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Diamond anvils are widely used in high-pressure research to investigate matter under extreme conditions. Here, broadband spectroscopy is used to measure pressure-driven opacity of diamond anvils to 520 GPa, revealing bandgap narrowing and optical behavior that redefines the limits of high-pressure spectroscopy.

Just over 30 years after HIV/AIDS was first recognized, three accounts of its ravages intrigue Robin Weiss.

Surgical sterilization alone cannot control global stray and feral domestic cat populations. Here, Godin et al. show that a single-dose injectable female sterilant administered before puberty safely and completely prevents pregnancy after maturity.

Radiation-induced low-energy electrons in solution are implicated in DNA damage, but their relaxation dynamics are not well understood. Here the authors observe how quasi-free electrons dissociate glycosidic bonds via an excited nucleoside anion radical, whereas solvated electrons reside on the nucleoside as a relatively stable anion radical.

Systematic base-editing and computational screens identify specific cysteine residues on VPS35 in the retromer complex as key sensors that decrease mitochondrial translation in response to reactive oxygen species signals.

The incidence ofClostridium difficileinfection (CDI) has increased in the past decade, with greater numbers of patients with refractory and recurrent CDI being seen. In this Review, the authors discuss the role of medical therapy (including antibiotics, immune approaches and fecal microbiota transplant) in the treatment of refractory and recurrent disease as well as that of surgery for refractory CDI.

The identification of the magnetic-fluctuation mode at a quantum phase transition of the archetypical heavy-fermion compound Ce_1−xLa_xRu₂Si₂ indicates that quantum criticality in this system is governed by collective antiferromagnetic behaviour, rather than by local magnetic moments as has been suggested.

Mitochondrial content in extracellular vesicles (EVs) can enhance inflammation, although its role in noninflammatory conditions is unclear. Here, the authors show that mitochondria-derived vesicles target material to EVs, whereas Parkin directs damaged mitochondrial content to lysosomes, providing insight into mitochondria-driven immune responses.

The association between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality is largely the result of myocardial anomalies. In this Review, the authors discuss the mechanisms that lead to myocardial damage and cardiac dysfunction in patients with OSA, and the potential beneficial effects of nasal continuous positive airway pressure on cardiac symptoms and hemodynamic parameters in these patients.

In the interaction of ultraintense, short laser pulses with solid targets, the collisionless Weibel instability is observed. For a sufficiently high resistivity of the target, an additional resistive instability appears.

URu₂Si₂ undergoes a prominent phase transition to an ordered state of unknown nature. Using high-resolution 3D ARPES, Bareille et al. image an abrupt symmetry reconstruction of its heavy-fermion electronic structure that could explain the origin of the ordered state and its missing entropy.

Patients with obesity and obstructive sleep apnoea have increased morbidity. Now, one study has reported limited beneficial effects of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) in patients with both these conditions. However, in another study, the reduction in blood pressure obtained with CPAP was not observed when nocturnal hypoxia was suppressed with supplemental oxygen.

Experimental study of the Kondo insulator SmB₆ provides an alternative route to realize a Fermi surface in the absence of a conventional Fermi liquid.

The formation of Ising quasiparticles in URu₂Si₂ results from ‘hastatic’ order, which breaks double time-reversal symmetry, mixing states of integer and half-integer spin, and accounts for the large entropy of condensation and the magnetic anomaly observed in torque magnetometry.

High-temperature superconductors exhibit pseudogap behaviour that remains of unknown origin, despite many years of intensive study. Here the authors study the onset of the pseudogap under pressure, providing evidence that it requires a hole-like Fermi surface and constraining future theoretical developments.

Recently, there has been significant progress on the application of laser-generated proton beams in material science. Here the authors demonstrate the benefit of employing such beams in stress testing different materials by examining their mechanical, optical, electrical, and morphological properties.

Measurements of high-field magnetotransport in overdoped cuprates indicate that the strange-metal regime exists beyond the critical doping, and that it has both coherent and incoherent contributions.

The authors show that the energy gap of the charge density wave is strongly linked to that of the superconducting and pseudogap in several cuprates. This indicates that the same microscopic physics may drive all three phases.

The orientation of the cell division axis is critical for normal growth and development as it determines the fate of future daughter cells; and the extracellular matrix to which cells adhere to plays a role in determining the orientation of the division axis. Here Bornens and colleagues present a combination of experimental and quantitative theory to show that spindle orientation is controlled by cortical force generators; a simple model based on pulling forces exerted by force generators on spindle microtubules can quantitatively describe spindle orientations in many different geometries.

Studying materials at high temperature and pressure provides information about phase transitions, with different X-ray probes to characterize material properties. This Primer describes how static and dynamic compression at synchrotrons and X-ray free-electron lasers can be used to reach high temperature, high pressure states and probe matter under extreme conditions.

The strange-metal state that develops close to a quantum critical point in strongly correlated electron systems is not well understood. This Review summarizes how the notion of Kondo destruction can describe much of the experimental phenomenology.

Low-temperature measurements of the Hall effect in cuprate materials in which superconductivity is suppressed by high magnetic fields show that the pseudogap is not related to the charge ordering that has been seen at intermediate doping levels, but is instead linked to the antiferromagnetic Mott insulator at low doping.

Quantum oscillation measurements in the underdoped copper oxide YBa₂Cu₃O_6 + x reveal a nodal electronic structure from charge order, which helps to characterize the normal state out of which superconductivity emerges in the underdoped regime.

Ion production and acceleration is ubiquitous in astrophysical objects but many questions still remain on the mechanisms at play and while laboratory plasmas provide an “accessible” regime, non-thermal ion acceleration has not been observed in the laboratory before the advent of high-power lasers. The authors collide two relativistic plasma flows and observe large energy difference of the protons coming out of the interaction region with or without an external magnetic field, qualitatively corroborating their 1D and 2D particle-in-cell simulations.