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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.

The Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative recruited and genotyped more than half a million Taiwanese participants, almost all of Han Chinese ancestry, and performed comprehensive genomic analyses and developed polygenic risk score prediction models for numerous health conditions.

LARGE1 glycosyltransferase synthesizes matriglycan (xylose-glucuronate)_n on dystroglycan, and short matriglycan can cause neuromuscular disorders. Authors show that LARGE1 processively polymerizes matriglycan of defined length on prodystroglycan.

Li et al. show that a Lamassu defense system protects bacteria from phage infection by activating a lethal tetrameric DNA-cutting enzyme. In the absence of phages, a protein clamp holds the enzyme as an inactive monomer, preventing self-damage.

Above-bandgap femtosecond laser pulses generate a coherent phonon flatband in a GaAs/AlAs superlattice captured using ultrafast X-ray diffraction, providing a way to control atomic vibrations for future electronic and quantum technologies.

Single-cell transcriptomes from the fetal–maternal interface of six species of mammals reveal a conserved gene expression signature of invasive trophoblast, stepwise evolution of decidual stromal cell types and co-evolutionary patterns in cell–cell signalling.

High performance dielectric polymers are applicable to power conversion systems for renewable energy generation and electric vehicles. Here, the authors report the melt blending of multiple immiscible polymers to achieve high dielectric permittivity while retaining low dielectric loss tangent.

Changes in penguin populations on the Antarctic Peninsula in recent decades have been linked to environmental factors such as sea ice. Here, the authors show that penguin colony change on Ardley Island, NW Antarctic Peninsula during the last 8,500 years was primarily driven by volcanic activity.

Insights to elucidate the composition–behaviour relationship in organic photovoltaic materials are required. Here the phase behaviour of disordered polymer:small-molecule acceptor blends is studied and an extended model is invoked to understand the temperature–composition diagrams.

The quark structure of the f₀(980) hadron is still unknown after 50 years of its discovery. Here, the CMS Collaboration reports a measurement of the elliptic flow of the f₀(980) state in proton-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 8.16 TeV, providing strong evidence that the state is an ordinary meson.

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.

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.

Dextran sulfate sodium is a colitis inducer that stimulates a ROS–Src–IP6K2 signaling axis to generate 5-IP₇, which sterically inhibits PI(4,5)P₂ phosphatases to promote PI(4,5)P₂-mediated E-cadherin endocytosis and epithelial junction breakdown.

There is considerable interest in transitioning industrial thermocatalytic reactions to renewable-driven processes, but the electrification of such reactions has been challenging. Now, it has been shown that bridging non-aqueous chemistry with aqueous electrochemistry through aqueous–non-aqueous interfacial proton-coupled electron transfer can enable electricity-driven hydrogen peroxide production.

This study maps chromatin accessibility at single-cell resolution in rice and related grasses, revealing how regulatory DNA elements evolve across cell types and species and identifying potential silencers that control gene expression.

It has been proposed that phonons propagating through a material can be used for quantum computing, in a similar manner to photons. Now, several of the quantum gates and measurements needed for this approach have been demonstrated.

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.

In this Perspective, members of the Aging Biomarker Consortium outline the X-Age Project, an Aging Biomarker Consortium plan for building standardized aging clocks in China. The authors discuss the project roadmap and its aims of decoding aging heterogeneity, detecting accelerated aging early and evaluating geroprotective interventions.

An NNMT inhibitor reduces tumour burden and metastasis in multiple mouse cancer models and restores immune checkpoint blockade efficacy by decreasing cancer-associated-fibroblast-mediated recruitment of myeloid-derived suppressor cells and reinvigorating CD8⁺ T cell activation.

Here the authors reveal a study of 486,956 Han Chinese individuals showing that most people with genetic variants affecting drug response do not have the predicted adverse events, highlighting the challenges of implementing pharmacogenetics in clinical practice.

Al-Hilal, Chrysovergi et al. identify a role for durotaxis in lung fibrosis and metastatic pancreatic cancer, mediated by the FAK–paxillin mechanosensor complex, and demonstrate therapeutic targeting of this pathway using the small molecule JP-153.

Zhang et al. unveil that asymmetrically-dividing neural stem cells (NSCs) differentially propagate cell fate memory to future NSCs versus differentiating progenitors through a dual mitotic bookmarking and selective molecular competition mechanism.

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.

China’s rapid e-commerce growth has driven a 12-fold surge in express delivery, yet cross-regional emissions and health impacts remain poorly quantified. Road transport emitted 23.9-Mt CO₂-equivalent and caused approximately 5,100 premature deaths in 2021, revealing stark transit-region health inequities and guiding sustainable logistics pathways.

Parity-time symmetry breaking and related non-Hermitian phenomena, such as high-order exceptional points, have attracted significant interest across various experimental platforms. Here the authors demonstrate a third-order exceptional point induced by parity-time symmetry breaking in a dissipative trapped ion.

Hydropower is a clean energy source but dams trap river sediment, decreasing delivery downstream and to coastlines. In the Mekong River Basin, replacing some hydropower dams with solar, wind and energy storage facilities could maintain energy supply while reducing impact on sediment transport.

Integrated optical frequency combs are powerful tools for optical spectroscopy. Here, authors demonstrate low-power, detectable-rate soliton microcombs from telecom to visible bands, including wavelength-multiplexed operation, using ultra-low-loss silicon nitride waveguides.

Federated learning (FL) algorithms have emerged as a promising solution to train models for healthcare imaging across institutions while preserving privacy. Here, the authors describe the Federated Tumor Segmentation (FeTS) challenge for the decentralised benchmarking of FL algorithms and evaluation of Healthcare AI algorithm generalizability in real-world cancer imaging datasets.

How tree diversity effects on ecosystem functioning vary along climatic gradients is unclear. Here, analysing data from 15 experimental forest sites, the authors show that tree growth responses to neighbourhood species diversity are stronger in wetter climates but are unaffected by interannual climatic variation within sites.

The Patagonian ice sheet not only responded to climate change but also actively influenced it regionally, highlighting the role of topographic forcing in shaping atmospheric circulation during glacial-interglacial cycles, according to a modeling study.

Cas9 in type II-C CRISPR–Cas systems functions independently of its RNA partners to regulate spacer acquisition, dynamically adjusting the process on the basis of crRNA abundance to maintain a sufficient CRISPR array size and immune memory.

APC/C activity is transiently inhibited to generate a pulse of glycolysis that is required for mammalian cell cycle entry.

Using experimental and atomistic simulations, the authors show that optical excitation lowers the energy barrier for domain wall motion. Combined with the imprint field, this effect enables subsecond optical control of domain switching in ferroelectric membranes.

Quark–antiquark annihilation measurements provide a precise determination of the ratio of down and up antiquarks within protons as a function of momentum, which confirms the asymmetry between the abundance of down and up antiquarks.

Silane, which is a precursor to the sandy surfaces of rocky planets and dusty clouds on gas giants, is seen directly in another world—a low-metallicity brown dwarf in which oxidation is slow and gas mixing is fast.

Theory predicts that phonons—quanta of lattice vibrations—can carry finite angular momentum and thus influence physical properties of materials. Now phonons with angular momentum have been seen in tellurium with a chiral crystal structure.

This paper explores how voltage-gated potassium channels can plug the pore to prevent the conductance of ions during inactivation.

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.

A transient in vivo prime editing strategy is developed for the liver by delivering the prime editor as mRNA encapsulated in LNP.

Together with an accompanying paper presenting a transcriptomic atlas of the mouse lemur, interrogation of the atlas provides a rich body of data to support the use of the organism as a model for primate biology and health.

Glia–neuron interactions are highly complex. Glial cells can sense and modulate different aspects of neuronal activity. Here in Caenorhabditis elegans, the authors show that early aged sensory neurons can transfer proteins via extracellular vesicles to AMsh glia, inducing neuroprotection during aging.

Lewis acid additive semicarbazide hydrochloride improves the formation of α-phase FAPbI₃-based films and promotes a homogeneous vertical distribution of A-site cations through a deprotonation–reprotonation process. The upgraded device performance reaches up to 26.12% with high stability, and mini-module perovskite solar cells achieving 21.47% (area, 11.52 cm²) demonstrate great scalability.

The CMS Collaboration reports the study of three simultaneous hard interactions between quarks and gluons in proton–proton collisions. This manifests through the concurrent production of three J/ψ mesons, which consist of a charm-quark–antiquark pair.