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Exceptional points enable unique light–matter interactions in non-Hermitian systems. This Review surveys band, scattering and Jones exceptional points in engineered materials, highlighting emerging applications and phenomena including topological properties, dynamic control, braiding, wavefront shaping and special states.

The efficacy of radiotherapy is sometimes hindered by the hypoxic and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Chen et al. develop an injectable hydrogel encapsulating IL-12/aCTLA-4 co-engineered red blood cells, thereby alleviating hypoxia-induced radioresistance and sequentially releasing aCTLA-4/IL-12 to relieve tumor immunosuppression.

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.

This Article reports cross-linking mass spectrometry (XL-MS) standard datasets with fully controlled protein interactions that are an order of magnitude more complex than existing ones. These datasets are used to benchmark XL-MS software and establish a fast, error-controlled search tool for XL-MS with cleavable reagents.

Kozai, Fernandez-Martinez et al. use high-speed atomic force microscopy to study the permeability barrier of yeast nuclear pore complexes. They show that karyopherins remodel a central plug that shapes barrier dynamics and disorder within the pore.

A rationally designed assay detects granzyme A activity by integrating peptide-based GzmA-targeted inhibitors and probes with chemiluminescent reporters to monitor inflammatory bowel disease.

It remains unclear how the hippocampal region integrates position and self-motion information to update spatial representations. Here, the authors report grid and head direction cells as well as cells encoding self-motion parameters such as angular head velocity and speed, and find conjunctive representations of these different parameters.

Snakes are capable of non-planar gaits, such as sidewinding. Now observations of juvenile anacondas reveal another non-planar gait resembling an S shape. Calculations show how topological dynamics of active filaments enable such movements.

A randomized field study in rural western Kenya, a region most vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change, found that modifying houses with cool-roofs and vector proofing most effectively reduced indoor heat, improved thermal comfort and lowered malaria mosquito density.

Sensory systems must adapt to changing perceptual demands. Here, the authors show that changes in sub-second timescale neural population dynamics enable flexible sensory encoding during different behavioural states, in mouse visual cortex.

Photonic technologies enable energy-efficient, high-speed computing, beyond electronics. The work shows nonlinear optical vector processing via linear transformations and wavelength multiplexing, for Hamming Distance and CAMs at 50 Gb/s, via silicon photonics.

Greying with age in horses is caused by an intronic copy number variation in the Syntaxin 17 gene. Here the authors report that the G2 allele with two copies of the duplicated sequence causes slow greying whereas G3 with three copies causes fast greying and a high risk of melanoma.

Scourzic et al. show that germinal centre B cells display an enhanced ability to reprogram to induced pluripotent stem cells compared to mature B cells. This ability indicates their higher plasticity level and is T follicular helper cell-dependent.

Mutations in the PBAF chromatin-remodeling complex cause various neurodevelopmental disorders. This study shows that PBAF shapes distinct motor neuron identities, revealing how its disruption impairs movement and offering insight into neurodevelopmental disorders caused by PBAF mutations.

The study reveals maps of the heliosphere’s termination shock strength. Asymmetries in the shock strength across the sky, from nose to tail and port to starboard flanks, are caused by the solar wind and interstellar medium dynamics.

This study shows that excessive atmospheric nitrogen deposition can enhance methane production and emissions by impacting microbial phosphorus acquisition due to the change of N/P ratios in oxygenated surface oceans.

Fast bond exchange reactions is critical for the design of vitrimer and vitrimer-like materials but are not sufficiently explored. Here, the authors use fast bond exchange between α-(acyloxymethyl)acrylate and carboxylic acid resulting in rapid stress relaxation and excellent processability owing to the highly efficient network rearrangement.

High-resolution pulse shaping is highly sought after, but existing systems are impractical outside of laboratory settings. Here, the authors introduce a chip-scale spectral shaper that uses high-Q microresonator filter banks and inline phase control to manipulate lines at GHz-level spacing.

When senescent cells accumulate during adulthood they negatively influence lifespan and promote age-dependent changes in several organs; clearance of these cells delayed tumorigenesis in mice and attenuated age-related deterioration of several organs without overt side effects, suggesting that the therapeutic removal of senescent cells may be able to extend healthy lifespan.

The authors present a fast mid-infrared hyperspectral chemical imaging technique that uses chirped pulse upconversion of sub-cycle pulses at the image plane, with lateral resolution of 15 µm and an adjustable field of view and large spectral range. They demonstrate identification and mapping different components in a microfluidic device, plant cell, and mouse embryo.

The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task in mice.

Flooding threatens urban economies via direct damages and supply-chain disruptions. Losses grow nonlinearly: wealthier cities incur larger absolute losses, while poorer cities face higher relative impacts, highlighting tailored resilience measures.

Relativistic jets observed from transient neutron stars throughout the Universe produce bright flares for minutes after each X-ray burst, helping to determine the role individual system properties have on the speed and revealing the dominant launching mechanism.

Large-scale computational and in vitro analyses identify commensal type III secretion systems and substrates in the human gut microbiome that can interact with human proteins to modulate immune pathways.

Navigational affordances describe our ability to identify routes of egress within scenes. Here, the authors show that this process likely occurs in early dorsal visual cortex and that such navigational affordances can emerge following brief presentation times.

Combining behavioral data, electrophysiology and modeling, the authors show that the human brain synchronizes visual signals by adjusting axonal conduction speed in the retina, revealing a previously unknown mechanism for precise perceptual timing.

Previous studies have shown the importance of unidirectionally aligned domain nucleation for the growth of 2D semiconductor single crystals. Here, the authors report the observation of a self-alignment process of misoriented domains during the metal-organic chemical vapour deposition growth of 2D MoS₂ on sapphire, leading to single-crystalline films with improved carrier mobility.

Researchers realize watt-class frequency modulation using compact coherent optical transmitters based on frequency-modulated photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers. The system has implications for long-distance free-space optical communications.

An in-depth analysis of tissue biopsies from patients with multiple myeloma and CAR T cell therapy-associated immune-related adverse events (CirAEs) after treatment with commercial BCMA-targeted CAR T cell therapy shows that CD4⁺ CAR T cells mediate off-tumor toxicities and that high CD4:CD8 ratio at apheresis, robust early CAR T cell expansion, ICANS and ciltacabtagene autoleuce treatment are independently associated with the development of CirAEs.

One of three back-to-back papers to show that dosage of BACH2 can modulate T cell differentiation and function and how we might apply this to enhance CAR T cell therapies for cancer.

SARST2 enables rapid exploration of protein structure space. In minutes, it scans the 214-million-entry AlphaFold Database on a personal computer, revealing homologs with higher accuracy and lower memory/disk usage than leading methods.

Kinematic measurements of the Perseus galaxy cluster reveal two drivers of gas motions: a small-scale driver in the inner core associated with black-hole feedback and a large-scale driver in the outer core powered by mergers.

Visual threat triggers contrasting freeze and escape defensive responses in two species of deer mice as a result of different activation thresholds downstream of the superior colliculus in the dorsal periaqueductal grey.

SleepGPT is a time-frequency foundation model for sleep decoding, built on a generative pretrained transformer, achieving superior performance in various downstream tasks across datasets.

High-density, intrinsically stretchable transistors with high driving ability and integrated circuits with high operation speed and large-scale integration were enabled by a combination of innovations in materials, fabrication process design, device engineering and circuit design.

Authors present an adaptive underwater optical communication (UWOC) technology based on multi-wavelength lasers and a full-color metasurface for converting visible-band Gaussian to circular autofocusing Airy beams. The potential of Airy beams to mitigate optical power degradation is demonstrated, enabling stable data rate transmission via 4 K video transmission for these systems.

Sperm–egg adhesion is crucial for mammalian reproduction. Here, authors report the human Izumo1:Juno complex, a key regulator of sperm-egg adhesion, forms an unusually strong bond through a secondary binding site, which is impaired in an infertility-associated Juno mutant.

The circuitry mechanism governing alert-driven accelerated locomotion remains unclear. Here, the authors report that a histamine-tuned subicular circuit plays a critical role in alert-driven accelerated locomotion in mice.

The structural anisotropy necessary for the powered directional rotation of chemically fuelled molecular motors had previously been provided by chiral fuels or enzymes. Now it has been shown that asymmetry in the organocatalyst itself is sufficient for directional fuelled rotation. This informs how chemical energy is transduced through catalysis, the fundamental process that powers biology.

A suite of tools including positive-going voltage indicators, a high-speed two-photon microscope, and denoising software enables prolonged imaging of electrical activity in neurons with limited toxicity.

To address the challenge of high-speed nonlinear activation in diffractive neural networks, the authors introduce a programmable, low-power, and fast nonlinear diffractive network that exhibits an activation latency of 17.7 ns, enabling tasks like real-time human posture recognition.

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

Microplastics (MPs) are persistent and widely distributed pollutants. Environmental factors cause physical and chemical aging that change their properties. This protocol is a systematic workflow for controlled MP aging and its characterization.

Inspired by nature, this study reports a dual-gradient aerogel via freeze-casting. It blends flexibility with rigidity, offers high sensitivity and wide range, withstands extreme heat and cold, with promise for integration in spacesuits.

There has been a recent interest in control of magnetism via ionic transport. The appeal of such magneto-ionic control lies in its extent, non-volatility and potential energy-efficiency, however, the number of systems showing such behaviour is limited. Here, Tan, Ma, and coauthors demonstrate magneto-ionic control through Carbon transport.

Shape morphing surfaces demonstrate a wide variety of applications, yet the existing technologies lack high-fidelity, high-speed deformation and embedded state sensing. Johnson et al. integrate soft actuators and soft sensors for high-fidelity shape morphing with self-sensing and high-speed actuation.