Browse Articles

A physics-informed alternative to Richardson-Lucy deconvolution across SNR regimes without iteration cutoffs

Structural features of the hippocampus covary with memory-guided attention depending on the side of hippocampal sclerosis

Past experiences stored in long-term memory (LTM) provide a valuable resource for making predictions that shape perception and guide goal-directed behavior. Contents from the high-capacity LTM system guide contextual selective attention to enhance sensory and higher-order processing of memory-predicted targets, in a process known as LTM-guided attention. While this essential cognitive function is believed to depend on the hippocampus, evidence is still scarce. In this study, we used a neuropsychological approach to test LTM-guided attention in the context of isolated hippocampal pathology and to explore structure-behavior covariance patterns. We tested healthy individuals (n = 20) and individuals suffering from focal epilepsy, with isolated, unilateral left (n = 20) or right (n = 17) hippocampal sclerosis (HS), in a task probing LTM-guided attention. Behavioral data indicated that individuals with left or right HS retained LTM-guided attention. We also assessed structure–behavior covariance using a multivariate structural neuroimaging approach. Hierarchical clustering analysis revealed that, in healthy individuals, LTM-guided attention performance covaried with atlas-derived subfield measures of the left hippocampal body. The volume of the left hippocampal body also covaried with attentional benefit in individuals with right HS. Interestingly, for individuals with left HS, LTM-guided attention covaried with the volume of the left hippocampus and with part of the right hippocampal volume. Together, these findings suggest that LTM-guided attention can be preserved in unilateral HS, with differences in hippocampal volume–behavior covariance depending on the side of hippocampal pathology.

The influence of aesthetic culture and self-efficacy on the aesthetic education in primary and secondary schools

Abstract This paper examines the current state of societal aesthetic education in 37 primary and secondary schools in Guangzhou, China. The study investigates the mediating role of aesthetic education construction in students’ learning and identification with aesthetic courses, as well as the influence of students’ self-efficacy in aesthetic education performance within the context of campus/family aesthetic culture. A preliminary distribution of questionnaires totaled 1,130, with 1,125 being valid samples. The main distribution involved 16,000 questionnaires, yielding 15,707 valid responses (a response rate of 98.16%). Additionally, 50 questionnaires were distributed to teachers, with 22 valid samples collected (a response rate of 44.00%), bringing the total number of valid samples suitable for data analysis to 15,727. The findings indicate that gender significantly affects variables related to aesthetic education. Students’ cultural and social capital significantly impact their performance in aesthetic education. Implementing implicit curricula can enhance students’ identification with aesthetic education, thereby improving their grades in these subjects. Thus, enhancing students’ self-efficacy in the context of societal aesthetic education can lead to better outcomes in aesthetic education.

Insolation-driven northern Atlantic westerly wind patterns shaped the mid-Pleistocene transition in three phases

Correction for Gu et al., Bistable random momentum transfer in a linear on-chip resonator

Turbulent flow in a vortex separator with a directed pipe inlet

Carbene-catalyzed site-selective sulfonylation and modular edition of monosaccharides for hydroxyl group stereoinversion and swapping

Correction for Xie et al., DAB2IP coordinates both PI3K-Akt and ASK1 pathways for cell survival and apoptosis

16 years of gelatinous zooplankton seasonal abundances reveal food availability and temperature as key drivers in Arctic latitudes

Abstract Year-round long-term monitoring programs are essential for assessing ecosystem functioning and change. In the Arctic, however, continuous multi-year sampling covering all seasons remains scarce. Using monthly observations from the Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring program (2005–2021) in Nuup Kangerlua (SW Greenland), collected with triplicate 0–100 m net hauls and concurrent environmental profiling, we characterized seasonal and multiannual abundance patterns of major gelatinous zooplankton (GZP) groups (Ctenophora, Appendicularia, Cnidaria, and Chaetognatha) and assessed their responses to temperature and salinity, as well as food availability (i.e., chlorophyll a , biomass of small copepods, small Calanus spp. (CI–CIII), large Calanus spp. (CIV–CVI) and copepod nauplii abundance), the latter being drivers rarely included in long-term studies. All GZP groups showed strong seasonal variability in abundances, with peak abundances in summer. Hereby, copepod availability showed correlations with GZP abundance that were equal to or stronger than those of temperature. Chlorophyll a correlated weakly with GZP abundance directly, but remained a central driving factor of prey availability and therefore still indirectly influenced carnivorous GZP dynamics. Salinity showed mostly negative associations. Indicator species analyses identified Oikopleura spp., Parasagitta spp., Aglantha digitale , and undetermined Hydromedusae as characteristic of warm, food-rich summer conditions. Additionally, undetermined Chaetognatha were an indicator taxon for the entire productive season. These findings demonstrate that resolving Arctic change requires year-round observations that integrate trophic context, as food availability can rival or exceed physical drivers in structuring GZP communities, as demonstrated here with copepods and primary production.

Age-related changes in behavioural and neural variability in a decision-making task

Abstract Age-related cognitive decline in learning and decision-making may arise from increased variability of neural responses. Here, we investigated how ageing affects behavioural and neural variability by recording >18,000 neurons across 16 brain regions (including cortex, hippocampus, thalamus, midbrain, and basal ganglia) in younger and older mice performing a visual decision-making task. Older mice showed more variable response times, reproducing a common finding in human ageing studies. Ageing globally increased firing rates and post-stimulus neural variability (quantified using the Fano factor), and decreased variability quenching–the reduction in neural variability upon stimulus presentation. Older animals showed higher overall firing rates across areas of visual and motor cortex, striatum, midbrain, and hippocampus, but lower firing rates in thalamic areas. Age-related attenuation in stimulus-induced variability quenching was most prominent in visual and motor cortex, striatum, and thalamic area. These findings show how large-scale neural recordings can help uncover regional specificity of ageing effects in single neurons, ultimately improving our understanding of the neural basis of age-related cognitive decline.

Correction for Sinclair et al., Prediction errors disrupt hippocampal representations and update episodic memories

WSO-YOLO11: a wavelet–strip-oriented YOLO11 framework for hot-rolled steel strip surface defect detection

Zero-PDG silicon photonic amplifier with high saturation power and low noise figure

Abstract High-power amplifiers are of great importance in many optical systems deployed in optical sensing, ranging, medical surgery and more. Likewise, high-gain, low-noise amplifiers with low polarization dependence are critical components of long-range optical communication systems. Integrated photonic solutions show great potential in challenging application fields thanks to their drastic reduction in size, weight and cost, but coming at the expense of low optical power due to reduced energy storage capacity in small devices. Recently, the large mode area (LMA) technology, which is known for dramatically increasing the energy storage capacity and saturation power of fiber amplifiers, has been brought to the chip-level, allowing for watt-level amplification directly from the chip. Here we demonstrate a silicon photonic LMA amplifier capable of both high-power amplification with output saturation powers > 115 mW and high small-signal gain up to 30 dB with a 3.6 dB noise figure on-chip, which we achieved by suppressing parasitic lasing with index-matching glue on the chip facets. Furthermore, we present a method to tune and completely nullify the polarization dependent gain (PDG). We believe that the PDG-tunability combined with the low-noise, high-gain and high-power amplification positions it as a potentially disruptive technology for next-generation integrated amplifiers across a range of applications.

Correction for Nunez et al., Early life-stage thermal resilience is determined by climate-linked regulatory variation

Interactive effects of age and lower-limb muscle strength asymmetry on spatiotemporal gait parameters

Bioinspired electrochemical artificial muscles with low voltage redox triggering and spontaneous contraction

Rat somatic genome editing enables ER+ breast cancer modeling

Genetically engineered mouse models have advanced cancer research, but they fail to mimic some human diseases. Rats offer a powerful alternative for modeling human cancers that are inadequately represented in mice, yet their use has been constrained by technical barriers to genome editing. Here, we report somatic genome editing in rats and apply this approach to model estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer, which accounts for approximately 70% of human cases but remains poorly represented in mice. The resulting rat tumors reproduce hallmarks of human ER+ breast cancer, including ductal histology, hormone responsiveness, and immune microenvironment features. By contrast, identical genetic alterations in mice failed to yield ER+ tumors, underscoring critical species differences in tumorigenesis. Together, this work establishes a versatile platform for the rapid generation of clinically relevant rat tumor models, opening avenues to study tumor biology, therapeutic response, and immune interactions in cancer subtypes previously inaccessible to experimental modeling.

An optimized dual-branch method for DNA enhancer identification based on pretrained models and multi-scale local regulatory motif extraction

Bonding character and octahedral geometry as key determinants of solute miscibility in Ir-based oxides

Multivalent assembly of PAR-3/aPKC complexes establishes cell polarity in <i>Caenorhabditis elegans</i> zygotes

Cell polarity is essential for the formation and function of animal tissues. Atypical protein kinase C (aPKC), its cofactor PAR-6, and scaffold protein PAR-3 regulate cell polarity in many different animal cell types. PAR-3 oligomerization is important to establish cell polarity, but how oligomerization relates to the assembly of the PAR-3/aPKC/PAR-6 complex is still unclear. Here, we use in vivo and ex vivo single-molecule techniques to demonstrate cooperativity between PAR-3 oligomerization and its binding to aPKC/PAR-6 in the Caenorhabditis elegans zygote. Using genetic perturbations, we present evidence that aPKC and PAR-6 have independent binding sites for PAR-3. We propose that multivalency drives cooperativity because a single aPKC/PAR-6 heterodimer can interact simultaneously with multiple PAR-3 molecules in an oligomer. Although single binding site mutations do not fully eliminate PAR-3/aPKC/PAR-6 binding, they do abolish anterior–posterior polarity, suggesting that PAR-3/aPKC cooperativity contributes to PAR-3 function during polarity establishment. Finally, PAR-3/aPKC cooperativity is downregulated in polarity maintenance, and this downregulation depends on the mitotic kinase PLK-1. Together, our results show how cells can developmentally regulate multivalent assembly of a key polarity complex to achieve timely segregation of cell fate determinants.