Danielle L. Chase and Orit Peleg

ANNUAL REVIEW OF BIOPHYSICS Volume 54, 2025

To ensure survival and reproduction, individual animals navigating the world must regularly sense their surroundings and use this information for important decision-making. The same is true for animals living in groups, where the roles of sensing, information propagation, and decision-making are distributed on the basis of individual knowledge, spatial position within the group, and more. This review highlights key examples of temporal and spatiotemporal dynamics in animal group decision-making, emphasizing strong connections between mathematical models and experimental observations. We start with models of temporal dynamics, such as reaching consensus and the time dynamics of excitation-inhibition networks. For spatiotemporal dynamics in sparse groups, we explore the propagation of information and synchronization of movement in animal groups with models of self-propelled particles, where interactions are typically parameterized by length and timescales. In dense groups, we examine crowding effects using a soft condensed matter approach, where interactions are parameterized by physical potentials and forces. While focusing on invertebrates, we also demonstrate the applicability of these results to a wide range of organisms, aiming to provide an overview of group behavior dynamics and identify new areas for exploration.

Read the full article at: www.annualreviews.org

Giorgio Tripodi, Xiang Zheng, Yifan Qian, Dakota Murray, Benjamin F. Jones, Chaoqun Ni, and Dashun Wang

PNAS 122 (30) e2500322122

Tenure is a defining feature of the US academic system with significant implications for research productivity and creative search. Yet the impact of tenure on faculty research trajectories remains poorly understood. We analyze the careers of 12,000 US faculty across 15 disciplines to reveal key patterns, pre- and post-tenure. Publication rates rise sharply during the tenure-track, peaking just before tenure. However, post-tenure trajectories diverge: Researchers in lab-based fields sustain high output, while those in non-lab-based fields typically exhibit a decline. After tenure, faculty produce more novel works, though fewer highly cited papers. These findings highlight tenure’s pivotal role in shaping scientific careers, offering insights into the interplay between academic incentives, creativity, and impact while informing debates about the academic system.

Read the full article at: www.pnas.org

Diana Cholakova

Advances in Colloid and Interface Science
Volume 345, November 2025, 103624

• Surface and polymorphic phase transitions enable dynamic behavior in emulsion droplets.

• Self-shaping occurs when the surfactant adsorption layer freezes before bulk nucleation begins.
• Fluid, frozen, polymeric, and composite particles with complex shapes can be prepared.
• Spontaneous bursting during freeze-thaw cycles produces submicron particles as small as 20 nm from coarse emulsions.
• Alternatively, double w/o/w droplets form, depending on the wetting properties of the surfactant solution.

Read the full article at: www.sciencedirect.com