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The Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative recruited and genotyped more than half a million Taiwanese participants, almost all of Han Chinese ancestry, and performed comprehensive genomic analyses and developed polygenic risk score prediction models for numerous health conditions.

The authors develop a low carbon cement-based material which exhibits hierarchical structure with low density (0.75 g cm⁻³), high specific compressive strength (344 (kN m⁻²)/(kg m⁻³)) and fracture toughness (4865 kJ m⁻³).

Natural disasters induce power outages with unequal impacts on poverty and non-poverty counties in China. Climate change will further exacerbate this disparity.

This study uses brain recordings, self-reports, and facial analysis to decode acute pain in epilepsy patients. Machine learning reveals stable neural markers in mesolimbic, striatal, and cortical regions, plus facial cues, enabling reliable pain detection in naturalistic settings.

Thermal lepton pairs are ideal probes for the temperature of quark-gluon plasma. Here, the STAR Collaboration uses thermal electron-positron pair production to measure quark-gluon plasma average temperature at different stages of the evolution.

Monolayer amorphous carbon (a-C) has attracted attention due to its structural and electronic properties, but its synthesis has so far required the use of metal substrates. Here, the authors report the Te-assisted growth of large-scale 2D a-C patterns on various insulating substrates, confirming their insulating properties in quantum tunnelling devices.

This study shows that C9orf72 mutations impair immune activation in ALS, affecting how brain cells communicate, and highlights key differences in the cellular and molecular pathways underlying sporadic and genetic forms of the disease.

The mediodorsal thalamus (MD) is central to flexible decision-making. Here, the authors identify MD’s unique roles in arbitrating between different reinforcement learning strategies through prefrontal-striatal brain circuits.

Planning for the Colorado River is critical to secure water and hydropower for the western US under climate change. This study highlights how different policies may reduce but not eliminate the risk of losing water and energy supply altogether.

Over 20 species of geographically and phylogenetically diverse bird species produce convergent whining vocalizations towards their respective brood parasites. Model presentation and playback experiments across multiple continents suggest that these learned calls provoke an innate response even among allopatric species.

The molecular mechanisms underlying nitrogen (N)-dependent flowering regulation remain unclear. Here, the authors reveal Hd6, a known factor involved in photoperiodic flowering regulation, as a key signaling component in rice heading date variation under different N conditions.

Powdery mildew is a devasting disease for both common wheat and durum wheat. Here, the authors report a pair of genetically linked nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR)-encoding genes confer powdery mildew resistance and show its potential in wheat disease-resistant breeding.

Renewable-fuelled plant factories (RFPFs) offer great promise for resilient food production. This study presents a multidimensional geospatial analysis to devise RFPF deployment schemes that aim to meet the population’s dietary vegetable demand in China’s 369 city-level regions.

A proteotoxic stress response specific to exhausted T cells, governed by AKT signaling and accompanied by increased protein translation, represents a mechanistic vulnerability and a new therapeutic target to improve cancer immunotherapies.

An inherently explainable AI trained on 1,015 expert-annotated prostate tissue images achieved strong Gleason pattern segmentation while providing interpretable outputs and addressing interobserver variability in pathology.

Some mafic rocks have a ⁴⁰K/³⁹K ratio lower than all other terrestrial samples, according to isotopic composition analyses, suggesting parts of Earth’s mantle have retained their composition prior to the Moon-forming impact to the present day.

Quality control for epigenomic datasets requires robust ground truths. Here, authors generate genome-wide quantitative methylation reference datasets from the publicly available Quartet DNA reference materials, which could serve as a resource for the standardised benchmarking of emerging technologies.

NatD is an acetyltransferase responsible for N-α-terminal acetylation of the histone H4 and H2A and has been linked to cell growth. Here the authors show that NatD-mediated acetylation of histone H4 serine 1 competes with the phosphorylation by CK2α at the same residue thus leading to the upregulation of Slug and tumor progression.

Near-infrared mechanoluminescence can be used in biostress imaging, but is subject to limitations in terms of the pre-irradiation process and low intensity. Here, the authors have circumvented these limitations by constructing an MgO/MgF₂:Cr³⁺ heterojunction piezo-photonics system.

Cells struggle to migrate on soft substrates, which don’t provide enough traction. Here, the authors show that rapid, cyclic changes in substrate rigidity allow cells to overcome this limitation and move quickly.

Spherical polar topological structures are of interest as they could enable high-density memory applications; however, such texture formation requires superlattices with delicately balanced boundary conditions to form. Here it is found that these textures can form in free-standing CuInP₂S₆, and that mechanical force can generate high-density domains.

Spontaneous scrolling in two-dimensional polar van der Waals materials, driven by intrinsic out-of-plane electric polarization, enables the scalable production of nanoscrolls and their heterostructures.

A complementary analysis of DESI DR2 distance measurements along with supernova and CMB data shows consistent, moderate evidence that dark energy changes over time rather than behaving as a simple cosmological constant.

Proteins in the fungal plasma membrane are key antifungal targets but their native structure and spatial distribution are poorly understood. Here, Jiang et al. use proteomics and cryo-electron tomography to investigate the organisation of membrane proteins in the fungal plasma membrane and how this is affected by antifungal drugs.

Wang, He, Gong and colleagues identify an age-related decline in the palmitoyltransferase ZDHHC11 in chondrocytes that leads to senescence and the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis, highlighting the potential of targeted ZDHHC11 delivery as a therapeutic strategy for osteoarthritis.

White adipose tissue (WAT) dysfunction leads to ageing-related metabolic disorders. Here, the authors show that the FMO3-TMAO axis in adipocytes induces senescence and inflammation in WAT microenvironment via NLRP3 inflammasome, leading to systemic glucose, lipid, and energy dysregulation in ageing

Climate risk increasingly threatens World Heritage sites, yet its integration into conservation planning remains underexplored. By analysing 1,868 World Heritage documents, this study reveals regional disparities of climate awareness and highlights the gap between awareness and action.

Here the authors reveal how an incoherent feedforward C/EBPα–Notch circuit times lung cell fate, guiding alveolar development, repair after injury, and shifts between protective and reparative states.

DNA damage from chemotherapy can activate cGAS–STING and interferon pathways. Here, the authors show that cGAS–STING signaling is specific to DNA rich in CA repeats, whereas DNA not rich in CA repeats is detected by AIM2, resulting in opposing tumor immune responses.

Wu, Zhang and colleagues introduce ‘compare and contrast spatial transcriptomics’ (CoCo-ST), a graph contrastive learning-based method for spatial transcriptomics analysis that detects low-variance structures.

The experimental demonstration of many-body signal amplification in a solid-state, room-temperature quantum sensor is reported.

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

Native crystallographic defects are often introduced during synthesis of battery materials, but has been overlooked. Here, using in situ synchrotron X-ray probes and electron microscopy, the authors have revealed their adverse effect during battery operation.

Typical quantum error correcting codes assign fixed roles to the underlying physical qubits. Now the performance benefits of alternative, dynamic error correction schemes have been demonstrated on a superconducting quantum processor.

Garnet-type LLZO electrolytes are considered among the most promising solid-state electrolytes for all-solid-state batteries; however, numerous challenges need to be addressed before they are integrated into a cell. By precipitating amorphous zirconium oxide onto grain boundaries, increased ionic conductivity is observed and dendrite growth is suppressed.

Cannulae are heat-resistant protein nanotubes found on the surface of thermophilic archaea. Here, the authors report the structures of cannulae at the atomic level with insight into their high stability and mechanism of assembly, which has potential impact for biomaterials design.

Recently, anti-resonant hollow-core fibers have emerged as an important medium for high-power laser delivery. Here, authors demonstrate a highly efficient, all-fiber delivery of 2 kW laser over 2.45 km, using a self-fabricated AR-HCF with a record low transmission loss of 0.168 dB/km at 1080 nm.

An approach that integrates electrochemical CO₂ reduction and biological denitrification provides a new solution for nitrogen removal, where the formate obtained from CO₂ is used directly as the carbon source in the denitrification process in wastewater treatment.

Liquid films are essential in semiconductor lithography but microscopic behaviors of photoresist within these films remain unclear. This study uses cryo-electron tomography to reconstruct photoresist structures, achieving 99% defect reduction.

Achieving high selectivity in CO₂-to-methanol conversion remains challenging. This study uses defect-engineered In₂O₃/ZrO₂ catalysts featuring abundant oxygen vacancies, significantly boosting methanol productivity and selectivity.

The quark structure of the f₀(980) hadron is still unknown after 50 years of its discovery. Here, the CMS Collaboration reports a measurement of the elliptic flow of the f₀(980) state in proton-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 8.16 TeV, providing strong evidence that the state is an ordinary meson.

This study presents a flexible AI-based method for compressing microscopy images, achieving high compression while preserving details critical for analysis, with support for task-specific optimization and arbitrary-resolution decompression.

Here the authors perform a trans expression quantitative trait locus meta-analysis study of over 3,700 people and link a USP18 variant to expression of 50 inflammation genes and lupus risk, highlighting how genetic regulation of immune responses drives autoimmune disease and informs new therapies.

Indonesian cattle are unique due to their history of admixture involving both zebu and banteng. Here, Wang et al. identify ~3.5 million novel introgressed SNP variants and provide a genomic map of banteng introgression within and across many cattle breeds, each with unique introgression histories.

Polygenic risk scores can help identify individuals at higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Here, the authors characterise a multi-ancestry score across nearly 900,000 people, showing that its predictive value depends on demographic and clinical context and extends to related traits and complications.

This study introduces WinnowNet, a deep learning-based method incorporating curriculum learning to enhance peptide identification in metaproteomics. WinnowNet consistently outperforms existing tools across diverse datasets, offering improved insights into microbial communities.

High-resolution computed tomography is used to reconstruct and analyse fossils of the herbivorous tritylodontid Polistodon and a newly named morganucodontid species called Camurocondylus, providing key insights into the evolution of the mammalian jaw joint.

High-resolution ALMA observations reveal a gravitationally bound septuple protostar system in NGC 6334IN, formed through disk fragmentation. This discovery sheds light on the formation of extreme high-order multiplicity in massive stellar clusters.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.