News from Science China Press

A large multicenter study of 17,415 Chinese participants showed that mosaic chromosomal alterations (mCAs) detected in blood were associated with colorectal cancer risk and further distinguished risk across groups defined by polygenic risk and lifestyle factors. The findings suggest that mCAs may provide complementary information for colorectal cancer risk assessment.

Researchers report in Science Bulletin that that lncCtxnd1 encodes a 59-amino-acid micropeptide, CTXND1, that suppresses hepatocellular carcinoma in experimental models by regulating tumor-associated macrophages. CTXND1 inhibits mTORC1 signaling in macrophages, limiting M2-like polarization and tumor-promoting activity. Restoring CTXND1 expression reduces tumor growth, revealing a previously unrecognized link between lncRNA-encoded micropeptides, macrophage function, and liver cancer progression.

By tuning molecular rigidity and intermolecular interactions through the incorporation of spiro units, Lu and Chen at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, demonstrate through systematic photophysical and device characterizations that the multi-spiro strategy effectively suppresses aggregation-caused quenching and bimolecular exciton annihilation. Consequently, the emitters exhibit outstanding resistance to concentration quenching, enabling high photoluminescence quantum yields and device efficiencies to be maintained even at high doping concentrations.

Hard carbon (HC) represents the most industrially promising anode material for sodium‑ion batteries. However, the intrinsic correlation between its nanopore architecture and sodium-ion storage kinetics as well as cycling stability remains to be clarified. In this study, lignin‑derivatives and phenolic resin were adopted as precursors. By regulating the molecular aggregation and chemical composition of the lignin precursors, HC materials with different nanoporous structures were prepared. The hard carbon anode with small carbon microcrystal size, high content of sp³ hybrid carbon and relatively large pore size is prone to structural damage during large current cycle. The disorder degree of graphene layers increases and the pore volume decreases. The destruction of the graphene layer structure not only leads to a rapid decline of plateau capacity but also reduces the formation potential of sodium clusters and increases the safety risk of sodium dendrite precipitation. This work reveals the relationship between the structure of HC nanochannels, sodium-ion storage kinetics, and cycling stability, providing a theoretical basis for the design of hard carbon anodes for fast-charging, low-temperature, long-life, and high-safety sodium-ion batteries.

Biological polarization vision extracts optical information inaccessible to conventional intensity-based imaging, offering a powerful paradigm for next-generation machine vision. However, simultaneously achieving large-area manufacturability, high polarization discrimination, and neuromorphic functionality remains challenging within a single organic material platform. Here, an electret-mediated biphasic dip-coating strategy was developed that enables scalable integration of ultrathin organic single crystals with an in-situ electret layer for neuromorphic polarization vision. In this design, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) serves as a dual-functional mediator: its amphiphilic structure regulates interfacial nucleation and mass transport to direct the continuous growth of highly oriented few-layer single crystals, while its hydroxyl-rich framework provides homogeneous electron trapping sites. The resulting uniformly anisotropic single-crystal coupled electret facilitates robust

polarization-dependent charge trapping, boosting the dichroic ratio (DR) above 10³ while delivering a low DR coefficient of variation (CV) of 7.3%. Furthermore, pronounced synaptic properties were achieved, featuring an exceptionally paired-pulse facilitation (PPF) index of 6594%, a photocurrent modulation range exceeding 10⁵, and an ultralow energy consumption of ∼1 aJ per synaptic event. By unifying scalable single-crystal growth with polarization discrimination and synaptic plasticity, this work advances organic semiconductors toward integrated neuromorphic polarization vision. Inspired by fish lateral lines, researchers developed a lightweight, miniaturized sensing unit that estimates both flow speed and direction. Combined with a neural network and an inertial measurement unit, the single unit was validated on an underwater robot during multiple motion states and attitude disturbances, reflecting practical underwater operating conditions.

Layered, nacre-inspired composites are strong but fail easily when loaded across their layers. Researchers have rolled the layered “brick wall” into a concentric cylinder, so the weak directions between layers point outward in every direction and never align into a single failure plane. The resulting rods are stronger and tougher than flat counterparts under compression, bending and twisting, and last over 1,000 times longer in bending fatigue.

Researchers have built a warm-white OLED from single-dopant light-emitting molecule. By linking two multi-resonance units with a thiophene bridge, the emitter glows blue-green on its own and orange-yellow of the excimer excited state. The two bands blend into warm white light, and the device reaches 27.1% external quantum efficiency, the best yet reported for a purely organic single-dopant white OLED.