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What do people mean when they say their lives are meaningful? Hicks and colleagues suggest that experiential appreciation, or valuing and appreciating one’s experiences, represents a unique pathway to the subjective feeling that life is meaningful.

Analysis of a fossilized front flipper of the Jurassic ichthyosaur Temnodontosaurus that preserves details of soft tissue indicates the presence of a serrated trailing edge that would have reduced noise generated while swimming, enabling stealth hunting and hiding from predators.

Hollow-core fibre technologies provide an exceptional platform for applications in sensing, communications and higher-power pulse delivery, yet these fibres suffer from uncontrolled coupling of polarization modes. Here Fini et al. fabricate a single-moded, polarization-maintaining hollow-core fibre.

Reassessment of paleodata, atmospheric and hydrologic modelling explain why some 10,000 to 5000 years ago, deep crater lakes could exist in the Tibesti volcanic complex, the highest mountain range in the today hyper-arid Sahara.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is defined by a fibroinflammatory microenvironment, which influences both disease progression and therapy response. In this Review, Arnold et al. outline our current understanding of the complex interplay between the stromal elements of the tumour microenvironment in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and present ways we might use this knowledge to develop better therapeutic strategies for patients with pancreatic cancer.

Pupylation is the bacterial equivalent of ubiquitin conjugation, and it involves C-terminal Pup conjugation to lysines to target proteins for proteasomal degradation. This modification reaction has now been reconstituted in vitro using enzymes from the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The Pup deamidase (Dop) of this pathway has been defined, and PafA has been shown to conjugate deamidated Pup to substrates.

The in-tissue architectures of β-amyloid and tau pathology in a postmortem Alzheimer’s disease donor brain are determined, showing fibril heterogeneity is spatially organized by subcellular location and suggesting applications to a broad range of neurodegenerative diseases.

Phase transitions are often revealed by a discontinuous behaviour of thermodynamic quantities. Here, the authors study the thermodynamic behaviour of a trapped 2D photon gas, revealing critical behaviour at the phase transition through a cusp singularity of the specific heat.

Lead (Pb) isotopes from a ferromanganese crust reveal that during lukewarm interglacials before the Mid-Brunhes Event, stronger deep Southern Ocean stratification limited CO₂ release, helping keep atmospheric CO₂ levels lower.

This study employs a citizen science approach to identify and classify over 230,000 light sources in German city centers, suburbs and villages. The results underscore the pivotal role of citizen science in expanding knowledge of artificial light emissions and bolstering policymaking efforts to mitigate urban light pollution.

Spiracles are tubes that connect the buccopharyngeal cavity with the surface of the skull and are found in many early-diverging fish lineages. Here the authors provide evidence that polypterid fishes use their spiracles to breathe air, and suggest that stem tetrapods may have used them similarly.

Although intermetallic compounds and alloys feature metal atoms bonded solely to other metal atoms, this motif is unusual in molecular compounds. Now, three compounds with lanthanide metals surrounded by transition metal atoms have been made. Although reactive, they mimic intermetallic bonding and form a conceptual link from coordination compounds.

Managing power exhaust in fusion reactors is a key challenge, especially in compact designs for cost-effective commercial energy. This study shows how alternative divertor configurations improve exhaust control, enhance stability, absorb transients and enable independent plasma regulation.

During the Miocene, the Central American seaway was not closed, allowing low-salinity Pacific water to potentially weaken the Atlantic circulation. A new, continuous Nd isotope record shows that there was no direct intermediate water mass export from the Caribbean to the Florida Strait and thus, the Atlantic circulation could strengthen.

Understanding the interactions between submicrometer-sized colloidal particles is of interest to scientists in numerous disciplines. Here, the authors use optical tweezers alongside a full image reconstruction technique to investigate these interactions on the nanometer scale.

Industrial ammonia synthesis relies on complex, multi-promoted Fe catalysts that lack clear structure–activity correlations. This study reveals that promoter synergy creates stable, nanodispersed Fe catalysts with superior activity and resistance to poisoning.

P. falciparum and vivax are responsible for most cases of malaria but are not genetically closely related and differ in their clinical and epidemiological impacts. In this study, the authors investigate the genomic and epidemiological characteristics of the two parasites in a co-endemic setting of Guyana.

Approaches making virtual and experimental screening more resource-efficient are vital for identifying effective inhibitors from a vast pool of potential drugs but remain elusive. Here, the authors address this issue by developing an active learning framework leveraging high-throughput molecular dynamics simulations to identify potential inhibitors for therapeutic applications.

Chagas disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, lacks an effective vaccine. Here, the authors report the cryo-EM structure of TcPOP, a potential vaccine antigen, in open and closed states and validate its immunogenic potential for invasion-blocking antibodies.

This study documents the deglacial intensified northward flow of high pCO2 Antarctic Intermediate and Mode Water in the Pacific Ocean and provides support for these water masses as one important conduit for oceanic outgassing in the eastern equatorial Pacific upwelling.

Active control of optical fields at the nanoscale is difficult to achieve. Here, the authors fabricate an on-chip graphene NEMS suspended a few tens of nanometres above nitrogen vacancy centres and demonstrate electromechanical control of the photons emitted by electrostatic tuning of the graphene NEMS position.

The authors study the charge-density-wave (CDW) compound 2H-TaSe₂ by inelastic x-ray scattering combined with photoemission spectroscopy. They find evidence for a precursor region above the CDW transition temperature, which is characterized by an overdamped phonon mode and is not detectable by photoemission.

Long-term cooling coincided with enhanced Antarctic Circumpolar Current strength and better carbonate preservation indicating major reorganization of Pacific circulation. During initial Northern Hemisphere Glaciation, the eastern South Pacific warmed.

Here, the authors simulate COVID-19 outbreaks on an empirical contact network derived from digital contact data collected on cruise ships. They model impacts of different control measures and find that combinations of measures, particularly vaccination and rapid antigen testing, are important for mitigating outbreaks.

Cryptands and related molecules are macrocyclic polyethers capable of strongly binding cations. Here, the authors use orthoester exchange for the dynamic one-pot synthesis of crypates, which can bind cations and, given their constitutionally dynamic nature, can also be decomposed to release their guest.

Analysis of medulloblastomas in humans and mice shows that the functional consequences of ZIC1 mutations are exquisitely dependent on the cells of origin that give rise to different subgroups of medulloblastoma.

A study describes the assembly and analysis of a haplotype-resolved pangenome of bulbous barley with the potential to improve domesticated barley and illustrates its use in evolutionary research and trait mapping.

A study using time-resolved cryogenic electron microscopy reveals the swinging lever mechanism of myosin, providing information on the molecular basis behind the production of force and movement by myosin.

Timothy Frayling, Joel Hirschhorn, Peter Visscher and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for adult height in 253,288 individuals. They identify 697 variants in 423 loci significantly associated with adult height and find that these variants cluster in pathways involved in growth and together explain one-fifth of the heritability for this trait.

Skyrmion bags—textures comprising multiple skyrmions contained within a larger skyrmion—have been reported in several condensed matter systems. Now an optical analogue of these structures has been observed in plasmonic moiré superlattices.

Spin–orbit torques in heavy metal/ferromagnetic layers have a complex dependence on the magnetization direction. This dependence can be exploited to increase the efficiency of spin–orbit torques.

Together with an accompanying paper presenting a transcriptomic atlas of the mouse lemur, interrogation of the atlas provides a rich body of data to support the use of the organism as a model for primate biology and health.

Artificial vesicles consisting of encapsulated fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-donor molecules and a FRET-acceptor bilayer dye-membrane provide ultrasensitive pH information in aqueous media by displaying pH-dependent fluorescence colour covering the entire visible light range. An exceptional white fluorescence was observed at pH 9.

The extreme fields generated when a high-intensity laser or relativistic electron passes through a plasma offer the potential to accelerate particles over shorter distances than is possible with conventional accelerators. A new study suggests that driving a plasma with protons rather than electrons could be the key to generating TeV electron beams by this process.

Earth’s volatile element composition can be explained without exotic building blocks or late volatile loss, according to matching patterns of volatile element depletion for Earth and carbonaceous chondrites, as revealed by chondrite analyses.

Frank et al. find that a subregion in the zebrafish homolog of olfactory cortex maps odor space onto a representation of valence. Learning shapes this odor-to-valence map through plasticity processes that modify inhibition.

Together with a companion paper, the generation of a transcriptomic atlas for the mouse lemur and analyses of example cell types establish this animal as a molecularly tractable primate model organism.

In this Primer, de Bruijin et al. discuss the epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, management and quality of life of adults with autoimmune encephalitis, a rare neurological condition that causes progressive inflammation of the brain. The authors also discuss unmet needs of the field and discuss strategies to improve long-term outcomes.

Cosmic rays flying through superconducting quantum devices create bursts of excitations that destroy qubit coherence. Rapid, spatially resolved measurements of qubit error rates make it possible to observe the evolution of the bursts across a chip.

Owing to its short atmospheric life, methane’s contribution to agricultural emissions and climate change may vary substantially depending on the temporal scale considered. Based on projections from three agricultural economic models, this study reveals how different appreciations of methane’s global warming potential may affect the cost-effectiveness of carbon pricing and low-meat diets.

Embedding carbon fibres in polymer matrices provides significant gains in strength and stiffness. Here, the Raman G peak of carbon fibre is studied in relation to applied strain and referenced to graphene; the work could facilitate stress measurements of carbon fibre polymer composites.

Functional analyses of the ABC-F protein YjjK (EttA) suggest that it acts as a sensor of cellular energy and controls entry into the translational elongation cycle. Using cryo-EM and single-molecule FRET, EttA is shown to bind the ribosomal E site and engage both the L1 stalk and P-site tRNA to restrain ribosomal dynamics.