Researchers from the School of Electronic Science and Engineering at Southeast University, led by Prof. Zhenhua Ni and Prof. Junpeng Lu, have developed a pioneering computational spectrometer recently published in PhotoniX. The device utilizes a silicon photonic "Vernier Caliper" concept to overcome the fundamental trade-off between device footprint, bandwidth, and resolution. Operating within an ultra-compact footprint of only 55*35 µm², the spectrometer achieves an expansive bandwidth exceeding 160 nm and an average algorithm-enhanced spectral resolution of 1.35 pm. This performance establishes a record-breaking bandwidth-to-resolution-to-footprint ratio of over 61.5 µm^-2, demonstrating a significant advance for integrated spectrometers.

This breakthrough is achieved through a deep co-design of photonic hardware and computational science, moving beyond simple algorithmic compensation. The hardware architecture features cascaded Trapezoidal Subwavelength Grating Microring Resonators (TSWG-MRRs) that utilize dispersion engineering to suppress resonant periodicity. This deterministic design allows the device to scan a working window over 16 times larger than a standard microring's free spectral range. The system treats the intrinsic resonance peaks as orthogonal measurement bases and integrates an Nvidia Jetson GPU-accelerated unit to achieve real-time reconstruction. The team successfully resolved 49 absorption lines of hydrogen cyanide (H¹³C¹⁴N) with an accuracy exceeding commercial benchtop optical spectrum analyzers, validating its potential for gas sensing, chemical analysis, and lab-on-a-chip applications.

As the AI era accelerates the demand for advanced semiconductor packaging, a global joint research team has developed an Ultrafast Laser Chemical Vapor Deposition (ULCVD) technique. This breakthrough enables maskless, 3D direct-write patterning of highly conductive carbon circuits on all surfaces of transparent glass substrates, solving critical metallization challenges for Through-Glass Vias (TGV) and Redistribution Layers (RDL).

Mosquitoes have a specialized organ called Johnston’s organ, which sits at the bottom of their antennae, detects vibrations, and generates its own oscillations, thereby amplifying signals for the mosquito’s detection. The antennae are also segmented and covered with fine hairs, which makes them flexible to a wide range of frequencies and more sensitive to air vibrations. Inspired by these concepts, researchers have created a sensor that works without amplification circuits or signal processing and filtering and enhances vibration signals, simply based on the geometry of the device.

Steven Elmlinger from Princeton University has studied human infants and zebra finches to understand how immature babbling transitions into adultlike speech. He and his colleagues found that human caregiver responses to sequential vocalizations significantly increased the rate at which infants learned to produce those sequences. Elmlinger repeated this experiment with zebra finches, with the same finding. He will present this work as part of the 190th ASA Meeting.

Researchers develop light-induced Asp(D)-to-Ala(A) protein editors (LIDAPEs) which enable site-specific residue editing of endogenous protein in living cells, and lay the foundation for a new class of chemical biology tools.

The growing global demand for paper continues to exert pressure on forest resources, while numerous industries generate large volumes of waste with high potential for valorization.

In this context, researchers from Ecuador conducted a study demonstrating the technical and economic feasibility of producing biodegradable paper from brewer's spent grain, an abundant byproduct of both traditional and craft beer industries.

It is our great pleasure to announce and congratulate the awardees of the 2026 Carbon Future Young Investigator Award. Established in 2024, this award recognizes young researchers (PhD student or postdoctoral researcher) who have demonstrated exceptional research potential and innovative capabilities in the fields of carbon materials, carbon catalysis, low-carbon energy, or chemical engineering.