Inlay

ABSTRACT Biological plasticity refers to the ability of synapses to strengthen or weaken over time. These adaptive properties play a fundamental role in learning and memory, spanning many orders of magnitude in timescales. Short-term plasticity (STP) arises from rapid correlative activity, while long-term plasticity (LTP) is governed by slower biochemical processes. Here, we investigate electromagnetically driven relaxation dynamics in perovskite nickelate thin films as an analogue of biological learning behaviors. By comparing radio frequency (RF), infrared (IR), visible, and ultraviolet (UV) radiation as stimuli, we find that RF excitation primarily induces STP, while visible and IR illumination lead to reversible relaxation on behavioral timescales. In contrast, UV illumination results in persistent, non-thermal changes in conductivity over extended timescales. Notably, UV-exposed nickelate films exhibit glass-like dynamics, characterized by stretched exponential relaxation and aging phenomena. The films display habituation to repeated stimuli, along with sensitization and spontaneous recovery under controlled environments. A minimal dynamical systems model captures key qualitative features of the UV-induced resistance changes. Our results demonstrate that electromagnetic frequency enables multi-timescale relaxation spanning nearly nine orders of magnitude, suggesting perovskite nickelates as promising platforms for adaptive optoelectronic hardware and for linking computational neuroscience with emerging quantum technologies.

This study presents an anatomical landmark-guided DRL framework for autonomous wireless capsule endoscopy navigation. Using a lightweight edge-contour-depth fusion module, it achieves over 97% coverage across diverse gastric anatomies. To ensure reliability, a two-stage sim-to-real pipeline with an adaptive dynamic programming controller mitigates physical disturbances, establishing a promising framework for autonomous gastric navigation. ABSTRACT Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) enables painless, minimally invasive visualization of the gastrointestinal tract. Still, its diagnostic potential is limited by incomplete mucosal coverage and poor transferability of existing navigation methods across patient anatomies. We propose a transferable, anatomical landmark-guided deep reinforcement learning framework for robust autonomous gastric navigation. Leveraging a lightweight edge-contour-depth fusion module, our policy operates on stable, low-dimensional landmark coordinates rather than high-dimensional video streams. This design effectively bridges the sim-to-real visual gap and ensures robustness across diverse anatomies, enabling low-cost deployment by reducing computational overhead. In simulations across eight patient-derived models, the method achieves >97% coverage within 50 s, significantly outperforming vanilla Proximal Policy Optimization, Soft Actor-Critic, and Deep Q-Network agents by enhancing coverage and minimizing variance. To ensure deployment reliability, a two-stage sim-to-real pipeline supported by an adaptive dynamic programming controller actively mitigates physical disturbances, including actuator latency and peristalsis. Ex vivo experiments across five independent scans demonstrate high coverage stability, achieving a mean coverage of 87% and a 53% reduction in procedure time compared with expert manual control. This study establishes a scalable paradigm for autonomous, high‑coverage endoscopic navigation, advancing the clinical deployment of intelligent WCE systems for GI diagnostics.

Slow-transit constipation (STC) is a disabling motility disorder with unclear smooth-muscle mechanisms. Spatial proteomic analysis of STC patient colon reveals both the central pathogenic role of smooth muscle cells (SMCs) in STC and novel regulators of intestinal motility, BIN1 and ALDH1B1. ABSTRACT Slow-transit constipation (STC) is a disabling motility disorder with unclear smooth-muscle mechanisms. Through spatial proteomics of human colon and functional assays in primary human colonic smooth muscle cells (HCoSMCs), we identified Bridging Integrator 1 (BIN1) and Aldehyde Dehydrogenase 1B1 (ALDH1B1) as key regulators of intestinal motility. Both proteins were markedly reduced in smooth muscle from STC patients and localized to fibrotic areas. Lentiviral knockdown of BIN1 or ALDH1B1 impaired ATP-evoked Ca 2 + responses and contraction, disrupted mitochondrial architecture, and increased reactive oxygen species. BIN1 deficiency activated mitochondrial apoptosis and extracellular matrix deposition, whereas ALDH1B1 loss induced mitophagy and NF-κB–driven inflammation. Transcriptomic and histological analyses confirmed convergence on profibrotic pathways. Together, these findings reveal a smooth-muscle-centric mechanism underlying STC pathogenesis and nominate BIN1 and ALDH1B1 as promising therapeutic entry points to restore intestinal motility.

It’s 2134, and humanity has finally embraced green technologies while ridding the Earth of harmful fossil-burning technologies, most notably gasoline, wood, coal, and oil. As a result, soot has been rendered obsolete, and all commercial products from soot, including shoes, wires, computer products, and eye products, are now produced from eco-friendly technologies. However, the uber-rich who still fancy non-eco-friendly products are willing to pay soot’s weight in gold for it. Therefore, the Exoplanet Research Corporation outfits its best ship to search for soot-enriched exoplanet atmospheres.

This study introduces a biomimetic “nanofusion” platform that integrates the biostability of threose nucleic acids (TNA) with homotypic cell-membrane cloaking to combat drug-resistant TNBC. By leveraging a non-canonical membrane-fusion pathway for direct cytosolic delivery, the platform bypasses endosomal sequestration. To achieve potent AKT2 silencing and significant tumor regression, offering a versatile framework paradigm for precision genetic medicine. ABSTRACT Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) remains lethal due to its aggressive molecular heterogeneity and drug resistance. We report a biomimetic nanoplatform (PLL/TNA AKT2 @CM NPs) integrating biostable threose nucleic acid (TNA) with a donor-derived cell membranes (CMs) “cloak” for subtype-specific therapy. By complexing TNA AKT2 antisense oligonucleotides with poly-L-lysine (PLL) and coating them with TNBS-subtype membranes (MDA-MB-468 or MDA-MB-231), we achieve potent homotypic affinity. PLL/TNA AKT2 @468CM NPs exhibited significant enhanced uptake in donor-matched basal-like 1 cells compared to heterotypic TNBC, non-TNBC and normal epithelial cells. Mechanistically, these nanoparticles internalize via a rapid membrane-fusion, bypassing endosomal entrapment for direct cytosolic delivery. This facilitates robust silencing of the AKT2 oncogene, achieving a ∼ 70% protein knockdown and outperforming conventional transfection reagents. In a drug-resistant MDA-MB-468 xenografts, systemic administration led to superior tumor accumulation, effective AKT2 knockdown, and significant tumor regression via the p21/Caspase-3 apoptotic axis, without systemic toxicity. This versatile “plug-and-play” strategy addresses tumor heterogeneity and endosomal sequestration, providing a transformative paradigm for targeted nucleic acid delivery in refractory cancers.

ABSTRACT To confront extreme space environments, a combination of inorganic and organic coatings can provide a pathway for offering highly durable radiation resistance and anti-friction simultaneously. Herein, a strong interfacial 3D hydrogen-bonding network is designed to create robust hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) based polymer coatings with excellent mechanical and friction performance after atomic oxygen (AO) irradiation. The h-BN-based polymer coatings possess substantial improvements in structural stability, thermal conductivity (5.75 W·m −1 ·K −1 , 24 times higher than pure organic coatings), tensile strength (48.1 MPa, improved by ∼ 200%), and low friction (0.12–0.14, reduced by ∼ 2.5 times) after AO irradiation. Notably, the oxygen transmission rate decreases from 2.53 to 0.35 cm 3 ·m −2 ·24 h −1 , displaying superior oxygen substance barrier performance. This exceptional performance arises from h-BN providing dual physical and chemical barriers through its layered structure and chemical stability, effectively resisting AO irradiation. Additionally, the 3D network facilitates efficient load transfer and heat dissipation for coating structure stability because the concentrated load is instantly transmitted across the entire h-BN surface, and the high thermal conductivity of h-BN is exerted to prevent localized overheating. This work provides a design strategy for next-generation radiation-resistant materials that unify high thermal conductivity, robust mechanical and friction performance.

A mechanically programmable metamaterial based on mechanical-acoustic interaction enables reconfigurable elastic wave control through bistable state switching. Spatial encoding of peak and valley states tunes band structures and transmission, achieving low-frequency vibration suppression, waveguiding, and energy localization. A one-press strategy enhances programming efficiency, establishing a scalable paradigm for reconfigurable acoustic devices. ABSTRACT Conventional elastic wave metamaterials are typically constrained by fixed structural configurations, which limits their ability to achieve reconfigurable and application-specific wave manipulation. To address this challenge, this work propose a mechanical–acoustic interaction (MAI) paradigm for mechanically programmable elastic wave control, in which acoustic functionalities are reconfigured through reversible switching between bistable mechanical states. The proposed acoustic dome metamaterial (ADM) consists of modular bistable units, where the peak and valley configurations serve as two mechanically programmable states without relying on electrical, magnetic, or thermal stimuli. By spatially encoding these bistable states, the band structure and transmission characteristics of the metamaterial can be reconfigured, enabling programmable control of elastic wave propagation, attenuation, and energy localization. Numerical and experimental results demonstrate low-frequency vibration suppression, reconfigurable waveguiding, and defect-state-enabled energy localization governed by mechanically encoded state patterns. Moreover, a one-press programming strategy is introduced to improve programming efficiency and reproducibility at the system level. These findings establish MAI as a physically intuitive and scalable mechanism for elastic wave programming, offering new opportunities for reconfigurable acoustic metamaterials and intelligent acoustic devices.

Gassorption analysis of in-plane functionalized carbons reveals small, uniform ultramicropore signatures as potential artefacts of specific adsorption of the probe gases. Low-pressure Langmuir fitting links these features to distinct functionalities via adsorption energies, enabling straightforward quantification of otherwise inaccessible surface-site densities, demonstrated here for tetrapyrrolic ZnN 4 and H 2 N 4 sites. ABSTRACT Pore size analysis is essential for understanding and optimizing structure-performance relations of functional carbon-based materials including activated carbons, supercapacitor electrodes and atomically dispersed metal-nitrogen-doped carbon (M-N-C) catalysts. Pore size distribution (PSD) plots based on gas sorption porosimetry often show narrow micropores that are related to the adsorptive properties of named materials, which must be considered as artefacts arising from approximations in classical density functional theory (cDFT) models. By selectively preparing specific in-plane functionalities using pyrolytic template-ion (salt templating) reactions, we herein show that those apparent pores can be explained by preferential adsorption of the adsorbate molecules to specific in-plane functionalities. Tetrapyrrolic Zn-N 4 sites are present in ZIF-8 derived carbons, which are converted by Zn-extraction into nitrogen-doped carbons (NDC) comprising tetrapyrrolic H 2 N 4 sites. DFT-based calculation of adsorption energies allows the conclusive assignment of corresponding adsorption phenomena in comparative N 2 vs. CO 2 vs. Ar adsorption measurements additionally using Langmuir analysis. While the assignment of artefacts may improve the discussion of porosity, the determination of specific adsorption sites may be utilized as a valuable tool in materials science. Advanced models for the important material classes may allow accelerated progress in important energy-related research fields.