA frameworks provide fundamental support for aerospace project delivery, AI-related competencies in aerospace management exhibit inherent interdependencies. Managers are required to continuously balance delivery schedules and cost pressures against mission assurance obligations such as verification and validation, configuration control, and compliance, making it impossible to simply represent AI competency as a linear list of attributes. Therefore, how to construct an AI competency assessment framework that captures governance priorities and multi-attribute interdependencies has become a critical issue urgently to be addressed in aerospace engineering management in the AI era.

Precision nutrient management in high-density orchards is critical for yield and fruit quality, yet accurately gauging the nitrogen status of individual trees remains a challenge. 

Ultra-low-pass whole-genome sequencing of bile cell-free DNA may improve the evaluation of biliary strictures, particularly when initial pathology is inconclusive. In 95 patients, the approach detected tumour DNA with 96% specificity in initially indeterminate cases and anticipated conventional diagnosis by a median of 38 days. Copy-number profiles also helped distinguish cholangiocarcinoma from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, while integration with targeted mutation burden identified a subgroup with significantly poorer overall survival, supporting prospective multicentre and independent validation.

A new study reports balloon-borne, in situ measurements of dust transport to the tropopause layer over the northern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, offering a fresh observational perspective on a process that has mostly been inferred from remote sensing and models.

This study established a new framework called FOCA to map how individualized brain networks coordinate their spatial layouts. The findings demonstrate that the brain’s hierarchical organization undergoes a dramatic “inversion” from birth to adulthood, and that early-life brain patterns can predict future neurodevelopment.

 

Cholesterol is an essential component of cell membranes and a key molecule for maintaining metabolic homeostasis. LDL-derived cholesterol is delivered to lysosomes, where NPC1 and NPC2 cooperate to transport free cholesterol to other cellular compartments. When this process is impaired, cholesterol abnormally accumulates in lysosomes, a hallmark of Niemann-Pick disease type C. While NPC1 was known to undergo palmitoylation, a reversible lipid modification regulating protein trafficking, localization, and stability, the enzyme catalyzing this modification and its functional impact on NPC1 remained unknown.

 

Gastric cancer remains one of the most common causes of cancer-related death worldwide, causing an estimated 660,000 deaths in 2022, and more than 70% of patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage. Although immune checkpoint blockade has transformed cancer immunotherapy, its efficacy in gastric cancer remains limited, with response rates below 20% in unselected cohorts. Tumor progression necessitates the metabolic reprogramming of cancer cells, and metabolic alterations together with immune dysfunction critically drive gastric cancer progression and therapeutic resistance. However, the metabolic landscapes of tumor cells and their interplay with immune components remain underexplored.

 

Biological Diversity has opened submissions for its special issue themed on resilient nature under global change, guest‑edited by Professor Qing Ye, Professor Hui Liu and Professor Feilong Li. Against mounting anthropogenic pressures including climate disruption, land‑use shift and biological invasion, the issue targets research untangling links between biodiversity, ecosystem function, stability and resilience. It welcomes basic theories, technical advances, long‑term monitoring data, assessments and practical restoration cases, spanning multi‑stressor effects, ecological tipping points, diverse restoration strategies, soil‑microbiome recovery, smart restoration evaluation and adaptive governance. APCs are fully waived. Authors need to select the corresponding special‑issue option in the submission system, and all manuscripts are due by 31 August 2027.