A  review in the Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines provides a systematic guide to mainstream mass spectral databases and computational annotation methodologies — from GNPS and SIRIUS to molecular networking — charting the path toward discovering novel natural entities.

Biomedical researchers at Texas A&M University’s College of Engineering and the University of São Paulo have developed dissolvable microneedles, each only a few times wider than a human hair, that can deliver therapeutic drugs and redistribute light beneath the skin, offering a practically painless, scar-free alternative to invasive surgery and a new path to treating skin cancer and other light-responsive conditions.

Accurate color matching is essential for achieving aesthetically realistic outcomes in dental crown and bridge restorations. Traditional visual methods, however, are often affected by lighting variations and observer subjectivity, which can result in inconsistent color matching, including metameric mismatches under changing illumination. Hyperspectral imaging can provide the spectral reflectance of teeth, but existing spatial-scanning or filter-based systems are typically bulky and time-consuming, limiting their suitability for real-time clinical use. Snapshot hyperspectral imaging captures multispectral information in a single exposure, yet many existing reconstruction algorithms rely primarily on data-driven approaches without explicitly accounting for the underlying physics of image formation, limiting their generalizability and interpretability.

A team led by the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, including researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, has reported the first experimental investigation of a nuclear physics reaction essential to explain how the element strontium is formed in stars. The study, published Communications Physics, reports that the team used indirect experimental techniques to extract previously inaccessible information about how an isotope of a separate element — krypton — absorbs, or captures, neutrons.

Quantum random number generators play a crucial role in securing high-demand information contexts by producing true random numbers. Nevertheless, the large volume and high cost limit their widespread use. Here, a system on-chip is proposed that fully leverages the advantages of different photonic integrated platforms, where the interference optical paths and photodiodes are integrated on a standard silicon process, while the laser source on-chip is realized on a III–V platform. Using micro-lens coupling package technology with coupling loss lower than 2 dB, the components on different platforms are combined and packaged with the amplifier circuits in a 42 mm × 24 mm footprint in a butterfly form. This miniaturized and cost-effective entropy source enables outputting a vacuum noise signal with a 3-dB bandwidth of over 500 MHz. After sampling and post-processing, a random number generation rate of up to 6.57 Gbps is achieved.

Researchers embedded isolated iron atoms in the sub-nanometer channels of an MFI zeolite, creating a stable catalyst in which iron sites activated hydrogen peroxide while nearby Brønsted acid sites attracted the target molecule. The catalyst showed rapid peroxidation and exerted effective cytotoxicity against tumor cells.