Inspired by the rock-paper-scissors game in ecosystem, researchers have established an active thermal transport model, revealing robust topological temperature localization phenomenon and topological phase transition. This work unveils new physics in non-equilibrium heat transfer and offers a new paradigm for thermal regulation and management.

Despite its high speed and parallel processing ability, optical encryption is vulnerable at the back-end. To address this, researchers developed a programmable dual-band photodetector with a color image encryption scheme, where the detector serves as both detector and decryption key. This detector-dependent security effectively prevents back-end eavesdropping, enabling a new pathway for highly secure optical encryption in information warfare.

Natural polysaccharides with different structural features and closely similar molecular sizes are often isolated together as a mixture using current purification methods and then are identified to be one complex structure. The current purity tests mainly focus on molecular size and ion-exchange property and therefore are weak to identify this impurity risk. Researchers have now developed the existing "enzyme diagnosis" method which usually indicates structure feature to an upgraded "enzyme diagnostic criteria" for purity test in order to expose these hidden mixtures. This new criterion may effectively solve the concern regarding the poor repeatability of polysaccharide structure identification by offering truly pure and much simpler polysaccharides.

This study investigates how 6:2 chlorinated polyfluorinated ether sulfonic acid (6:2 Cl-PFESA)—a widely used alternative to perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS)—exacerbates antibiotic resistance gene (ARG) proliferation during anaerobic digestion. The research demonstrates that PFESA exposure significantly increases both intracellular and extracellular ARGs, particularly tetracycline and sulfonamide resistance genes, through multiple mechanisms including enhanced mobile genetic element proliferation, extracellular polymeric substance restructuring that immobilizes DNA, oxidative stress-induced membrane damage, and selective enrichment of resistant microbial taxa. These findings reveal that emerging PFAS alternatives pose overlooked ecological and health risks by amplifying antimicrobial resistance spread in wastewater treatment systems, highlighting the need to incorporate resistance indicators into environmental risk assessment frameworks for persistent contaminants.

A team from Tsinghua University reports Au–TiO₂ metasurfaces that convert visible light into singlet oxygen at high speed and extremely high local density. By combining quasi-BIC field confinement with hot-carrier transfer across an ultrathin interface, the device produces molar-level singlet oxygen locally within seconds, which is surprisingly ~10⁶ times that achieved by conventional approaches. Besides, the on-chip generator enables wavelength- and pixel-selective cytotoxicity for targeted tumor cell killing in photodynamic therapy.

Researchers from The University of Osaka discovered a mechanism that greatly improves the efficiency of endothermic singlet exciton fission. By combining singlet-fission molecules with quantum dots, the team created hybridized electronic states at the material interface that act as intermediate energy pathways. This allows one absorbed photon to generate two excited states with high efficiency, potentially allowing solar technologies to exceed current efficiency limits.