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The North Water polynya is a unique but vulnerable ecosystem, home to Indigenous people and Arctic keystone species. New palaeoecological records from Greenland suggest human abandonment c. 2200–1200 cal yrs BP occurred during climate-forced polynya instability, foreshadowing future ecosystem declines.

The dynamics of microglia states adjacent to or far from amyloid-beta plaques are unclear. Here the authors show that non-plaque-associated microglia modulate the cell population expansion in response to amyloid deposition, and Csf1 signaling regulates their transition to the amyloid-associated state.

Using a globally distributed standardized aerial sampling of fungal spores, we show that the hyperdiverse kingdom of fungi follows globally highly predictable spatial and temporal dynamics, with seasonality in both species richness and community composition increasing with latitude.

Here, Pelliciari et al. present resonant inelastic X-ray scattering on monolayer samples of unconventional superconductor FeSe, finding evidence for gapped and dispersionless spin excitations. These experiments are very difficult due to the extremely small scattering volume of the FeSe monolayer.

This Primer on Bayesian statistics summarizes the most important aspects of determining prior distributions, likelihood functions and posterior distributions, in addition to discussing different applications of the method across disciplines.

Baker, Marcos and colleagues analyze β-arches (loops connecting unpaired β-strands) and derive rules used for de novo design of a hyperthermostable jellyroll structure, with eight antiparallel β-strands forming double-stranded β-helices.

Assembling random networks on a surface is an intriguing — and potentially useful — phenomenon, but partial order is difficult to control. Researchers have now altered two-dimensional tetracarboxylic acid networks through only small chemical changes. This phase behaviour reveals that entropy, alongside energy, plays a crucial role in the order–disorder balance.

BEAST X advances Bayesian phylogenetic, phylogeographic and phylodynamic analysis by incorporating a broad range of complex models and leveraging advanced algorithms and techniques to boost statistical inference.

Researchers test geodynamic models for far-field continental deformation during the Laramide orogeny. New and existing thermal data show that the hot hinterland crust promoted lower crust mobility and crust-mantle decoupling during flat-slab traction.

Juno’s microwave radiometer data could measure the water concentration in the deep atmosphere of Jupiter (0.7 to 30 bar) at the equator: \(2.7^{+2.4}_{-1.7}\) times the solar O/H abundance, with a thermal vertical structure compatible with a moist adiabat.

A two-dimensional one instruction set computer has been fabricated based on complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor technology by leveraging the heterogeneous integration of large-area n-type MoS₂ and p-type WSe₂ field-effect transistors.

The authors report a particle-particle correlation and velocity-difference profile method to measure nuclear lifetime. The results obtained for excited states of 23Mg are used to constrain the production of 22Na in the astrophysical novae explosions.

The origin of continental crust is unclear. Geochemical and geophysical analyses of the Central American land bridge show that continental crust began to form there when enriched oceanic crust created above the Galápagos plume was subducted.

It is reported that measles epidemics in Niger are unexpectedly episodic, and it is shown through modelling that powerful seasonality in transmission generates high amplitude, chaotic epidemics, with potentially important consequences for vaccine-based control strategies.

The root of the eukaryote Tree of Life is estimated from a new, larger dataset of mitochondrial proteins including all known eukaryotic supergroups, showing it lies between two multi-supergroup assemblages.

The Multi-Worm Tracker permits real-time, high-throughput, quantitative analysis of behavior in Caenorhabditis elegans. It should enable screens for genes implicated in complex worm behaviors. Also in this issue, Albrecht and Bargmann apply microfluidics to study worm chemosensory behavior with high spatial and temporal precision.

Most kimberlites erupting in the past billion years on Earth did so about 30 million years after continental breakup, with dynamical and analytical models suggesting a control from rifting-related mantle delamination.

Serial femtosecond crystallography is an X-ray free-electron-laser-based method that uses X-ray bursts to determine protein structures. Here the authors present the structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre, an integral membrane protein, achieved with no sign of X-ray-induced radiation damage.

The local X-ray-induced dynamics that occur in protein crystals during serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) measurements at XFELs are not well understood. Here the authors performed a time-resolved X-ray pump X-ray probe SFX experiment, and they observe distinct structural changes in the disulfide bridges and peptide backbone of proteins; complementing theoretical approaches allow them to further characterize the details of the X-ray induced ionization and local structural dynamics.

A study describes a direct computational approach without experimental optimization to design high-affinity proteins that bind small helical peptides.

Deconvolution methods infer levels of immune infiltration from bulk expression of tumour samples. Here, authors assess 6 published and 22 community-contributed methods via a DREAM Challenge using in vitro and in silico transcriptional profiles of admixed cancer and healthy immune cells.

Acidification enhances lactate dehydrogenase– and malate dehydrogenase–mediated promiscuous production of L-2-hydroxyglutarate (L-2HG) from α-ketoglutarate and stabilizes HIF-1α levels.

Histone chaperone RbAp48 interacts with histones H3–H4 and delivers them to a second histone chaperone, ASF1, to be assembled into new nucleosomes. These interactions are now investigated, revealing that RbAp48 binds H3–H4 heterodimers (but not tetramers) and causes conformational changes in their core fold. Moreover, an allosteric mechanism facilitates exchange of H3–H4 between RbAp48 and ASF1.

Joint analysis of new and previously published sequencing data for primary and metastatic prostate cancers identifies new candidate driver mutations and provides insights into disease progression and potential drug targets.

Pump-probe spectroscopy is routinely used to interrogate ultrafast valence electronic and vibrational dynamics in complex systems. Here, the authors extend this technique to the X-ray regime using a sequence of femtosecond X-ray pulses to understand core-valence interactions in a solvated molecular complex.

Corrosion is a ubiquitous failure mode in materials. Here the authors report a percolating 1D wormhole corrosion morphology using advanced electron microscopy and theoretical simulations. The work presents a vacancy mapping method with nm-resolution, identifying the incubation sites of the wormholes.

This study presents a computational framework describing OCD frontostriatal dynamics, offering possible intervention targets to normalise functional brain activity and reduce symptom severity.

The chronology and mode of parallel evolution remain unclear. Here, the authors compare mid-Holocene and contemporary bottlenose dolphin adaptations between pelagic and coastal ecosystems with paleogenomics, finding rapid adaptation to newly emerged habitat from standing genetic variation.

Using data from a single time point, passenger-approximated clonal expansion rate (PACER) estimates the fitness of common driver mutations that lead to clonal haematopoiesis and identifies TCL1A activation as a mediator of clonal expansion.

Phylogenetic reconstructions with conserved protein markers from the 11 known DPANN phyla reveal their monophyletic placement within the Euryarchaeota.

Samples of different body regions from hundreds of human donors are used to study how genetic variation influences gene expression levels in 44 disease-relevant tissues.

Large-scale combination drug screens in cancer are extremely challenging because of the immense number of possible combinations. Here, the authors develop BATCHIE, a Bayesian active learning platform to design scalable and maximally informative drug combination screening assays; this is validated in retrospective and prospective cancer studies.

Protected areas are intended to safeguard wildlife, but their effectiveness has at times been questioned. Barnes, Craigie, and colleagues show that protected areas do offer refuge—maintaining their bird and mammal abundances—but with greater success for larger-bodied species and in more developed nations.

A method is introduced to quantify short-range order in multicomponent alloys using atom probe tomography, which enables further understanding and materials design related to atomic-scale solute engineering.

The conversion of auditory and vestibular stimuli into electrical signals is initiated by force transmitted to a mechanotransduction channel through the tip link. Here authors show that a single tip-link bond is more mechanically stable relative to classic cadherins, and that the double stranded tip-link connection is stabilized by single strand rebinding facilitated by strong cis-dimerization domains.

As presented at the ESMO Congress 2025: In patients with locally advanced or metastatic solid tumours, including mesothelioma, treatment with a first-in-class inhibitor of the Hippo−YAP−TEAD pathway was safe and led to encouraging clinical response rates in patients with mesothelioma.

The dynamics of water molecules at interfaces controls natural and artificial processes, but experimental investigations have been challenging. Here the authors investigate water molecules on a graphene surface using helium spin-echo spectroscopy, and reveal a regime where freely mobile molecules undergo strong repulsive mutual interactions which inhibit ice nucleation.

An information-theoretic analysis of DNA methylation in samples from patients with paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukaemia reveals that a regulatory set of driver genes harbour the greatest differences in methylation stochasticity.

Immune lymphocyte estimation from nucleotide sequencing (ImmuneLENS) infers B cell and T cell fractions from whole-genome sequencing data. Applied to the 100,000 Genomes Project datasets, circulating T cell fraction provides sex-dependent and prognostic insights in patients.

By exploiting geometric phase control inside a laser cavity to map polarization to orbital angular momentum, a new class of laser that is able to generate all states on the higher-order Poincaré sphere is reported.

Picornaviruses use modular RNA domains in their internal ribosome entry sites (IRESs) for translation through non-canonical, cap-independent mechanisms. Here the authors report the crystal structure of domain V from the IRES of hepatitis A virus (HAV) ssRNA genome, suggesting that the functional homology among different types of picornaviral IRESs is structure-based.

Systematic characterization of longitudinal tau variability in human Alzheimer’s disease using an unbiased subtyping algorithm reveals four trajectories of tau deposition with distinct clinical features.

Somatic small variants in cancer genomes are identified in both short-read and long-read data.