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Strong interaction is blind to quark flavor, so collisions of nuclei with the same number of protons and neutrons should generate the same number of charged and neutral kaons. Here, instead, the authors show a significant excess of charged over neutral kaon production in Ar+Sc nuclei collisions, compatibly with earlier measurements which however suffered from larger uncertainties, and show that known effects cannot explain the result.

A unique case from the Colombian cohort of autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease is reported in which disease progression is substantially delayed despite unusually high amyloid plaque pathology, possibly related to a rare mutation in APOE3.

The competitive dynamics of mitochondrial haplotypes juxtaposed within the same cell are poorly studied. Here the authors show, in the context of a transmissible cancer, that one haplotype has recurrently entered cancer cells by horizontal transfer and appears to have a ‘selfish’ selective advantage.

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography capture how aromatic side chains can flip within the core of a protein via the generation of a local void volume.

Measures to protect marine habitats must consider the interlinkages between conservation policies and food systems. This study illustrates how a new protected area in Palau may shift fish supply and tourist consumption, highlighting policies to avoid negative environmental consequences.

The diverse Heliconius butterflies have evolved key innovations, including pollen feeding, and are a quintessential example of adaptive radiation. Using comparative genomics, Cicconardi et al. identify targets of selection at coding and non-coding loci during major ecological transitions in Heliconius.

Releasing COVID-19 lockdown measures risks increases in transmission. Here, the authors estimate the increase in transmission rate for different regions in Italy and estimate that isolation of 5.5% exposed and highly infectious individuals would be needed to compensate for a 40% increase in transmission.

Future spintronic devices may exploit spin-orbit interactions, which often emerge from broken symmetries and strongly influence electronic behaviour. Here, the authors evidence the amplification of Rashba coupling by a crystal field that breaks the local inversion symmetry at the Ni site in BaNiS₂.

Laminin, an important component of the extracellular matrix supporting the epithelium, hinders the typical mechanoresponse of epithelial cells to an increase in substrate stiffness, by protecting the cell nucleus from mechanical deformation.

Lolo et al. show caveolin-1 functions in non-caveolae structures termed dolines. Whereas caveolae respond to high forces over a mechanical threshold, dolines transduce low and medium mechanical forces gradually in a complementary buffering system.

The amount and frequency of rainfall structures aquatic food webs. Here the authors show that in tropical tank bromeliads, lower trophic levels are more abundant in stable rainfall conditions, while biomass pyramids are inverted in conditions with periodic droughts.

Self-limited assembly of 'imperfect' chiral nanoparticles enables formation of bowtie-shaped microparticles with size monodispersity and continuously variable chirality to be used for printing photonically active metasurfaces.

Climate change effects on animals are typically measured as decreases or increases in performance, compared to controls. Because both directions can have cascading effects at the ecosystem level, this study conducts a meta-analysis testing for deviations in biological responses using absolute rather than relative changes, showing that impacts on marine animals might have been largely underestimated.

A major obstacle to fully understanding the catalytic mechanisms of oxygen reduction reactions and to designing more efficient catalysts is the lack of detailed information about the active site structure. Molecular local chemisorption sites and the long-range supramolecular arrangement of metallophthalocyanine molecules on a metal surface can now be controlled by the fine tuning of the overlayer coverage.

Changes in the microenvironment of the aged lung relative to younger lung tissue can lead to the reactivation of dormant melanoma cells through a mechanism that involves a decrease in WNT5A and AXL signalling and an increase in MERTK.

Graves' orbitopathy is an inflammatory syndrome that affects orbital tissues in about half of patients with Graves' disease. Therapy should be planned on the basis of disease severity and activity. This case illustrates the therapeutic approach to a patient with severe, active Graves' orbitopathy complicated by optic neuropathy, and discusses treatment alternatives.

Analysis of the optical and γ-ray flux monitoring of the blazar BL Lacertae during its outburst in 2020 shows the existence of quasi-periodic oscillations in the relativistic jet with cycles as short as 13 h.

Senate assigns a clinical trial €3 million — but researchers want an open competition.

A nutrient profiling system is developed to incorporate 54 attributes across 9 domains, bringing together a broad and unique range of food characteristics and uniform scoring principles. The Food Compass presents a detailed profiling system for the healthfulness of foods.

The nature of young star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds is debated. Here, the authors show an alternative approach that exploits data to exclude the presence of age differences greater than a few million years among cluster stars in a very young cluster.

A high-throughput small-molecule drug screening platform enabled the detection of compounds targeting the functional interactions of receptor tyrosine kinases and identifies four new EGFR triple-mutant inhibitors.

European ancestry individuals are not typically treated as admixed in genetic studies. Here, the authors detect higher than expected admixture in European populations, which could potentially affect the results of genetic studies if it is not accounted for.

Resolvins are endogenous lipids with pro-resolving activity. Here the authors find that rats overexpressing human α-synuclein show defects in dopamine signalling before dopamine cell loss, and that this is associated with low Resolvin D1 levels and neuroinflammation.

Zooplankton biomass in the dark ocean is thought to be low and weakly coupled to epipelagic primary production, but recent evidence suggests otherwise. Here the authors analyse data from the Malaspina Circumnavigation Expedition and published data to estimate bathypelagic zooplankton biomass and assess its relationship to primary production, currently not well accounted for in oceanic C budget.

Observations of an extremely metal-poor star suggest that rapidly rotating massive stars with large magnetic fields were a source of r-process elements in the early Universe.

Elena Cattaneo and Gilberto Corbellini are among the academics working to protect patients from questionable stem-cell therapies. Here, they share their experiences and opinions of the long, hard fight for evidence to prevail.

Content-aware image restoration (CARE) uses deep learning to improve microscopy images. CARE bypasses the trade-offs between imaging speed, resolution, and maximal light exposure that limit fluorescence imaging to enable discovery.

Observations of seven fast-moving stars in the central 3 arcsec (0.08  pc) of ω Centauri indicate an intermediate-mass black hole in ω Centauri.

Saliency maps have been proposed to guide visual attention, yet the underlying neural correlates remain undetermined. Here, the authors record from monkeys as they watch videos of natural scenes, and find superior colliculus superficial visual-layer neurons exhibit activity patterns consistent with a visual saliency map.

In native photosystem II (PSII), multi-chromophore antennas surround the reaction centre, capturing light and triggering the quantized (four-flashes) photo-oxidation of water to oxygen. The PSII ‘quantasome’ is the most efficient photo-electrolyser built so far. An artificial quantasome has now been developed; it is specifically designed for oxygen evolution by self-assembling light-harvesting-perylene bisimides with a ruthenium polyoxometalate water-oxidation catalyst.