Communications Engineering, Published online: 11 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00553-9Jingyang Yan and colleagues report the use of V-shaped PDMS stamps for roll-to-roll microcontact printing. With physics-informed displacement control, variable pattern sizes can be produced using a single stamp.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 10 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00537-9The class of micro-electromechanical systems are renowned for their fast timescales and nonlinear behaviour. Seigan Hayashi and colleagues overcome these challenges by applying experimental continuation to characterise the dynamics of their device.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 09 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00560-wJonathan Thomas and colleagues present real-time plasma effector measurements during wound treatment. In- situ monitoring enables precise plasma device control, advancing precision plasma medicine and supporting clinical translation.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 09 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00568-2Dairy wastewater treatment requires efficient and sustainable solutions. Yuqi Gong and colleagues reported a self-regulating anaerobic system that achieved high pollutant removal and methane production, while significantly reducing energy use and emissions.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 08 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00563-7Offshore wind farms can act as synergistic energy hubs when integrated with coastal plants, storage, and marine ranches. Da Xie and colleagues report how such clusters in East China enhance renewable absorption and deliver economic and ecological benefits.

TBC

Reviewer of the Month

Communications Engineering, Published online: 06 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00565-5Jiansong Fan and colleagues report RoImAI, a vision foundation model for rock thin-section microscopy images. RoImAI enables fast and accurate rock segmentation, classification, and automated lithology reporting.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 04 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00558-4Yufen Wang and colleagues report a synergistic alkaline biochar-ferrate technique to enhance medium-chain fatty acid (MCFA) production from sludge by stage-optimized modulation. This strategy overcomes dual bottlenecks in sludge-to-MCFA conversion.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 02 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00562-8Yunhui Xie and colleagues report a method that treats a coherent beam combining system as a phased array. They show it can approximate phase-delaying optics to steer, shape and rotate the focus without moving optics, increasing system flexibility.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 02 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00541-zXuan Phuc Le and colleagues report on the photoelectric detection of spin resonances in nitrogen-vacancy centres in a graphitic-diamond-graphitic structure. Behaving like two back-to-back Schottky diodes, it produces an enhanced photoelectric signal.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 01 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00561-9Magnetic Particle Imaging enables fast 3D imaging without radiation, ideal for cardiovascular and interventional use. Franz Wegner and colleagues tested implant heating in a perfused human cadaver and found no relevant temperature rise.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 01 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00539-7Ashok, Ning, and colleagues report a new class of origami-inspired electromagnetic waveguides that can fold, deploy, and reconfigure. These shape-morphable designs enable efficient microwave transmission in compact, confined systems.

An autonomous drone swarm uses synthetic aperture sensing to see through dense foliage. It detects anomalies like unusual heat or color, allowing it to find and track hidden targets without prior trai...

An autonomous drone swarm uses synthetic aperture sensing to see through dense foliage. It detects anomalies like unusual heat or color, allowing it to find and track hidden targets without prior trai...

Communications Engineering, Published online: 29 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00559-3Conventional wet purification systems face scalability and durability challenges. Junkai Ren and colleagues report a porous ceramic-based bubble-enhanced filtration system achieving scalable, durable, and renewable wet particle removal while enabling multifunctional air purification.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 29 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00555-7Alex Vicente Sola and authors introduce a new high-speed LiDAR-based imaging modality driven by the time-of-arrival of individually detected photons and reconstructed by a spiking convolutional neural network, allowing the system to run fully asynchronously.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 28 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00550-yRory D. Bennett and colleagues have shown that real-time prostate tracking is possible using object detection and surface-based ultrasound scans. This opens the door to development of a prostate cancer screening workflow that is not reliant on highly skilled clinicians.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 28 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00538-8Johannes Grünwald and colleagues report that active electroencephalographic (EEG) electrodes provide recordings as reliable as traditional passive ones during transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This supports broader adoption of active EEG electrodes for TMS by reducing preparation time and technical limitations.

Communications Engineering, Published online: 27 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44172-025-00556-6Qihui Wu and colleagues propose a brain-inspired embodied learning method for anomaly active target tracking, enabling dynamic switching between normal and anomaly handling modes. This improves tracking robustness in complex real-world environments