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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.

Integrated scanning probe techniques in combination with first-principles theory unveil the crystallization of electron polarons into quasi-one-dimensional polaron superlattices in individual polypentacene molecules.

Composites of carbon nanotubes and superconductors provide technologically important new, or improved, functionalities. Here, with a chemical solution approach, well-aligned carbon nanotube forests embedded in a superconducting NbC matrix are shown to effectively enhance the superconducting properties of NbC.

The recently discovered phenomena arising from 2D nanomaterials have led to an increased interest in the fabrication of other ultrathin materials from those typically only observed in the bulk. Here, the authors demonstrate the synthesis of micron-sized, single-crystalline ZnO nanosheets via solution based methods.

Next-generation red and green G-protein-coupled receptor-based dopamine sensors with improved properties have been developed. Their performance is demonstrated in cell culture, in brain slices and in vivo in the mouse.

Intercalating alkali metals into picene—a hydrocarbon with five linearly fused benzene rings—results in superconducting materials. Now, alkali-metal-doped phenanthrene, which consists of three fused benzene rings, is also found to be superconducting, opening up a broader class of organic superconductors.

The combinatorial synthesis of ionizable lipids allows for the identification of an antioxidant lipid exhibiting low immunogenicity for lipid nanoparticle-mediated mRNA delivery in vivo.

While Bell inequalities have been violated several times—mostly in photonic systems—their violations within particle physics experiments are less explored. Here, the BESIII Collaboration showcases Bell-violating nonlocal correlations between entangled hyperon pairs.

Relaxosome is a complex involved in bacterial conjugation and the spread of antibiotic resistance genes. Using cryo-EM, the authors reveal how specific protein-DNA interactions within the relaxosome facilitate the transfer of plasmid DNA between bacteria.

Nitrogen and phosphorus limitations are both key to spatial patterns and temporal trends in primary production. This global analysis indicates that phosphorus limitation on terrestrial primary productivity has become stronger and is increasing more rapidly than nitrogen limitation.

A tenet of elementary biology is that mitochondria — the cell’s powerhouses — and their DNA are inherited exclusively from mothers. A provocative study suggests that fathers also occasionally contribute.

A massive phonon mode in a high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator has been laser cooled close to its ground state. Its robustness to decoherence establishes the potential of these devices for quantum technologies.

Complete sequences of chromosomes telomere-to-telomere from chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan and siamang provide a comprehensive and valuable resource for future evolutionary comparisons.

Vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 are needed to fight the pandemic. Here the authors show immunogenicity of an adjuvanted subunit vaccine, SARS-CoV-2 spike protein trimerized with trimer-tag technology, in small animal models and protection from SARS-CoV-2 challenge in non-human primates.

Iron pnictide compounds have recently been shown to have superconducting properties. Xuet al. show that the superconducting gap of underdoped pnictides scales linearly with the transition temperature, and that a pseudogap develops with underdoping.

A propeptide strategy increases uptake of phosphotyrosine and a nonhydrolyzable analog to facilitate their incorporation into proteins by recombinant methods, aided by a specific aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase with a reconfigured active site.

The authors add GaSb to PbSe as an n-type dopant to form stable solid solutions with high power factor and high figure of merit. They find that the Ga and Sb atoms co-occupied the Pb sites, causing local structural distortion.

It is essential to improve our understanding of the features that influence aggressiveness and invasion in high grade gliomas (HGG). Here, the authors characterize dynamic anatomical structures in HGG called oncostreams, which are associated with tumor growth and are regulated by COL1A1.

According to a neutron-scattering study of the structural and magnetic properties of the pnictide CeFeAsO_1−xF_x, the phase diagram of this material shows considerable similarities with the high-T_c cuprate superconductors. These results are an important addition to the effort to find out where superconductivity in these iron–arsenic alloys arises.

MultiSTAAR provides a general and flexible statistical framework for functionally informed multi-trait rare variant analysis of biobank-scale sequencing studies by jointly analyzing multiple traits and incorporating annotation information.

Investigating the inner structure of baryons is important to further our understanding of the strong interaction. Here, the BESIII Collaboration extracts the absolute value of the ratio of the electric to magnetic form factors and its relative phase for e + e − → J/ψ → ΛΣ decays, enhancing the signal thanks to the vacuum polarisation effect at the J/ψ peak.

The Einstein Probe has discovered a fast X-ray transient, EP240414a, associated with a broad-lined type Ic supernova. Its unusually soft spectrum and weak jet add to the diversity of stellar deaths and suggest a previously unknown Wolf–Rayet star explosion mechanism.

This multiomic study, including single-nucleus DNA methylation and chromatin conformation matched with single-nuclei RNA sequencing, provides insights into the epigenomic landscape of human subcutaneous adipose tissue.

Enhancing the superconducting temperature is often the main driver of synthetic studies of novel superconducting materials. Now, an approach yielding an air-stable iron selenide system that superconducts up to 40 K is reported.

Soil-transmitted helminths (STHs) are major pathogens. Here the authors screen 480 structural families of natural products to find compounds that kill Caenorhabditis elegans specifically when they require rhodoquinone (RQ)-dependent metabolism: they identify several classes of compounds and show some compounds kill adult STHs.

In this Review Luo, Kharas and Jaffrey outline how N⁶-methyladenosine (m⁶A) RNA modification affects RNA stability, translation, splicing and immune responses to influence cancer biology. They discuss emerging evidence on how m⁶A may influence cancer metabolic reprogramming and outline the challenges and opportunities of targeting m⁶A writers, erasers and readers for cancer therapy.

The semileptonic decay channels of the Λc baryon can give important insights into weak interaction, but decay into a neutron, positron and electron neutrino has not been reported so far, due to difficulties in the final products’ identification. Here, the BESIII Collaboration reports its observation in e+e- collision data, exploiting machine-learning-based identification techniques.

Recent evidence has questioned the dogma of strict maternal transmission of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in humans. Wei et al. saw no evidence of paternal transmission of mtDNA in 11,035 human trios, and show that nuclear-mitochondrial segments (NUMTs) can give the impression of paternal mtDNA transmission, but are actually inherited through the nuclear genome.

Castleman disease encompasses a group of disorders characterised by abnormal lymph node morphology. Here the authors use single cell and spatial transcriptomics to assess the stromal, immune and interaction architecture of different subtypes of Castleman disease, indicating potential ligand-receptor interactions between immune cells.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

Human WNT10A mutations are associated with dental defects and adult onset ectodermal dysplasia. Xuet al. show that WNT10A-activated ß-catenin plays dual roles in adult epithelial progenitor proliferation and differentiation by complexing with KLF4 in differentiating, but not proliferating, cells.

The sensitivity of mesothelioma to the treatment of immune checkpoint blockade remains elusive. Here this group reports a double blind, placebo-controlled, randomized phase III trial of PD1 inhibitor (Nivolumab) on 332 patients with relapsed mesothelioma, and to uncover determinants of efficacy.

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.

Here, the authors analyze the blood transcriptome of Kenyan children with severe malarial anemia and observe impaired immune responses and molecular activation of hypoxia and reactive oxygen species networks, providing insight into disease pathogenesis.

In topological insulators, studies have largely concentrated on the spin part of the wavefunction. But the spin–orbit coupling is strong, so the orbital components of the wavefunction need to be measured as well. Surprisingly, the orbital wavefunction turns out to be asymmetric about the Dirac point.

Levels of the transcription factor Myc are deregulated in a range of different cancers. Here the authors show that Myc induces rapid transcriptional responses in some mouse tissues (liver), but not others (heart), and that transcriptional and proliferative responses in cardiomyocytes depend on the positive transcription elongation factor (P-TEFb).

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.

Nuclear morphology plays a critical role in regulating gene expression and cell function. Here, Wang et al. report that topography-induced nuclear deformation enhances the secretome of hMSCs, promoting extracellular matrix (ECM) organization and facilitating bone regeneration through matricrine effects.

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

Analyses of 2,658 whole genomes across 38 types of cancer identify the contribution of non-coding point mutations and structural variants to driving cancer.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

While HER2-targeted therapies such as trastuzumab can be effective in patients with breast cancer, resistance often develops. Here, the authors demonstrate that the histone reader ZYMND8 promotes glycerophospholipid metabolic reprogramming via c-Myc and cPLA2α to increase secretion of IL-27, mediating resistance to HER2-targeted antibodies in preclinical models of breast cancer.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

The characterization of 4,645 whole-genome and 19,184 exome sequences, covering most types of cancer, identifies 81 single-base substitution, doublet-base substitution and small-insertion-and-deletion mutational signatures, providing a systematic overview of the mutational processes that contribute to cancer development.