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2023 CX1 is the only L-chondrite-like asteroid analysed from space to ground. It catastrophically fragmented in the atmosphere, depositing 98% of its energy in one burst—an unusual, high-risk fragmentation mode with implications for planetary defence.

The trRosetta neural network was used to iteratively optimise model proteins from random 100-amino-acid sequences, resulting in ‘hallucinated’ proteins, which when expressed in bacteria closely resembled the model structures.

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.

Measurement-free quantum error correction allows to avoid costly mid-circuit measurements and feed-forward controls. Here, the authors present a toolbox of logical operations needed for measurement-free fault-tolerant universal quantum computing and demonstrate a measurement-free logical fault-tolerant logical algorithm using an error-detecting code on an ion-trap quantum processor.

Engineering of semiconductor nanocrystals requires a detailed understanding of their formation. Here, the authors use signal-enhanced NMR and theoretical calculations to decode the structural transition from metastable CdSe clusters to mature quantum dots.

In this work, an exotic nuclear decay in one dimension is simulated using IonQ trapped-ion quantum computers. The coherent evolution of many decay channels is classically hard and quantum simulation of these processes may impact future searches for new physics.

Ribas and colleagues report the results of a phase 2 clinical trial of neoadjuvant PD-1 blockade in patients with surgically resectable desmoplastic melanoma.

Mapping of the neutrophil compartment using single-cell transcriptional data from multiple physiological and patological states reveals its organizational architecture and how cell state dynamics and trajectories vary during health, inflammation and cancer.

Watt, Dauber, Szkop and colleagues find that H3K4me3 remodels 5′UTR selection in hypoxia and that this process is independent of HIF-1 transcriptional mechanisms.

Modulation of random heteropolymers results in globular polymer clusters with catalytic activity mimicking proteins.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

A group of extremely energetic electrons peaking at a few million electron volts is revealed in a large solar flare observed in microwaves. This megaelectronvolt-peaked population appears to originate near a coronal source where bulk electron acceleration occurs.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

A deep-learning-based strategy is used to design artificial luciferases that catalyse the oxidative chemiluminescence of diphenylterazine with high substrate specificity and catalytic efficiency.

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.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

The bacterium Helicobacter pylori, often found in the human stomach, can be classified into distinct subpopulations associated with the geographic origin of the host. Here, the authors provide insights into H. pylori population structure by collecting over 1,000 clinical strains from 50 countries and generating and analyzing high-quality bacterial genome sequences.

Peptide design remains a challenge owing to the large library of amino acids. Rational design approaches, although successful, result in a peptide design bias. Now it has been shown that AI techniques can be used to overcome such bias and discover unusual peptides as efficiently as humans.

Geospatial estimates of the prevalence of anemia in women of reproductive age across 82 low-income and middle-income countries reveals considerable heterogeneity and inequality at national and subnational levels, with few countries on track to meet the WHO Global Nutrition Targets by 2030.

E. coli sequence type 131 is a significant cause of community-onset infection. Here, the authors perform a prospective household-based cohort study in Singapore including samples from humans, companion animals, the environment, and food, to characterise transmission and carriage dynamics.

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

In this study, advanced passive seismic tomography generates a high-resolution 3D image of a volcano in unrest, providing a potential for quasi-real time imaging for evacuation planning.

UNAGI deciphers cellular dynamics from human disease time-series single-cell data and facilitates in silico drug perturbations to discover drugs potentially active against complex human diseases.

The presence of correlations can strongly affect the evolution of a quantum system. Here, the authors directly observe differences in the dynamics of two spins-1/2 systems in an NMR setup depending on the correlations of the initial state, including differences in energy flow and mutual information.

Mobile impurities can be useful probes of quantum states. Here, the authors theoretically identify polarons formed on the edge of topological insulating states, termed chiral polarons, that can be used to probe topological matter.

Simulations of historical and future periods of climate change showed that delayed mitigation to limit global warming might reduce the capacity of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage and threaten climate stability and food security.

The accretion geometry of X-ray binary Cygnus X-3 is determined here from IXPE observations. X-ray polarization reveals a narrow funnel with reflecting walls, which focuses emission, making Cyg X-3 appear as an ultraluminous X-ray source.

Short laser pulses of femtosecond time scales are in high demand in order to explore the fast electron dynamics in light-matter interactions. Here, the authors demonstrated the compression of free electron laser pulses in the extreme ultraviolet range by using a chirped pulse amplification technique.

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.

X-ray polarimetry observations with the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer constrain the accretion geometry in an X-ray pulsar and provide evidence for a misalignment of the spin, magnetic and orbital axes in Her X-1.

Emergence of Nagaoka polarons and kinetic magnetism is observed in a Hubbard system realized with strongly interacting fermions trapped in a triangular optical lattice.

In global drylands, soils tend to be more fertile beneath tree, shrub and grass islands. Soil fertility was greater beneath taller and wider plants but was unaffected by either grazing pressure or the type of herbivore.

LigandMPNN is a deep-learning-based protein sequence design method that can explicitly model all nonprotein components of biomolecular systems.

China has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality in 2060. Here the authors find a promising option to abate 1.0 Gt CO₂-eq yr⁻¹ of carbon emissions at a marginal cost of $69 (t CO₂-eq)⁻¹ by retrofitting 222 GW of coal power plants to co-fire with biomass and upgrading to CCS operation across 2836 counties in China.

Cancers in different populations have been shown to be genetically distinct. Here, the authors sequence breast cancers from Mexican-Hispanic patients and find that these patients have a higher percentage of Akt1 mutations compared to Caucasian and Asian populations, suggesting these are clinically actionable.

The effect of strong interactions on the physics hosted by flat bands remains largely unexplored in atomic systems. An experiment in a synthetic flat-band lattice now demonstrates an interaction-driven transition from localization to delocalization.

An investigation using various methods reports an association between adeno-associated virus 2 and paediatric hepatitis of unknown aetiology.

A photonic–plasmonic device — which can be used as a tip for an atomic force microscope and also as a nanoscale light source for near-field Raman excitation — allows topographic, chemical and structural information to be obtained with a spatial resolution of 7 nm.

An extreme Einstein ring ~10,000 times as bright as the Milky Way in the infrared is studied with VLT/ERIS and ALMA, and the authors find that the lensed galaxy is a starburst with a fast-rotating disk, rather than being driven by a major merger.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis study of blood lipid levels in roughly 1.6 million individuals demonstrates the gain of power attained when diverse ancestries are included to improve fine-mapping and polygenic score generation, with gains in locus discovery related to sample size.

Self-supervised learning (SSL) is increasingly used to train pathology foundation models. Here, the authors introduce a pathology benchmark set generated during standard clinical workflows that includes multiple cancer and disease types; then leverage it to assess the performance of multiple public SSL pathology foundation models and to provide best practices for model training and selection.

The relationship between cellular histogenesis and molecular phenotypes for the EWSR1- ATF1 fusion in clear cell sarcoma (CCS) requires further characterization. Here, the authors investigate the EWSR1-ATF1 gene regulation networks in CCS cell lines, primary tumors, and mesenchymal stem cells.

Group B streptococci (GBS) started causing serious infections in newborn babies in the 1960s. Here, the authors show that the emergence of GBS diseases was associated with worldwide dissemination of a few clones that were resistant to tetracycline, an antibiotic that became widely used in the 1950s.

Analysis of 2,170 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in Spain provides insights into transmission patterns and the effects of lockdown on the emergence of new variants.

This work explores infrared thermochromic antennas made of vanadium dioxide for self-adaptive thermal radiators, demonstrating a scalable, cost-effective, and versatile technique for large emissivity contrast composites that can find applications in energy-efficient cooling and heating.

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.