Your intestine completely rebuilds its inner lining every few days—one of the fastest renewal processes in the human body. Scientists have now discovered that this extraordinary feat is accompanied by a hidden network of specialized mesenchymal support cells working behind the scenes, revealing an unexpected level of organization inside the gut and offering new clues that may eventually inform approaches to intestinal injury and inflammatory bowel disease.

Silicon photonics has emerged as a promising technology for addressing bandwidth and latency bottlenecks of conventional electrical interconnects and therefore are being explored for future artificial intelligence infrastructure. However, heterogenous integration of multiple material systems remains a challenge. Now, researchers show how micro-transfer printing can enable highly versatile heterogenous integration to expand the functionality of silicon photonics, paving the way for advanced photonic systems.

Researchers analyzed snow droughts in Xinjiang from 1980 to 2021 and classified them into warm-only, dry-only, and warm-dry types. The study identifies strong spatial heterogeneity, highlights the Kunlun Mountains as a major hotspot, and shows that warm-dry snow droughts increased markedly after 2000.

A PtIn nanoalloy catalyst supported on Sn MFI zeolite was designed, which exhibits remarkable performance in the selective oxidation of glycerol to lactic acid under base-free conditions. Notably, the PtIn/Sn-MFI catalyst shows a faster initial reaction rate than its monometallic Pt/Sn-MFI counterpart. The synergy between electron-rich PtIn alloy and Lewis acid Sn sites enables remarkable stability and activity, offering a sustainable route for glycerol valorization.

Carbohydrate-based vaccines are an effective means for combating bacterial infections, particularly in the face of rising antibiotic resistance. This perspective provides an overview of carbohydrate vaccine against bacterial infections, from the earliest polysaccharide formulations to the latest synthetic constructs, and highlights the full engineering continuum encompassing carbohydrate antigen production, epitope mapping, conjugation chemistry, formulation, preclinical and clinical evaluation, and regulatory approval. By introducing the integrative framework of carbohydrate-based vaccine engineering (CVE), a unified perspective is provided to support both the optimization of current vaccine platforms and the rational design of next-generation glycoconjugate vaccines.