Browse Articles

Assessing the onset of spring water-level rise in snowmelt-dominated rivers of northeastern Russia using machine learning

From free speech advocates to critics: The Trump administration’s new rhetoric promotes support for censorship among Trump voters

Most Americans claim to support freedom of speech, including President Donald Trump who has portrayed himself as an ardent defender of this constitutional right. However, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Trump and members of his administration began to explicitly call for speech restrictions. This largely unprecedented rhetoric from a sitting president and his allies provides an opportunity to examine competing theories of public opinion: the influence of partisan elites versus the public’s purported commitment to free speech. In a preregistered survey experiment, we found that exposure to such unusually explicit antispeech rhetoric increased Trump voters’ support for government censorship of outparty media and individuals but prompted backlash among non-Trump voters, increasing their support for protecting outparty speech. While prior research has established that partisans favor censorship of outparty members, we demonstrate that partisans differentially shifted their censorship attitudes in response to the Trump administration’s new rhetoric, whether or not the source was attributed to Trump and his allies. These findings highlight the influence of elite rhetoric on public support for even the most foundational—and popular—democratic norm, raising concerns about the resilience of American democracy in the face of explicitly illiberal elites.

Retraction Note: Dandelion flower-fabricated Ag nanoparticles versus synthetic ones with characterization and determination of photocatalytic, antioxidant, antibacterial, and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities

Observation of chiral bound states in the continuum in self-biased magneto-optical photonic crystals

Chiral bound states in the continuum (BICs) are confined photonic modes with infinite quality factors and chiral response, offering significant potential for chiral optics. Although a novel type of spin-orbital-locking chiral BIC was recently predicted in magneto-optical (MO) photonic crystals (PhCs) that break time-reversal symmetry (TRS), its experimental realization has remained elusive. Here, we report an experimental observation of such chiral BICs in self-biased MO PhCs, which operate without external magnetic fields. Moreover, we experimentally demonstrate that the chirality and the surrounding near-circular polarization of these chiral BICs can be switched simply by reversing the remanent magnetization, without any structural changes. Unlike conventional chiral BICs that preserve TRS, these magnetically induced chiral BICs exhibit exceptional robustness against structural imperfections and perturbations. This work represents a significant advancement in topological photonics for chiral BICs, opening pathways toward robust chiral optical devices.

Retraction Note: Comparative plastome analysis of Schweinfurthia papilionacea and Schweinfurthia imbricata clarifying their taxonomic position in Lamiales

Amplification-free dual-blocking autocatalytic CRISPR-Cascade for attomolar DNA detection with low nonspecific signal

Autocatalytic CRISPR architecture offers amplification-free nucleic acid detection by directly linking target recognition to self-reinforcing ribonucleoprotein (RNP) generation. However, spontaneous background activation remains a key barrier, because strand invasion or unwinding events can initiate unintended amplification and diminish assay specificity. Here, we introduce a dual-blocking CRISPR-Cascade design that independently cages both the guide RNA and trigger DNA, establishing an intrinsic AND gate to raise the effective kinetic barrier for unintended RNP formation. This strategy suppresses leakage by approximately 3- to 18-fold relative to single blocking configurations in full Cascade reactions, while preserving rapid detection (10 min), achieving single-copy sensitivity, and enabling quantitative detection. When paired with a competitive guide RNA decoy, the system further reduces background signals without affecting true target detection. Finally, we demonstrate robust Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus detection from whole blood in under 40 min including the sample purification and extraction. These results establish dual-blocking as a generalizable molecular gating framework for constructing leakage-resistant, amplification-free CRISPR systems suitable for rapid and decentralized diagnostics.

Modification of screen-printed carbon electrode with 2D MoS2 nanosheets/1D Bi2S3 nanorods heterostructures as voltammetric sensing platform for 2,4-dichlorophenol analysis in water samples

Early adjunct anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy improves outcomes and restores infection-induced immune paralysis in mice with invasive pulmonary mucormycosis

Invasive pulmonary mucormycosis (IPM) is a severe opportunistic mold infection whose outcome is predominantly host driven. Preclinical proof-of-concept studies and clinical case reports in salvage therapy settings suggested a benefit of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in IPM management. However, the kinetics of infection-induced immune paralysis and optimal timing of ICI therapy remain poorly understood. Here, we performed sequential nCounter-based transcriptomics on lung tissue of cyclophosphamide-immunosuppressed mice with IPM ( Rhizopus arrhizus infection) to dynamically study the pulmonary immune environment. Within 7 d after infection, lungs of mice with IPM showed reversal of early proinflammatory signaling, impaired T cell signaling, and upregulation of exhaustion markers. Similar immune paralysis signatures were seen in mice with invasive pulmonary aspergillosis and fusariosis. For therapeutic studies, Mucorales-active antifungal therapy with isavuconazonium sulfate (ISAV) was initiated on day 3 after IPM infection, along with anti-PD-L1 or a nontargeting isotype antibody (control) given either on days 3 + 5 (early) or days 6 + 8 (late). Both early and late adjunct anti-PD-L1 therapy were well tolerated and significantly improved morbidity/mortality outcomes compared to ISAV + isotype. Notably, early adjunct anti-PD-L1 therapy promoted significantly stronger innate immune cell activation, upregulation of key cytokine pathways, reinvigoration of T-helper-cell signaling, and reversal of IPM-induced exhaustion signals than both late adjunct anti-PD-L1 and isotype control. These findings indicate that combined antifungal and early immunomodulatory therapy may be an important strategy to intercept immune paralysis and improve outcomes in immunocompromised hosts with IPM, inviting further preclinical and clinical exploration of early host-directed interventions to treat deadly mold pneumonias.

High glucose impairs autophagy and mitochondrial homeostasis in human dental pulp cells

Abstract This study aimed to investigate the effects of high-glucose exposure on human dental pulp cells and to explore associated changes in autophagy, mitochondrial homeostasis, and AMPK/mTOR signaling. Human dental pulp cells were cultured in vitro and assigned to a control group, a 5 mmol/L low-glucose group, and a 35 mmol/L high-glucose group. Cell viability was assessed using the CCK-8 assay at 24, 48, 72, and 96 h. The expression levels of p-AMPKα, p-mTOR, SQSTM1/p62, LC3B, and β-actin were detected by western blotting. Intracellular reactive oxygen species were measured using DCFH-DA staining, and cellular glutathione and ATP levels were evaluated using assay kits. Compared with the low-glucose group, high-glucose exposure increased p62 expression, reduced LC3B expression, decreased AMPKα phosphorylation, and increased mTOR phosphorylation. High-glucose exposure also increased intracellular reactive oxygen species levels, reduced glutathione content, and decreased ATP levels. These findings suggest that high-glucose exposure impairs autophagy-related activity and disrupts mitochondrial homeostasis in human dental pulp cells, accompanied by changes in AMPK/mTOR signaling.

Bleb expansion requires transient membrane invaginations that sequester curvature-preferring proteins

Bleb-based cell migration involves rapid plasma membrane expansion driven by intracellular pressure. How the membrane reorganizes its curvature and protein composition during this process remains unclear. Here, we identify a distinct inward membrane structure, termed the sub-bleb invagination (SBI), that forms de novo at the bleb base during expansion. SBIs display strong positive curvature and transiently sequester curvature-preferring integral membrane proteins such as Caveolin-1 and Piezo1 without endocytosis. Live-cell imaging shows that these proteins transiently accumulate at the SBIs in concert with bleb growth, indicating that bleb expansion dynamically redistributes membrane curvature and protein localization. Overexpression of curvature-preferring proteins markedly inhibited bleb enlargement and induced the aberrant formation of SBI-like membrane invaginations, suggesting that their excessive accumulation limits the membrane from unfurling. Our findings reveal a curvature-based mechanism for membrane protein sorting during bleb expansion and highlight how the interplay between membrane curvature and integral membrane protein organization shapes PM dynamics.

The effect of maternal and child health resource allocation on efficiency in China

Abstract Maternal and child healthcare services constitute a vital component of the healthcare system and play a crucial role in safeguarding population health. However, in China, challenges such as the irrational allocation of MCH resources and suboptimal operational efficiency remain prevalent. This study aims to investigate the impact of resource allocation on the efficiency of the maternal and child healthcare system in China. Data for 31 provinces and municipalities in China were obtained from the China Health Statistical Yearbook and the China Statistical Yearbook covering the period 2017 to 2021. The comprehensive Maternal and Child Health resource density index was developed by applying the entropy weight method to analyze the allocation of MCH resources across provinces. Furthermore, a three-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model was employed to calculate the efficiency of the provincial MCH systems. Finally, a spatial Durbin model was applied to examine the effect of the comprehensive MCH resource density on system efficiency. Between 2017 and 2021, the comprehensive Maternal and Child Health (MCH) resource density index in most regions of China increased from 0.108 to 0.138. In contrast, the average technical efficiency declined from 0.943 to 0.920, with substantial disparities observed across regions. The Moran’s I index for MCH resource efficiency ranged from − 0.349 to − 0.245, indicating significant spatial autocorrelation. Key factors influencing the technical efficiency of MCH resources included the comprehensive CHRDI in maternal and child health, urbanization rate, and total health expenditure per capita ( P  < 0.05). While the allocation of maternal and child health resources in China improved between 2017 and 2021, significant regional disparities persist. The study further reveals that the level of MCH resource allocation exerts spatial spillover effects on efficiency. Based on the current data trend, optimizing resource allocation may require a combination of policy guidance, financial input, performance evaluation, regional collaboration, and other coordination strategies.

Dynamic bidirectional coupling of membrane morphology and rod organization in flexible vesicles

The ordering of rod-like particles in soft, deformable containers emerges from the interplay of anisotropic interactions, geometric confinement, and boundary compliance. This competition couples internal particle organization to container morphology, producing behavior distinct from both rigid confinement and bulk systems. Such coupling is also relevant to biological contexts in which filamentous structures are confined by deformable membranes. Using a minimal model combining experiments and simulations of colloidal rods encapsulated in lipid vesicles, we show that soft confinement drives a bidirectional coupling between internal order and vesicle shape. This interplay gives rise to a phase diagram in which elongated vesicles promote nematic alignment at lower packing fractions, whereas higher packing fractions induce smectic-like ordering that reshapes vesicles into plate-like morphologies with increased bending energy. Furthermore, by controlling vesicle volume and membrane area, we demonstrate that boundary conditions enable reversible tuning of both vesicle shape and internal rod organization. These results establish a framework for dynamically controlling colloidal self-assembly in soft containers and provide insight into the organization of anisotropic building blocks in deformable, cell-like, confinements.

A deep learning approach for solving a fractional order Monkeypox transmission model using a harmonic neural network optimized with SGDM

ProteomeLM: A proteome-scale language model enables accurate and rapid prediction of protein–protein interactions and gene essentiality across taxa

Language models trained on biological sequences are advancing inference tasks from the scale of single proteins to that of genomic neighborhoods. Here, we introduce ProteomeLM, a transformer-based language model that uniquely operates on entire proteomes from species spanning the tree of life. ProteomeLM is trained to reconstruct masked protein embeddings using the whole proteomic context, yielding contextualized protein representations that reflect proteome-scale functional constraints. Notably, ProteomeLM’s attention coefficients encode protein–protein interactions (PPI), despite being trained without interaction labels. Furthermore, it enables interactome-wide PPI screening that is substantially more accurate, and orders of magnitude faster, than amino acid coevolution-based methods. We further develop ProteomeLM-PPI, a supervised model that combines ProteomeLM embeddings and attention coefficients to achieve state-of-the-art PPI prediction across benchmarks and species. Finally, we introduce ProteomeLM-Ess, a supervised gene essentiality predictor that generalizes across diverse taxa. Our results demonstrate the potential of proteome-scale language models for addressing function and interactions at the organism level.

System-level characterisation of hybrid LEO-terrestrial link performance under Ka-band propagation and interference constraints

Apoptosis-inducing factor starts its activity within mitochondria revealed by in situ vibrational probes

Apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF) is a flavoprotein located in the mitochondrial intermembrane space, and it is believed to trigger caspase-independent cell death after its release from the mitochondria into the nucleus. Here, the proapoptotic activity of AIF within mitochondria and the underlying molecular mechanism are explored using label-free vibrational spectroscopy and imaging. Electron transfer between AIF and cytochrome c (Cyt c ) is evidenced by resonance Raman spectroscopy, and the details of their interaction are revealed through molecular dynamics simulations. We elucidate the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH)-AIF-dependent generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and its correlation with phospholipid peroxidation at the molecular level. With in situ Raman probes, our results verified the synergistic contribution of AIF and Cyt c to mitochondrial membrane permeabilization via a ROS-independent pathway. Remarkably, NADH-dependent Cyt c release from isolated mitochondria is clearly monitored by in situ and real-time Raman spectroscopy, and our findings prove the proapoptotic role of NADH, further supported by flow cytometry. This function of AIF has implications for a deeper understanding of cell death executors and would open up therapeutic strategies for cancer.

Integrating network pharmacology with ex-vivo analysis to assess the effect of IL-2 in halting breast cancer: involvement of Treg/CTLA-4/Blimp-1/caspase-3

Abstract The T lymphocytes have a vital role in tumor immunosurveillance within the tumor microenvironment (TME) but on the other hand, the TME adopts several mechanisms that cause inhibition and apoptosis to effector T cells leading to tumor immune evasion. The controversial role of interleukin-2 (IL-2) was demonstrated by promoting the activation and proliferation of different immune cells such as NK cells, effector and regulatory T cells (T regs). Thus, ex-vivo approach was used to investigate IL-2 anti-tumor effect on breast cancer cells isolated from Egyptian patients after mastectomy via modulating Treg/CTLA-4/Blimp-1/caspase-3 trajectory. Previous to the ex-vivo approach we aimed to find common targets between IL-2 and breast cancer disease using network pharmacology. Results of network pharmacology illustrated that there were 35 common targets including CD4, CTLA-4 and caspase 3. Breast cancers cells obtained were then cultured in the presence of 10 µl of (50 ng/ml) recombinant IL-2 for 24 h. Results revealed that tissue culture supplementation with IL-2 significantly reduced T regs within the TME via inhibiting the tumor expression of CD25 and Forkhead box P3 (FOXP3). In addition, it was found that IL-2 significantly decreased the expression of the inhibitory receptor CTLA-4 and increased the expression of B lymphocyte–induced maturation protein-1(Blimp-1), leading to the activation of effector T cells and the induction apoptosis of the breast tumor cells. These findings suggest that IL-2 could serve as a new treatment strategy for breast cancer via modulating immune responses within the TME.

A defined community of core gut microbiota members promotes cognitive performance in honey bees

Gut microbiota across animals have been shown to influence host cognition and behavior. However, it remains unclear whether these cognitive effects are driven by specific bacterial species or arise from community-level interactions. Here, we leveraged the honey bee ( Apis mellifera ) as a model system, which harbors a simple and well-characterized gut microbiota that is experimentally tractable and has been previously shown to impact host cognition. We established a defined bacterial community—composed of core members of the honey bee gut microbiota. Gnotobiotic bee experiments with the full community, communities missing individual members, or individual members showed that only the full community enhanced honey bees’ performances in odor discrimination learning and short-term memory compared to microbiota-deprived bees. Metabolomic analyses identified several metabolites associated with learning success that mapped to pathways modulated by microbial colonization, including tryptophan metabolism, nucleoside metabolism, and lysine degradation. However, many of these metabolites were not altered by removing individual members from the full microbial community. This suggests that microbiota-mediated improvements in cognition are emergent properties of the community as a whole, rather than the result of individual metabolites or specific bacterial taxa acting alone. Our findings support a systems-level view of the microbiome, suggesting that understanding and manipulating host development, particularly in relation to brain function, should prioritize microbial community function (e.g., metabolic pathways) over taxonomic composition alone.

Enhanced convolutional neural networks by using adaptive conditional dropout with dynamic regularization

Plant Kelch phosphatases are Ser/Thr phosphatases involved in cell cycle regulation

Brassinosteroids (BRs) are plant steroid hormones sensed by the membrane receptor kinase BRI1. Activation of BRI1 leads to the dephosphorylation of BZR1/BES1 transcription factors. Overexpression of the Kelch phosphatase BRI1 SUPPRESSOR 1 (BSU1) rescued the growth defects of bri1 mutants. Subsequent studies identified BSU1 as a protein tyrosine phosphatase, which promotes BR signaling by dephosphorylating a phosphotyrosine in the glycogen synthase kinase 3 BIN2. Crystal structures of the BSU1 phosphatase domain now reveal a high degree of structural similarity to protein phosphatase 1 (PP1), a eukaryotic serine/threonine phosphatase. Consistently, BSU1 efficiently dephosphorylated phosphothreonine- and phosphoserine-containing substrate peptides, but showed no detectable activity toward BIN2 and other phosphotyrosine substrates. A catalytically inactive BSU1 phosphatase domain suppresses the growth phenotypes of the Arabidopsis bri1-5 mutant and binds the BSU1 homologs BSL1-3. bsu1 and bsu1 bsl1 bsl2/3 loss-of-function mutants display wild-type-like BR responses, but exhibit stomatal patterning and fertility defects. Importantly, the PP1-like C-terminal tail of BSU1 is phosphorylated at Thr785 by a cyclin-dependent kinase complex. The phosphorylated tail binds to the BSU1 substrate-binding grooves, blocking access to the active site. Mutation of Thr785 to alanine activates BSU1, suggesting that Kelch phosphatases and PP1 share a common regulatory mechanism. Deletion of the Marchantia polymorpha Kelch phosphatase MpBSLM results in an undifferentiated cell mass phenotype, associated with the overactivation of a cell cycle reporter. Taken together, our experiments suggest that plant Kelch phosphatases act as PP1-like cell cycle regulators, rather than as tyrosine phosphatases in BR signaling.