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Japonica subspecies has a lower nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) than that of indica rice. Here, the authors show that natural variations in the NIN-like protein 4 (OsNLP4) encoding gene are responsible for the divergence and introgression of the indica OsNLP4 allele into elite japonica cultivar can increase NUE and grain yield.

A genome-wide association study in rice identifies variation in SBRR1 associated with sheath blight resistance. Introducing the SBRR1-R allele into a commercial rice variety reduces yield loss under severe exposure to sheath blight disease.

This work demonstrates compact thin-film lithium niobate detectors for broadband, sensitive terahertz detection up to 3 THz, introducing a differential scheme that accesses either temporal differences or derivatives of the THz field.

Polar skyrmions are nanoscale topological structures of electric polarizations. Their collective modes, dubbed as “skyrons”, are discovered by the terahertz-field-excitation, femtosecond x-ray diffraction measurements and advanced modeling.

Grain chalkiness is an undesirable trait that severely compromises rice quality. Here, the authors report the cloning of an E3 ubiquitin ligase encoding gene Chalk9 and reveal its crucial role in regulating grain chalkiness through mediating the ubiquitination-dependent degradation of OsEBP89.

Native top-down proteomics reveals epidermal growth factor receptor–estrogen receptor-alpha (EGFR–ER) signaling crosstalk in breast cancer cells and dissociation of nuclear transport factor 2 (NUTF2) dimers to modulate ER signaling and cell growth.

The condensation of repeat-containing RNAs can have neurotoxic effects but is challenging to study. Now a NMR approach termed condensate detection by semi-solid magnetization transfer (CONDENSE-MT) can be used to study RNA condensate dynamics, proton–solvent exchange kinetics and condensate hydration.

The magnetoelastic coupling at a ferroelectric-ferromagnetic interface is shown to be dominated by shear-strain effects. Using polarised x-ray microscopy to simultaneously image the ferroic domain structures, the authors demonstrate an anomalous coupling in the ultrathin film limit.

The PhenoSphere is a unique plant cultivation facility in which field-like environments can be simulated. Here, the authors find that a single season simulation is superior to an averaged season and to a climatized glasshouse cultivation to elicit field-like phenotypes evaluated in 11 maize lines.

The authors show that deep brain stimulation (DBS) inhibits local neural activity via differential suppression of glutamate and GABA release, and they developed a chemogenetic therapy as a less invasive, cost-effective alternative to electrical DBS.

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.

Khawaja et al. show sex-specific differences in neuronal-activity regulation by chaperone-mediated autophagy and that loss of chaperone-mediated autophagy leads to defective neuronal physiology and increased seizure susceptibility, linking chaperone-mediated autophagy to neuronal excitability.

To fully realize LLMs’ potential value in clinical applications, effective methods to enhance their quality and credibility are required. Here, the authors present LINS, a framework to enhance medical LLM responses by integrating up-to-date evidence and supporting clinical tasks, and validate it through new physician-curated datasets and large-scale user trials.

Researchers developed a nano-resolution, multi-material, and multi-layer printing method for the colloidal nanocrystal library. The electrohydrodynamic technique is enabled by in-situ ligand treatments to achieve fully printed infrared photodiodes.

How the brain supports speaking and listening during conversation of its natural form remains poorly understood. Here, by combining intracranial EEG recordings with Natural Language Processing, the authors show broadly distributed frontotemporal neural signals that encode context-dependent linguistic information during both speaking and listening..

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

The underlying physics of the strange metal phase observed in many strongly correlated materials is not well understood. Now, evidence emerges that antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations play an important role.

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.

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.

Whether paternal pre-conceptual SARS-CoV-2 infection impacts sperm RNA content, or effects offspring phenotypes, has not been previously investigated. Here authors report changes in sperm noncoding RNAs in SARS-CoV-2 infected sires and increased anxiety-like behaviors in offspring.

Squeezed light field microscopy (SLIM) combines ideas from tomography and compressed sensing with light field microscopy to enable volumetric imaging at kilohertz rates, as demonstrated in blood flow imaging in zebrafish and voltage imaging in leeches and mice.

Cartilage-targeted gene therapy is dependent on delivery efficiency. Here, the authors develop non-pathogenic, virus-inspired lipopeptide-based nanoplatforms to deliver nucleic acids to cartilage with increased transfection efficiency over conventional lipid nanoparticles.

In this study, the authors present optimization and efficacy testing of apolipoprotein-based lipid nanoparticles for delivering various nucleic acid therapeutics in vivo to immune cells and their progenitors in the bone marrow.

Organ banking via vitrification could transform transplantation but has never been achieved at human organ scales. Here, the authors demonstrated successful vitrification in ≤ 3L CPA volumes and ~<1L porcine liver with successfully rewarming ≤ 2L CPA volumes using nanowarming.

The genetic basis underlying resistance to Sclerotinia stem rot (SSR) in oilseed rape remains elusive. Here, the authors identify BnaA07.MKK9 as a pivotal regulator of SSR resistance in oilseed rape by GWAS, providing new insights into plant defense mechanisms against necrotrophic pathogens.

Methane emission occurs in natural wetlands on a large scale, but the corresponding trace element emissions have not been studied. Here, the authors study selenium and arsenic emission in a pristine peatland and show that this causes large amounts of those trace elements to enter the biogeochemical cycle.

Multiverse and wormholes are experimentally elusive due to dimensional constraints. Here, authors use nonlocal artificial materials and deep learning to emulate photonic parallel spaces, realizing invisible zero-index tunnels and independent optical devices coexisting at the same physical location.

The authors explore the impact of MC4R deficiency on lipid metabolism in humans, based on two large cohorts. Findings indicate that individuals with obesity due to MC4R deficiency have lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels, as well as reduced cardiovascular risk.

Limited diagnostic capacity for asymptomatic individuals hinders malaria elimination efforts in Africa. Here, the authors present a near point-of-care method based on colorimetric LAMP detection that outperforms expert microscopy and commercial rapid diagnostic tests for Plasmodium detection in asymptomatic and submicroscopic individuals.

NV center-based quantum sensors integrated into diamond anvil cells have enabled magnetic imaging under high pressure but are less suited for studying magnetic van der Waals materials. Here, the authors demonstrate magnetic imaging of micrometer-sized flakes of 1T-CrTe2 under high pressure using spin-centers in a thin hBN layer.

Phenotype-based screening is a major bottleneck in the development of microbial cell factories. Here the authors build an AI-powered digital colony picker for single-cell-resolved, contactless screening and export of microbial strains, which identified lactate-tolerant Zymomonas mobilis mutants.

An Fe^III/V redox mechanism in Li₄FeSbO₆ on delithiation without Fe^IV or oxygen formation with resistance to aging, high operating potential and low voltage hysteresis is demonstrated, with implications for Fe-based high-voltage applications.

The Yamaji effect is a modulation of the electronic transport as the angle of an applied magnetic field is changed. This has been observed in a model cuprate and sheds light on the geometry of the Fermi surface and the nature of the pseudogap.

An untethered jamming mechanism uses magnetic fields to control interactions between soft-ferromagnetic composites with designed magnetization profiles. Stiffness, damping, and shapelocking are tuned for programmable robotic materials.

Dynamic systems show promise for physical neural networks, but gradient based optimization requires mathematical models. Here, the authors present a data-driven framework for optimizing networks of arbitrary dynamic systems which is robust to noise, and enables tasks such as neuroprosthetic control.

The developing heart integrates several progenitor cell types. Here they show that the pericardium enveloping the heart develops among cells that form the mesothelium around inner organs and body cavities, distinct from the classic heart field.

Anisotropic hybridization between conduction and unpaired f electrons is rarely observed. Now, a lanthanide-based two-dimensional compound exhibits nodal hybridization, giving rise to heavy-fermion behaviour.

ER membranes tune protein degradation to lipid composition. Using reconstitution approaches, the authors show that the ubiquitin conjugating enzyme UBE2J2 senses lipid packing, modulating its own and partner enzyme activities; together, they integrate lipid saturation and cholesterol signals.

Spatiotemporal hierarchical modelling of geological sea-level proxies and tide gauge data suggest that the modern global mean sea-level rise rate since 1900 has exceeded any century over at least the past four millennia, breaking the long-term stability observed in southeastern China.

Ambient electromagnetic energy is ubiquitous, but it is a challenge to harvest this energy. Here the authors designed a dielectric polarization enabled textile which can harvest electromagnetic energy.

Chemical reactor design has traditionally relied on human expertise. Here, the authors present Reac-Discovery, an AI-driven platform that designs, validates, fabricates and optimizes 3D-printed catalytic reactors.

Owing to electron localization, two-dimensional materials are not expected to be metallic at low temperatures, but a field-induced quantum metal phase emerges in NbSe₂, whose behaviour is consistent with the Bose-metal model.

Duan and Kaushik et al. reveal the structural basis of how Escherichia coli and Thermus thermophilus RNA polymerases initiate transcription from Np₄A alarmones producing Np₄-capped transcripts. The caps form various interactions with a polymerase during initial steps, influencing capping efficiency.

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.

Pl@ntBERT is a language-based AI model that learned the ‘syntax’ of plant assemblages, predicting likely species and inferring habitats by modelling biotic relationships.

Chromatin accessibility dynamics causally influence changes in gene expression levels, but these fluctuations may not be directly coupled over time. Here, authors develop computational causal framework HALO, examining epigenetic plasticity and gene regulation dynamics in single-cell multi-omic data.

The temporal characterization of few-femtosecond vacuum ultraviolet pulses bring new opportunities for investigating ultrafast light-matter interactions.