Researchers say they may have taken a significant step toward explaining the origin of gravity, a tentative conclusion emerging from their use of quantum relative entropy.

Reaching net zero sooner would limit long-lasting changes to El Niño and the tropical Pacific, new climate modelling suggests, although heat stored deep in the ocean means changes to the tropical Pacific could persist for centuries. 

Cells must produce energy despite changing conditions. But what keeps metabolic enzymes functional during temperature fluctuations? A team led by Prof. Simon Ebbinghaus and Dr. Harshita Rastogi at Ruhr University Bochum and the Research Center Chemical Sciences and Sustainability investigated this question using phosphofructokinase-1 platelet isoform (PFKP), a central enzyme in glucose metabolism. They found that thermal protection depends less on the size of crowding molecules than on the subtle chemical interactions among them, which can determine how well the enzyme remains active as temperatures rise. Their work was published in the science magazine Angewandte Chemie International Edition from October 8, 2026. 

Scientists have developed a simple yet powerful strategy to overcome a long-standing challenge in cancer phototheranostics—the trade-off between imaging brightness, therapeutic efficacy, and biological stability. By systematically replacing hydrogen atoms with deuterium (a heavier isotope) in a near-infrared fluorescent molecule, researchers achieved simultaneous improvements in all three critical properties. The optimized nanoparticles delivered 26% higher fluorescence brightness, 14% more reactive oxygen species for killing cancer cells, and 20% better stability in blood. In mouse models, a single treatment completely eliminated breast tumors, and fluorescence-guided surgery enabled precise removal of colorectal cancer remnants that were invisible under white light—extending survival from under 20 days to over 60 days. The strategy is broadly applicable and does not require redesigning the molecular backbone, offering a versatile platform for next-generation cancer theranostics.

In the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, Prof. Jinyou Shao at Xi'an Jiaotong University and his co-workers have resolved the challenge of maintaining electrical reliability under repeated bending by bonding a sturdy copper base directly beneath a reservoir of liquid metal alloy. The pairing functions like an autonomous, self-repairing highway: as bending tears microscopic cracks into the solid copper floor, the liquid alloy overhead immediately flows into the fractures to preserve electrical flow, while the rigid copper foundation bears external pressure so the circuit never chokes under compression.

Turbulence is ubiquitous and occurs in our everyday lives on Earth, such as when milk is stirred into coffee, or in the stormy motions of the ocean and the atmosphere. Media in space and astrophysical systems can also develop turbulence, but the physics is different because the medium is in an ionized state (known as the plasma state) and the flow motion is strongly coupled to electromagnetic fields. Furthermore, space plasma is collisionless because the medium is so dilute that the particles do not collide with each other. How does plasma develop into turbulence? How is the fluctuation energy distributed in collisionless turbulence? Turbulence in space plasma remains a mystery in physics.  

An international research team from the Technische Universität Braunschweig and University of Tokyo in cooperation with Tohoku University, Kyushu University, Osaka University, and multinational research institutes has now demonstrated, for the first time, a reversal phenomenon of magnetic field rotation in space turbulence. A structure emerges within the unstructured space plasma. The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

In the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, Prof. Yang Li at Zhejiang University and his co-workers developed a dual-sided stencil printing technique that packs high-capacity energy storage into electrode tracks just 80 μm wide by giving a tungsten stencil two distinct physical personalities—a dual-sided "Janus mask" named after the two-faced Roman god.