Search

Agricultural machinery and supporting sectors such as energy, food processing, transportation and storage are quantified, demonstrating a sixfold increase in related health risks over the past 37 years in China, with disproportionately higher impacts on low-income populations.

A Dirac quantum spin liquid phase is predicted to have a continuum of fractionalized spinon excitations with a Dirac cone dispersion. A spin continuum consistent with this picture has now been observed in neutron scattering measurements.

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

Multi-template PCR enables parallel DNA amplification but suffers from sequence-specific biases. Here, the authors develop a 1D-CNN model predicting amplification efficiency directly from the DNA sequence and discover adapter-mediated self-priming as a key cause of uneven amplification during PCR.

Polygenic risk scores can help identify individuals at higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Here, the authors characterise a multi-ancestry score across nearly 900,000 people, showing that its predictive value depends on demographic and clinical context and extends to related traits and complications.

The bacterial genotoxin colibactin induces DNA interstrand cross-links which pose a barrier to DNA replication. Here, the authors use Xenopus egg extracts to show that the Fanconi anemia pathway is responsible for repairing these cross-links.

Crystal growth is visualized inside non-transparent liquid metals, while preserving their original state, using X-ray micro-computed tomography to reveal how liquid metal solvent composition and cooling conditions influence crystal formation.

Phylogenomic analysis of 7,923 angiosperm species using a standardized set of 353 nuclear genes produced an angiosperm tree of life dated with 200 fossil calibrations, providing key insights into evolutionary relationships and diversification.

Previous ophthalmic foundation models have struggled to generalize effectively to diverse and rare fundus diseases, restricting their clinical applicability. Here, the authors introduce a vision-language foundation model that demonstrates superior performance in diagnosing both common and rare fundus conditions.

Magnetic field has been observed to promote oxygen evolution at some circumstance, however the reason for the enhancement remains unclear. Here, the authors show that enhancement is due to the disappearance of magnetic domain walls.

Ferroelectric organic materials can be used for tunnel barriers in memory devices as a cheaper and eco-friendly replacement of their inorganic counterparts. Here, Tian et al. use poly(vinylidene fluoride) with 1–2 layer thickness to achieve giant tunnel electroresistance of 1,000% at room temperature.

Multinational enterprises exacerbated China’s regional carbon inequality over 1997–2012 but alleviated it by 2017, demonstrating potential to mitigate both emission volume and inequality via knowledge spillovers.

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

The authors observe a reduction in thermal conductivity when transitioning from single to multi-cation oxides, exploring the role of local bonding distortions in phonon scattering and thermal transport.

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.

X-ray free electron lasers are increasingly available for use in macromolecular structure determination. Here, the authors describe the successful use of selenium single-wavelength anomalous diffraction data to calculate experimentally derived phases.

Assessing the coupling between a plasmonic nanocavity and a single quantum emitter is challenging due to the lack of spatial control at the atomic scale. Here Zhanget al. achieve control with sub-nanometre precision and demonstrate the Fano resonance and Lamb shift at the single-molecule level.

Silicon dioxide is one of the most abundant natural compounds and its various crystalline phases are widely studied. Here, using synchrotron X-ray diffraction and theoretical modelling, the authors discover a polymorphic phase transition involving previously unknown triclinic phases of silicon dioxide.

Magic state distillation is achieved with logical qubits on a neutral-atom quantum computer using a dynamically reconfigurable architecture for parallel quantum operations.

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.

Seafood methylmercury contamination is a global food safety issue. A model is developed to explore the impact of China’s municipal wastewater policies on seafood safety and reductions in methylmercury exposure.

There is ongoing research into new electrocatalysts for hydrogen production from water splitting. Here, the authors report the electrocatalytic performance of nickel/nickel oxide heterostructures on carbon nanotubes, and are able to assemble a water electrolyzer operated by a single-cell 1.5 V battery.

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.

Many perennial plants reproduce in irregular pulses, known as masting, triggered by weather cues. This global study finds temperature is the key driver, with climate change expected to cause divergent reproductive impacts in tropical versus temperate regions.

By introducing chiroptical spectroscopy with attosecond pulses, attosecond coherent control over photoelectron circular dichroism is demonstrated and measurements of chiral asymmetries in the forward–backward and angle-resolved photoionization delays of chiral molecules are reported.

The energy alignment at organic-metal interface has a strong influence on the performance of organic-based electronic devices. Lin et al.show this alignment can be tuned by varying the thickness of a uniform metallic thin film, which is confined between organic active layers and the substrate.

This study addresses variations in suicide rates across the United States and the impact of three county-level clusters of social determinants of health characteristics. The authors used unsupervised machine learning to analyze data from 2009 to 2019, revealing that remote areas, characterized by rurality and older populations, had the highest suicide rates, highlighting the need for addressing disparities with targeted interventions.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

Satellite observations of formaldehyde and nitrogen dioxide, key species contributing to ozone formation, reveal that rising temperatures and emissions are driving increased ozone levels globally in urban and remote environments

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.

Global consumption drives freshwater overuse at production sites along supply chains, of which 24% is outsourced via trade. Agricultural demand is a key driver, while manufacturing exports exacerbate water stress in emerging economies.

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.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

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.

Supershear rupture speed occurred at the devastating 2018 magnitude 7.5 Palu earthquake, Indonesia, according to back-projection of teleseismic data.

An analysis of 2,954 genomes from 38 cancer subtypes identified 19,166 retrotransposition events in 35% of samples. Aberrant LINE-1 retrotranspositions can lead to the deletion of tumor-suppressor genes as well as the amplification of oncogenes.

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.

In this study the authors consider the structural variants (SVs) present within cancer cases of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. They report hundreds of genes, including known cancer-associated genes for which the nearby presence of a SV breakpoint is associated with altered expression.

Inbreeding depression has been observed in many different species, but in humans a systematic analysis has been difficult so far. Here, analysing more than 1.3 million individuals, the authors show that a genomic inbreeding coefficient (FROH) is associated with disadvantageous outcomes in 32 out of 100 traits tested.

As presented at the 2025 World Conference on Lung Cancer, in a multiarm phase 2 trial, perioperative immunotherapy was safe and feasible in patients with resectable diffuse pleural mesothelioma, with exploratory data suggesting that ctDNA kinetics could be informative of tumor regression and post-treatment survival.

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.