Search

Although river protection is core to social and environmental well-being, the extent to which river conservation policies are effective is difficult to assess. This study reveals that, under all relevant protection mechanisms in the contiguous USA, only 12% of rivers are adequately protected.

Synthetic materials are known for their outstanding durability and water stability, however, in contrast with biological structures they are not biodegradable. Here, the authors produce a biological material that gains strength in contact with water and becomes waterproof.

Conventional slurry electrodes limit high-energy lithium batteries. This work shows that dry-processed electrodes with molecularly coupled carbon–binder networks enable high mass and active material loading, supporting stable high-voltage operation and enhancing battery energy density.

Urban ecology traditionally focuses on single cities, yet cities play key roles in ecological processes such as migration. Radar analysis across the continental USA reveals that nearly half of stopover hotspots concentrate in metropolitan areas, linked to urbanization.

Aperiodic composite crystals were discovered that emulate 2D moiré materials, demonstrating a potentially scalable approach for producing moiré materials for next-generation electronics and a generalizable approach for realizing theoretical predictions of higher-dimensional quantum phenomena.

This study shows how the bacterial retron Eco2 defends against viruses. Phage nucleases trigger activation of Eco2, which cuts RNAs, shuts down protein production and stops phage replication.

From 2014–2017, marine heatwaves caused global mass coral bleaching, where the corals lose their symbiotic algae. The authors find, this event exceeded the severity of all prior global bleaching events in recorded history, with approximately half the world’s reefs bleaching and 15% experiencing substantial mortality.

Over the past 40 years, 42% of tropical and subtropical ecosystems have experienced an increase in plant reliance on past precipitation, consistent with greening during the late growing season in drylands and drying during the wet-to-dry period in non-drylands.

Mucosal administration of a multivalent, adjuvanted vaccine against Clostridioides difficile promoted bacterial clearance and protected against morbidity, mortality, tissue damage and recurrence in mice.

Greenwald, Nederlof and colleagues developed a computational pipeline analyzing multiplex imaging data and established spatial patterns within breast cancer microenvironment that are predictive of immune checkpoint blockade response across treatment time course.

This study identifies KAT7 as a key factor converting zinc deficiency into reduced H3K14ac. This signal drives both physiological zinc homeostasis and, upon prolonged deficiency, pathophysiological liver fat accumulation.

Saturated, three-dimensional scaffolds are key in modern drug discovery, and highly strained rings serve as privileged building blocks for their synthesis. Now, by tailoring the substitution patterns of 1,4-precursors, the authors suppress the competing di-π-methane rearrangement, enabling an efficient and divergent synthesis of highly strained housanes via an intramolecular [2 + 2] cycloaddition.

Electroreduction of CO is an emerging route to produce multicarbon molecules, but achieving this efficiently in solid-state devices is challenging. Here the authors develop a cation-functionalized layer using polyacrylate in a solid-state electrolyser that produces ethylene stably and efficiently from syngas.

Genome-wide association meta-analysis identifies 58 independent risk loci for major anxiety disorders among individuals of European ancestry and implicates GABAergic signaling as a potential mechanism underlying genetic risk for these disorders.

Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

Hepatic glycogenolysis is essential for protein glycosylation and rhythmic secretion by the liver. Disruptions to hepatic glycogenolysis, caused by congenital diseases or physiological factors such as obesity, caloric restriction and changes to meal timing, alter hepatic protein secretion.

A follow-up analysis of a clinical trial that evaluated anti-PD-1 therapy in patients with cancer who are living with HIV provides mechanistic insights into transcriptomic, cellular and cytokine changes related to immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment and identifies a signature associated with clinical response.

Sequencing of marine sediments finds 136 newly identified Heimdallarchaeia and several novel lineages, and indicates that Heimdallarchaeia evolved distinct metabolic capabilities from other Asgardarchaeota, in conditions that may have given rise to early eukaryotes.

Vertical transmission is thought to favour beneficial host–microbe interactions, but these may also be context dependent. Here Bruijning et al. show with a model that variable environments can select for bet-hedging by hosts via imperfect vertical transmission of microbes.

Water-based fabrication is of potential use for a range of applications, but can be challenging. Here, the authors report the use of silk fibroin as an absorbate for the preparation of high density nanoparticle layers by water-based processing.

Using two newly developed immunoassays tested in three clinical cohorts, this study highlights CSF DOPA decarboxylase as a promising biomarker for differentiating dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson’s disease from Alzheimer’s disease and controls.

Chen et al. developed a self-powered smart magnetoelastic stent for real-time hemodynamic monitoring and stenosis detection.

Donahue et al. show that ageing is associated with changes in ER morphology. ER-phagy drives age-associated ER remodelling through tissue-specific factors.

Analysis of the somatic and transcriptomic profile of 123 acral melanoma samples from Mexican patients helps understand tumour origins and prognosis, and highlights the importance of including samples from diverse ancestries in cancer genomics studies.

The famous nebula Barnard 68 has been used as a giant cosmic-ray detector: cosmic-ray-excited vibrational H₂ emission has been observed by JWST, giving a direct measurement of the CR ionization rate.

A scalable architecture that is based on a quantum dot crossbar array comprising tightly pitched spin-qubit tiles and implemented in planar germanium, can be used characterize spin qubits.

Human visual system relies on temporal attention to detect moving objects before high-level processing with large computational overheads. Wang et al. emulate this function in a neuromorphic hardware, showing a 400% speedup compared to algorithm-based visual perception and surpassing human capabilities.

The electronic behaviour of complex oxides such as LaNiO₃ depends on many intrinsic and extrinsic factors, making it challenging to identify microscopic mechanisms. Here the authors demonstrate the influence of oxygen vacancies on the thickness-dependent metal-insulator transition of LaNiO₃ films.

The study shows a micron-scale polariton structure where an artificial gauge field creates topological, non-reciprocal edge transport without strong magnetic fields, overcoming key limits for topological polariton lasers and devices.

The lowest-frequency gravitational wave background may be shaped by supermassive black hole binaries that scatter nearby stars or dark matter. In this case, the NANOGrav 15-year dataset favours dense galactic centres with 10⁶ solar masses per cubic parsec.

Limited-size object microscopy (LSOM) enables label-free super-resolution imaging of isolated nano-objects with a resolution as low as λ/8 under the sole assumption of the limited size of the imaged object.

Artificial intelligence applied to brain magnetic resonance imaging could transform neurological care. Here the authors present BrainIAC, a foundation model that can be used across diverse clinical tasks with limited training data.

The Ocean Equity Index provides a systematic, twelve-criteria framework to assess and improve equity in ocean initiatives, projects and policies, producing structured data that guide evidence-based decisions and support more equitable outcomes for coastal communities and ecosystems.

Verhaege et al. identify a conserved fibroblast barrier population at the base of the choroid plexus that compartmentalizes brain–CSF interfaces and is disrupted by inflammation, revealing a new site of central nervous system immune entry and barrier regulation.

Insights into regulatory T cell biology are accelerating therapeutic innovation in cancer immunotherapy, autoimmune diseases and transplant rejection.

PARM is a deep-learning model trained on data from massively parallel reporter assays to help predict promoter activity in different human cell types, design synthetic promoters and identify key features of regulatory promoter grammar.

In a study of four brain-dead human decedents, extracorporeal liver cross-circulation using genetically modified pig livers provides essential hepatic functions, supporting the feasibility of this approach for temporary liver support as a bridge to organ transplantation.

Non-invasive strategies to detect and track activated myeloid cells will facilitate disease diagnosis and monitoring in patients affected by neuroinflammatory disorders. Here, the authors present 18F-FMD, a dendrimer-based PET tracer that detects and monitors activated myeloid cells at different stages (presymptomatic and symptomatic) of Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis (EAE) in mice and in response to disease-modifying therapies.

Boosting mitochondrial metabolism in neurons in central memory circuits by enhancing Ca²⁺ retention in the mitochondrial matrix is shown to improve long-term memory formation in flies and mice.

To humanize models of liver metabolic disease research, authors develop a microfluidic platform leveraging human hepatic spheroids integrated with microvasculature and circulating monocytes to model hepatic insulin resistance.

Using a non-human primate model, the authors identified the tissue sites of initial viral rebound after discontinuation of antiretroviral therapy, demonstrating that such rebound preferentially occurs in the gastrointestinal tract-associated lymphoid tissues.