Search

Karapetyan et al. report how multiscale electron ptychography, a computational electron microscopy technique with sub-Ångström lateral and nanometer-scale depth resolution, enables 3D imaging of buried features (distortions, defects, and roughness) in gate-all-around transistors, guiding the semiconductor fabrication.

Despite its importance in medicinal chemistry, the sulfonamide functional group is rare in natural products and its biosynthesis is poorly understood. This study reveals the structure and mechanism of SbzM, a sulfonamide synthase essential for altemicidin biosynthesis.

A high-temperature immiscible blend of two dipolar polymers that self-assemble into three-dimensional all-polymer nanocomposites allows markedly enhanced dielectric and energy storage performances over a broad temperature range.

A study examines the effects of mutations that occur naturally in T cell cancers, reporting that such mutations can potentially be exploited to increase the potency of T cell therapies.

Floquet engineering is often limited by weak light–matter coupling and heating. Now it is shown that exciton-driven fields in monolayer semiconductors produce stronger, longer-lived Floquet effects and reveal hybridization linked to excitonic phases.

Quantum low-density parity-check error correction codes are anticipated to deliver high performance, but require long-range qubit–qubit interactions. Two of these error correction codes have now been successfully implemented on a superconducting device.

The Margin Unit of Jezero crater contains olivine with a forsterite content similar to the olivine cumulates in the crater floor, according to an approach which uses X-ray data from the Perseverance rover to analyse monocrystalline olivine composition

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

Electrochemical CO reduction to multi-carbon products offers a carbon-negative approach to produce chemicals, but the intricate reaction pathways lead to a broad spectrum of products. Now it has been shown that alkali cations alter the mechanistic pathways that govern the reaction selectivity involved in the formation of hydrocarbons versus oxygenates.

Polymer thin films that emit and absorb circularly polarised light are promising in achieving important technological advances, but the origin of the large chiroptical effects in such films has remained elusive. Here the authors demonstrate that in non-aligned polymer thin films, large chiroptical effects are caused by magneto-electric coupling, not structural chirality as previously assumed.

KRAS mutations are keenly associated with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and represent a potential therapeutic target. Here the authors present the findings from a phase I clinical trial testing pooled KRAS mutant peptides in combination with immune checkpoint blockade in patients with resected pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Bacterial flagellar motors switch rotation direction with high sensitivity to environmental inputs. A theoretical model explains how torque-dependent non-equilibrium switching contributes to ultrasensitivity.

Yashinskie, Zhu and colleagues show that p53 activation triggers increased synthesis and accumulation of phospholipids, with enhanced activation of autophagy and lysosomal catabolism programmes and increased reliance on lipid headgroup recycling.

Here the authors report that native amines react with α-halo acylsilanes to afford amides selectively with rapid kinetics. Enabled by a tandem silyl-migration/desilylation process, this amide ligation tolerates a wide range of unprotected polar functional groups and proceeds at diluted concentrations.

cellSTAAR advances noncoding rare variant association analysis by integrating single-cell genomics data.

Ionic liquid additives increase the power conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cells, but their effect on perovskite crystallization remains unclear. Xu et al. provide mechanistic insights and demonstrate improved operational stability under continous illumination and 90 °C thermal stress.

Liu et al. report Chinese normative lifespan brain charts showing later neurodevelopmental milestones than those detected in Western cohorts. Individual deviations from these norms are valuable in assessing clinical risk and outcomes.

Extrachromosomal circular DNAs (ecDNAs) are prevalent in human cancers and are thought to drive tumor evolution and drug resistance by amplifying oncogenes. Here, authors develop ec3D to reconstruct three-dimensional ecDNA structures, revealing how their spatial organization rewires regulatory circuits.

Quantum error mitigation refers to techniques that reduce, rather than correct, errors in quantum computing. Here the authors demonstrate zero-noise extrapolation applied to quantum error correction circuits on superconducting processors, effectively reducing logical errors and advancing early fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Prostate cancer incidence and mortality rates vary across males from diverse populations. Here, the authors perform a proteome-wide association study across different populations and establish population-specific genetic prediction models.

The STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory demonstrates evidence of spin correlations in \(\Lambda \bar{\Lambda }\) hyperon pairs inherited from virtual spin-correlated strange quark–antiquark pairs during QCD confinement.

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study reveal declines in chronic respiratory disease mortality between 1990 and 2023—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the burdens on people affected remain substantial.

Global Burden of Disease estimates show that between 1990 and 2023, the prevalence and burden of drug use disorders, inclusive of amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine and opioid use, have been increasing in high-income countries, particularly in the USA.

Stable and robust topological edge modes are observed at finite temperatures in an array of 100 programmable superconducting qubits because of emergent symmetries present in the prethermal regime of this system.

Two-dimensional metal halide perovskites exhibit diverse structures, but tuning their intralayer structure is challenging. Now, ammonium-terminated bidentate linkers have been used to develop 2D perovskites. These materials exhibit superior thermal resistance and improved photovoltaic performance compared with their Ruddlesden–Popper and Dion–Jacobson counterparts.

Soil microbial populations bloom and then die-off in ecosystems with seasonal snowpack. This study showed that distinct taxa utilize different N sources for growth or energy during the microbial bloom and alter the fate of N after snowmelt.

Metastatic triple negative breast cancer (mTNBC) has limited treatments options. Here, this group presents a combination of low-dose cyclophosphamide, anti-CSF1R, and anti-PD-1 therapies to boost immune cell infiltration and reduce recurrence in aggressive TNBC models.

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.

Humanity’s Last Exam, a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, is designed to be an expert-level closed-ended academic benchmark with broad subject coverage.

The ALICE Collaboration provides details on the microscopic mechanism that ends up creating antideuteron in high-energy proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

Here, as part of the Sherlock-Lung study, the authors profile the microbiomes of 940 lung cancers in never smokers finding no significant associations with demographic and clinical features, suggesting lung bacteria are unlikely to have a sizable role in lung cancer.

MGAT1 is a glycosyltransferase critical for the synthesis and maturation of complex N-glycans. Here, the authors show that MGAT1 modulation of CD73 glycosylation and function regulates tumor immune response in triple-negative breast cancer.

The large-scale production of bilirubin has long been a challenge. Here, the authors engineered an in vitro enzymatic cascade through systems-level design, enabling gram-scale synthesis of bilirubin.

The authors uncover a direct, BAI1-dependent, role for C1q in the control of neural stem cell proliferation and quiescence via MDM2–p53 and p32, a complement cascade-independent mechanism of C1q action that has implications for central nervous system health and disease.

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.

This study reports that de novo germline missense variants in SF3B1, distinct from the somatic variants frequently observed in cancer, cause a neurodevelopmental disorder and disrupt global RNA splicing.

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is associated with epithelial metabolic derangements which exacerbate gut inflammation. Here the authors report that colonoids from children with ulcerative colitis exhibit hypermetabolism and cellular stress primarily driven by lipid dysregulation. Pharmacological inhibition of PPAR-a, a transcriptional regulator of lipid metabolism, alleviates epithelial stress and inflammation.

A new artificial intelligence model, DeepSeek-R1, is introduced, demonstrating that the reasoning abilities of large language models can be incentivized through pure reinforcement learning, removing the need for human-annotated demonstrations.

Cellular niches are highly heterogenous in triple negative breast cancer. Here, the authors utilise imaging mass cytometry and spatial transcriptomics to characterise the microenvironment in Black American and White American patients.

Bark decomposition could significantly affect global carbon and nutrient cycling. Here, the authors report the global trend of bark decomposition rates, identify the key drivers in different climate regions, and predict the response of bark decomposition to future climate change.

The death of massive stars has traditionally been discovered by explosive events in the gamma-ray band. Liu et al. show that the sensitive wide-field monitor on board Einstein Probe can reveal a weak soft-X-ray signal much earlier than gamma rays.

Alkaline-earth phenoxides show promise as optical cycling centres; however, their properties when connected to larger structures is unclear. Now it has been shown that their optical cycling remains efficient despite increasing molecular complexity, enabling the scaling of laser-coolable molecules toward larger structures and surface-bound quantum systems.

Nanocrystal assembly is key to creating complex architectures. Here, the authors show that tuning competitive ion adsorption alters anisotropic surface potentials and electrostatic torques, directing facet attachment to enable alternative mesoscale designs.

High-entropy nanocarbides (HENCs) containing 5–22 metal elements are synthesized through a nanoconfined impulse synthetic strategy enabled by Joule heating-induced in situ reactions in carbon nanotube films. These HENCs exhibit multi-element effects and enhanced electrocatalytic activities due to their nanoscale size and modified catalytic sites.

Beta-relaxation in glasses is commonly attributed to the confined motions of constituent atoms in nanosized domains, but there is no direct evidence so far. Here, Zhu et al. show the correlation between the evolution of spatial heterogeneity at nanoscale and beta-relaxation below glass transition point.

While the ligand coordination microenvironment surrounding catalytic centres influences reactivity, dynamic oxygen reconstruction during water oxidation electrocatalysis complicates structure-based mechanistic insights. Now the in situ formation of lattice O–O ligands has been shown to activate Fe centres in metal oxides and hydroxides, thereby enhancing their oxygen evolution reaction activity.

Zonal positioning in the liver determines whether the CTNNB1 oncogene can induce liver cancer.

Lung adenocarcinomas bearing the ID2 mutational signature display increased LINE-1 retrotransposon activity, which contributes to their fast evolutionary dynamics and aggressive phenotype.