Could Southeast Asia become carbon neutral by 2050, even as energy demand increases? The region is growing quickly and still relies heavily on fossil fuels. A modeling study by Bin Su and colleagues provides an energy system optimization model with pathways to net-zero emissions by 2050 for the electricity and hydrogen sectors in members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Cambodia. The model simulates energy production and demand ...

The emergence of carbon-neutral energy systems such as high-temperature electrolysis, solar thermal power plants, small modular reactors, and hydrogen- and ammonia-based processes has necessitated the development of novel structural materials that exhibit outstanding corrosion resistance and mechanical properties even at high temperatures and under harsh environments. Notably, traditional austenitic stainless steels (ASSs) fail in these conditions. Addressing this technological gap, materials science engineers have come up with Ni- and Fe-based ...

University of Warwick researchers discover rapid, jasmonate-driven, early immune response in plants using breakthrough live-imaging tool. Plants mobilise their immune defences far earlier than scientists have believed for decades — and through a previously overlooked early signalling mechanism - according to a new study published in Nature Plants. Unlike animals, plants are literally rooted to the spot and cannot deploy specialised immune cells or antibodies, nor run away. Instead, every cell must be capable of responding to attack from pathogenic viruses, bacteria, fungi, or insect pests. When attacked plants quickly initiate defence responses ...

A poor night’s sleep portends a bleary-eyed next day, but it could also hint at diseases that will strike years down the road. A new artificial intelligence model developed by Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues can use physiological recordings from one night’s sleep to predict a person’s risk of developing more than 100 health conditions. Known as SleepFM, the model was trained on nearly 600,000 hours of sleep data collected from 65,000 participants. The sleep data comes ...

Researchers at the University of St Andrews have uncovered a long‑elusive molecular ‘reshuffle', a breakthrough that tackles one of chemistry’s most persistent challenges and could transform the way medicines are manufactured.  In a paper published today (6th January) in Nature Chemistry, researchers from the School of Chemistry have found a key to unlocking an 80-year-old chemical puzzle, which could have important ramifications for fine chemical processes like those involved in the manufacture of medicines.  Chiral molecules are asymmetric or non-superimposable on their mirror image. Each side is different, existing in “right hand” ...

The maternal microbiome and immune system have both independent and synergistic effects on fetal brain health - changes in the mother’s immune system have been linked to an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in children. A new study, published today in Nature Neuroscience, expands our understanding of this “gut-immune axis” by mapping the impact of stressors during pregnancy – namely changes in the microbiome and activation of the immune system - on the neuroimmune landscape of the developing fetal brain. The research team, led by ...

One of the great successes of 20th-century physics was the quantum mechanical description of solids. This allowed scientists to understand for the first time how and why certain materials conduct electric current and how these properties could be purposefully modified. For instance, semiconductors such as silicon could be used to produce transistors, which revolutionized electronics and made modern computers possible.   To be able to mathematically capture the complex interplay between electrons and atomic nuclei and their motions in a solid, physicists ...

LA JOLLA, California, USA, 6 January 2026 -- In a revealing Genomic Press Interview published today in Genomic Psychiatry, Dr. Maria Margarita Behrens recounts an extraordinary scientific journey that wound through four countries and multiple disciplines before arriving at fundamental questions about how the brain develops and what goes wrong in psychiatric disorders. Her work now stands at the forefront of international efforts to decode the molecular signatures that define every cell type in the human brain. Dr. Behrens serves as a faculty member in the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and holds ...

TIANJIN, CHINA, 6 January 2026 -- A comprehensive genetic investigation led by Dr. Feng Liu at Tianjin Medical University General Hospital has uncovered striking molecular connections between schizophrenia and bone health, identifying 195 shared genetic loci that may explain why psychiatric patients face elevated fracture risks. The peer-reviewed research, published in Genomic Psychiatry, analyzed genomic data from over half a million individuals and reveals that these two seemingly unrelated conditions suggest overlapping biological pathways at the molecular level. The finding carries immediate clinical weight. Patients with schizophrenia experience osteoporosis at rates far ...

ADELAIDE, South Australia, AUSTRALIA, 6 January 2026 -- A genetic mutation passed from mother to children in families affected by schizophrenia has now been shown to completely silence a brain receptor that pharmaceutical companies are racing to target with new drugs. Researchers at Flinders University, publishing their peer-reviewed findings in Genomic Psychiatry, demonstrate that this single amino acid change transforms the trace amine-associated receptor 1 (TAAR1) from a functioning cellular gatekeeper into a molecular dead end. The discovery carries weight far beyond basic science. Several drug companies have invested heavily in TAAR1-targeting medications, ...

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina, USA, 6 January 2026 -- A comprehensive mini-review published today after peer review in Brain Medicine by Dr. Tao Ma and colleagues at Wake Forest University School of Medicine synthesizes emerging evidence that two isoforms of a critical cellular energy sensor play distinct, and sometimes opposing, roles in Alzheimer's disease. The analysis proposes that this overlooked complexity may explain why pharmacological approaches targeting AMP-activated protein kinase have yielded frustratingly mixed results in treating the disease that ...

KODAIRA, Tokyo, JAPAN, 6 January 2026 -- In a revealing Genomic Press Interview published today in Genomic Psychiatry, Dr. Noritaka Ichinohe challenges a foundational assumption that has quietly constrained psychiatric research for decades: the belief that meaningful explanation requires averaging away individual differences. His three decades of translational neuroscience across Japanese research institutions have instead demonstrated that biological heterogeneity, far from being statistical noise to eliminate, constitutes the very phenomenon demanding ...

SÃO PAULO, SP, BRAZIL, 6 January 2026 -- A Viewpoint published today in Genomic Psychiatry by Dr. Mayana Zatz and colleagues at the Human Genome and Stem Cell Research Center, University of São Paulo, examines why Brazil represents one of the most valuable yet underutilized resources for understanding extreme human longevity. The synthesis draws upon the team's ongoing research with a nationwide cohort of long-lived individuals while contextualizing recent advances in supercentenarian biology. Where Genetic Diversity Meets Exceptional Aging Why do some humans live ...

There are “costs of life” that mechanical physics cannot calculate. A clear example is the energy required to keep specific biochemical processes active — such as those that make up photosynthesis, although the examples are countless — while preventing alternative processes from occurring. In mechanics, no displacement implies zero work, and, put simply, there is no energetic cost for keeping things from happening. Yet careful stochastic thermodynamic calculations show that these costs do exist — and they are often quite significant. A ...

China Finance Review International (CFRI) has announced a call for papers for a forthcoming special issue titled “New Frontiers in Sustainable Finance,” inviting original research that examines the growing role of sustainability in financial markets, corporate decision-making, and regulatory frameworks. The special issue aims to capture recent advances in sustainable finance as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations become increasingly central to the global ...

A research team led by Professor Leo Tianshuo Zhao from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Hong Kong (HKU), has developed the world’s smallest fully printed infrared photodetectors, which are an innovative room-temperature nano-printing platform that overcomes the limitations of traditional silicon-based technology. Near-infrared (NIR) technology is essential for applications such as autonomous systems, biomedical sensing, and high-speed optical communications. However, conventional silicon-based CMOS technology cannot directly detect NIR wavelengths. Current solutions ...

Background Understanding the dynamic neural mechanisms of sleep-wake cycles is a major challenge in sleep science and neuroengineering. Sleep, essential for maintaining brain homeostasis and cognitive function, relies on the intricate coordination between neuronal electrical activity and neurochemical signals in specific brain regions. The nucleus accumbens, a key node in the reward and motivation circuit, has been identified as critical for regulating sleep-stage transitions through dopamine dynamics and neuronal firing patterns. However, existing neural sensing technologies face significant ...

Microvascular endothelial dysfunction (MiVED) is implicated in several health conditions, such as hypertension, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD), and diabetes. MiVED is considered an early marker of endothelial impairment that often precedes dysfunction in larger arteries. Our study aims to address the lack of suitable technologies for detailed in-vivo MiVED observation by introducing fast raster-scan optoacoustic mesoscopy (fRSOM), which can resolve cutaneous MiVED features at single-capillary resolution.   The ...

Organised by the Beijing-Hong Kong Academic Exchange Centre, the results of the annual selection for the ‘Top 10 Innovation & Technology News in Hong Kong 2025’, have recently been announced. The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is pleased to report that three of its groundbreaking research projects have made it onto this prestigious list, leading among all local institutions. These selected projects in the fields of medical health and astronomical sciences highlight HKU's strong capabilities ...

This study is led by associate professor Gan Ai and associate professor Jinding Liu (College of Plant Protection, Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China). Nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins function as key intracellular receptors in the plant immune system, recognizing pathogens’ effectors and activating defenses. Identifying NLRs is a critical step in breeding disease-resistant crops. However, NLRs are frequently misannotated or entirely overlooked in automated genome annotations due to their complex genomic structures and ...

For quota_Anchor, collinear gene pairs are initially identified by a dynamic programming algorithm analogous to those implemented in DAGchainer and MCScanX. The algorithm then identifies the highest-scoring block and determines the number of query and reference genes within that block, taking into account the alignment depth constraint. This iterative process continues until the score of the collinear block falls below the predefined minimum threshold (default: 3), at which point the iteration terminates.   The authors hypothesized that inversion alters the regulatory context of collinear ...

Quantum information storage is a cornerstone technology for the emerging quantum internet and quantum computation. While current quantum communication networks face fundamental limitations due to signal loss over long distances, quantum memories offer a promising solution by enabling quantum repeaters that can extend the range of quantum networks through entanglement swapping operations.   In a breakthrough published in Light: Science & Applications, a research team led by scientists from the Humboldt-Universität ...

Fluorescence microscopy is a cornerstone of modern biological research, widely used to reveal cellular structures, molecular interactions, and dynamic life processes. Computational fluorescence microscopy(CFM) has further revolutionized this field by integrating molecular specificity with optical modulation and algorithmic demodulation, enabling high resolution and multidimensional imaging far beyond the limits of conventional wide field microscopy. However, its full potential is still hindered by a long standing challenge: accurate characterization of the imaging system. Traditional approaches either rely on ...

This study is led by Professor Guangcun Li (State Key Laboratory of Vegetable Biobreeding, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China). The authors evaluated 14 restriction enzymes to select optimal restriction enzymes in multiple crop species, as the restriction enzyme used affects the evenness and spacing of markers.   Then they present BacPhase, an innovative sequence-based approach in which constructed BACs are digested with a restriction enzyme and self-ligated to produce small inserts that can be ...

This study was led by Prof. Jianghua Chen from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The authors identified four WOX1 homologs in soybean and uncovered their roles in leaf development. They found that GmWOX1a and GmWOX1b are specifically expressed at the initiation sites of leaf primordia and in the middle domain of leaf primordia.   Using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, they generated multiple knockout mutants and demonstrated the functional redundancy among four WOX1 genes. Triple mutants Gmwox1acd and Gmwox1bcd showed ...