Shanghai scientists have identified a "brake" gene that could potentially halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease, following the creation of the world's first functional map of regulatory "switches" in astrocytes — cells that protect and support brain neurons — using an innovative technology.

Researchers at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences have successfully extracted a new two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterial directly from ordinary plant straw, proving that a "hidden treasure" has been sitting in plain sight in fields across the country.

A joint research team has recently achieved a breakthrough in the field of optical metamaterials, creating new avenues for multi-scale optical metamaterial research and micro-nano photonics applications. The team, jointly led by the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National University of Singapore, has proposed a new paradigm for the scalable fabrication of optical metamaterials, achieving synergistic optimization of optical properties and structural design.

Southwestern China's Kunming city is home to rare orchid species. We follow our reporter Tao Yuan to see how scientists are protecting these prized flowers from extinction. They are some of the most prized flowers in the world. Rare colors. Exquisite forms. At the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, hundreds of orchids are now on display.

A Chinese-led international team has released the largest-ever cosmological simulation, named "HyperMillennium," offering scientists a powerful digital tool to explore cosmic evolution. This simulation covers a vast cube with a side size of 12 billion light-years and uses 4.2 trillion virtual dark matter particles. By applying a technique called N-body numerical simulation, the team accurately recreated how large-scale structures in the universe evolved over 10 billion years.

More than 60 kilometers from the urban area of Beijing, surrounded by mountains beside the Yanqi Lake, the Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility (SECUF) operates quietly in the Huairou Science City. Zhou Rui, a professor at the Institute of Physics (IOP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and head of the nuclear magnetic resonance measurement station at SECUF, focuses on the changing measurement values on his computer screen, checking instruments and communicating with colleagues from time to time.

A new study by Chinese scientists has revealed how cryospheric degradation affects carbon and nitrogen cycles on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, providing key data for biogeochemical models of high-altitude cryospheric regions. The study, spearheaded by the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, traces the characteristics and transport mechanisms of dissolved organic matter in the source area of the Yellow River, China's second-longest waterway, on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Chinese researchers have developed a new type of copper foil that overcomes a long-standing trade-off among strength, electrical conductivity and thermal stability, offering a promising material for advanced electronics and next-generation energy storage systems.

The Max Planck-Chinese Academy of Sciences Center for Synthetic Biochemistry was officially inaugurated in South China's Shenzhen on Saturday, marking the first collaborative research initiative between the Max Planck Society (MPG) from Germany and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) dedicated specifically to the field of synthetic biology.

Facing the acceleration of glacier flow within the Antarctic Peninsula, researchers from the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have figured out that such a phenomenon was caused by the upper-ocean warming.

Workers work at the construction site of the Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak (BEST) in Hefei, east China's Anhui Province, April 15, 2026. Dubbed the "artificial sun," the BEST facility represents one of China's major ventures into controlled nuclear fusion and is poised to attempt the world's first fusion energy power generation demonstration.

Chinese scientists have developed a new tool to measure how fast the human immune system ages, and identified a key factor that could help slow this process. The study, led by a research team from the China National Center for Bioinformation and the Institute of Zoology, both under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Quzhou Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University in east China, was recently published in the journal Immunity.

For centuries, scientists have grappled with a striking human puzzle -- why roughly 90 percent of people worldwide are right-handed -- yet the underlying cause of handedness has long remained elusive, until now, as a Chinese research team says to have solved it.

China on Tuesday launched the Lijian-1 Y12 carrier rocket to send eight satellites into space. The rocket blasted off at 12:03 p.m. (Beijing Time) from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone in northwest China. It successfully sent the satellites into their planned orbits. This launch marked the 12th flight mission of the Lijian-1 carrier rocket series.

A group of Chinese researchers has reported the discovery of a new pulsar, which exhibits an exceptionally high spin-down rate, two orders of magnitude higher than that of other known millisecond pulsars.

Chinese scientists have made new progress in understanding the persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in permafrost regions, according to the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources (NIEER) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The study conducted systematic research and in-depth exploration of the environmental behavior of a new type of POP, hexachlorobutadiene (HCBD), in the Arctic region.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez underscored the vital role of cooperation in driving scientific progress during a visit to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on Monday. "Cooperation does not weaken science. It strengthens. It improves its quality, expands its impact, and creates lasting bonds between science communities," Sanchez said as he was awarded an honorary professorship by the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS).

For centuries, scientists have known that tobacco plants produce nicotine -- but no one could figure out exactly how they do it. Now, a team of Chinese researchers has finally solved the puzzle. In a study recently published in the journal Cell, researchers from the Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences (CEMPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences mapped out the complete process -- from start to finish -- of how nicotine is made in a wild species of tobacco called Nicotiana attenuata.