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Exploiting the optics-like dynamics of low-energy electronic excitations in graphene requires the challenging combination of ballistic transport and complex gating. Here the fabrication and characterization of suspended graphene p–njunctions is reported, paving the way for future electron optics experiments.

Natural products have historically made a major contribution to pharmacotherapy, but also present challenges for drug discovery, such as technical barriers to screening, isolation, characterization and optimization. This Review discusses recent technological developments — including improved analytical tools, genome mining and engineering strategies, and microbial culturing advances — that are enabling a revitalization of natural product-based drug discovery.

The authors use femtosecond-timed Coulomb explosion to study in real time the bimolecular reaction of a single lithium ion diffusing toward a benzene dimer inside a liquid helium nanodroplet until formation of an ion-molecule complex.

The Havre Tough back-arc basin, New Zealand, formed rapidly and in two phases: initial, limited seafloor spreading was followed by a transition to arc magmatism, as shown by geophysical data and modelling.

Here, the authors show learning tasks with similar structures can initially cause interference and slow down learning, but both the brain and artificial networks gradually reorganize information over time, enabling them to perform better and adapt more efficiently.

Here, the authors combine newly collected juniper wood samples and herbarium samples, and published data to create a continuous, chronological paleoclimate record spanning the past ~500 years. This improves contextualization of current anthropogenic warming.

Small cell lung cancer cells form functional synapses with glutamatergic neurons, receiving synaptic transmissions and deriving a proliferative advantage from these interactions.

17β-oestradiol establishes an anti-ferroptotic state in female kidney tubules.

The DNA-dependent protease SPRTN cleaves toxic DNA-protein crosslinks (DPCs). Here, the authors show that SPRTN is activated by DPC-ubiquitylation through an allosteric ubiquitin binding interface. This regulatory mechanism enables precise control of SPRTN activity during DNA repair.

Authors combine neutron scattering and MD simulations to study psychrophilic bacteria, linking proteome dynamics to the state of the proteome folding in the context of differential thermal adaptation.

HistoPlexer, a deep learning model, generates multiplexed protein expression maps from H&E images, capturing tumour–immune cell interactions. It outperforms baselines, enhances immune subtyping and survival prediction and offers a cost-effective tool for precision oncology.

Seismological and geodetic data are used together with a machine learning earthquake catalogue to reconstruct magma migration before and during the 2025 volcano–tectonic crisis at Santorini volcano, indicating a coupling between Santorini and Kolumbo.

Whole-genome sequencing data from more than 2,500 cancers of 38 tumour types reveal 16 signatures that can be used to classify somatic structural variants, highlighting the diversity of genomic rearrangements in cancer.

Bat influenza viruses use MHCII, not sialic acids, for entry. Using high-resolution microscopy. on live cells, the authors show at the nanoscale that viral particles attach to clusters of MHCII. and attract additional molecules to the attachment site.

A high-resolution three-dimensional endoscopic imaging technique resolves unique features in Barrett’s oesophageal neoplasia.

The authors present SVclone, a computational method for inferring the cancer cell fraction of structural variants from whole-genome sequencing data.

Resonant dispersive wave (RDW) emission enables tunable few-femtosecond UV pulses which can be useful for ultrafast science. Here, the authors investigate ultrafast relaxation and structural evolution of morpholine with enhanced temporal resolution, following excitation via RDWs.

Time-resolved electron microscopy reveals that intersectin-1 and endophilin A1 condensates hold replacement synaptic vesicles close to release sites. Without this, replacement vesicles are unavailable for immediate use, causing synaptic depression in response to stimulation trains.

This Review highlights fundamental optical phenomena that have been redefined at the nanoscale by anisotropic polaritons, including anomalous cases of refraction, reflection and focusing.

The dorsal peduncular area of the mouse brain functions as a network hub that integrates diverse cortical and thalamic inputs to regulate neuroendocrine and autonomic responses.

New research finds that policymakers coleading energy scenario design has the potential both to better align scenarios with policymakers’ priorities and to question current policy, by substantially reducing energy use at half of the cost of technology-focused approaches.

In one earthquake, an oceanic transform fault ruptured in one direction and then backwards at a speed exceeding that of shear-wave propagation, according to an analysis of data recorded by nearby seafloor and global seismometers.

Buron et al. show that oxytocin enhances heart rate variability linked to breathing during recovery from stress. This calming and cardio-protective effect is produced through a hypothalamus–brainstem pathway for parasympathetic control of the heart.

Plasma proteomics plays a key role in advancing clinical research and biomarker discovery. Here, the authors show in a large MSCoreSys multicenter benchmark study that DIA outperforms DDA, delivering robust, precise, and reproducible label-free protein quantification across sites.

Optoelectronic devices such as conventional semiconductor lasers are used to study the chaotic behaviour of nonlinear systems. Here chaos is observed for quantum-dot microlasers operating close to the quantum limit with potential for new directions in the study of chaos in quantum systems.

How the brain represents high-level musical meaning is unclear. Here, the authors reconstruct heard music from fMRI data and show that both music- and text-derived semantic features are predictive of activity in the auditory cortex.

Combining high-resolution mapping of foliar and herbivore faecal sodium concentrations across Africa, the authors show that plant-derived sodium availability constrains megaherbivore densities at a continental scale.

FcγRI binds immune complex (IC) to contribute to various autoimmune diseases, but a specific blocking antibody has not been reported. Here the authors characterize two anti-FcγRI antibodies that block and replace IC-binding to FcγRI in the context of patient-derived samples or a mouse immune thrombocytopenia model to implicate potential clinical translation.

The notion that catalysts are static entities that barely change under operation is still prevalent although it is often not true. Here, a range of operando and in situ techniques reveals the dynamic nature of Co₃O₄ during the oxidation of 2-propanol to acetone, unveiling a network of interconnected solid-state processes, such as exsolution, diffusion or void formation, that govern the catalytic performance.

Using carbon nanotubes in electronic or photovoltaic devices generates active metastable states. These elusive species are hard to characterize because of the polydisperse and aggregate nature of nanotube bundles. A complete characterization of the radical–ion pair state has now been achieved using a range of techniques.

Laser-induced conversion electron Mössbauer spectroscopy, which detects electrons emitted by ²²⁹Th nuclei in a thin ThO₂ sample excited by vacuum ultraviolet light, is demonstrated, opening the possibility of a conversion-electron-based nuclear clock.

The selective hydrogenation of trace acetylene to ethylene is a well-established process for purifying fossil-derived ethylene streams. Here, the authors present a self-repairing Pd-C laterally condensed catalyst that improves selectivity, prevents sub-surface hydride formation, and achieves high ethylene productivity, effectively bridging the gap between powder catalysts and single-crystal model catalysts.

In frustrated magnets geometric constraints are expected to prevent any magnetic ordering. In this work, normally non-magnetic atoms on a silicon surface display an ordered state despite geometric frustration. This offers new ways of controlling magnetism on surfaces.

The performance of inverted perovskite solar cells has been limited by non-radiative recombination at the perovskite surfaces. Here, authors employ phosphonic acids and piperazinium chloride for homogeneous passivation, achieving certified efficiency of 28.9% for 60 cm² perovskite-silicon tandems.

Reconfigurable arrays of up to 448 neutral atoms are used to implement and combine the key elements of a universal, fault-tolerant quantum processing architecture and experimentally explore their underlying working mechanisms.

Control over pain changes how intense it is perceived. Here, the authors show that this effect results from increased expectation precision with control, which changes activity in brain regions relevant for motor-control, evaluating threat and modulating pain.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

The stability of graphene-based field-effect transistors with amorphous aluminium oxide serving as the top-gate oxide can be improved by tuning the Fermilevel of the two-dimensional channel material such that it maximizes the energy distance between the charge carriers in the channel and the defect bands in the gate oxide.

This study uncovers how light polarization governs ultrafast charge transfer between gold and gallium nitride (GaN), revealing a low-loss, nonthermal electron pathway that could advance solar energy conversion and optoelectronic technologies.

Degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's are associated with the misfolding of many diverse proteins, yet the amyloid fibrils formed by all these proteins are similar. David Eisenberg and colleagues have now identified 30 short fibril-forming peptides implicated in a range of amyloid diseases and have solved 13 of their atomic structures, revealing variations in one common feature — the 'steric zipper'.

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.

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of type 2 diabetes (T2D) identifies more than 600 T2D-associated loci; integrating physiological trait and single-cell chromatin accessibility data at these loci sheds light on heterogeneity within the T2D phenotype.

Many tumours exhibit hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypoxic tumours often respond poorly to therapy. Here, the authors quantify hypoxia in 1188 tumours from 27 cancer types, showing elevated hypoxia links to increased mutational load, directing evolutionary trajectories.

The control of magnetic properties by electric fields is key to realizing spintronics devices. The surface of the antiferromagnetic magnetoelectric Cr₂O₃ is now shown to exhibit room-temperature ferromagnetism, whose direction can be switched by an electric field. This magnetization switches the exchange-bias field with magnetic multilayers grown on Cr₂O₃, promising a new route towards room-temperature spintronics devices.

Little is known about the biology of back pain, a leading cause of disability. Here the authors report 30 new back pain loci, implicating genes involved in cartilage/bone biology, as well as neurological and inflammatory processes.

Mothers can fiercely defend their young, but how the brain triggers this response remains to a large extent a mystery. Here, authors show that a dormant, hormone-sensitive brain circuit switches on to spark maternal aggression during the lactation period.

H3K36me3 is a marker of actively and recently transcribed genes. Here, the authors describe a 3-step mechanism of transcription-coupled H3K36me3 deposition by the mammalian methyltransferase SETD2, via the elongation factor SPT6.

The microscopic understanding of photo-induced insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) in 1T-TaS₂ remains elusive. Here, Stahl et al. identify the collapse of interlayer molecular orbital dimers during a collective electronic phase transition as a key mechanism for the IMT in 1T-TaS₂.