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Theoretical analysis reveals that spasers do not differ fundamentally from conventional semiconductor lasers; differences are mainly technical and result from loss in the metal. Spasers are shown to have significantly inferior threshold currents and linewidths to those of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, but their speed can be slightly greater.

Most atom-based quantum networks emit photons at non-telecom wavelengths, requiring lossy conversion for long-distance links. A scalable approach for generating direct entanglement between atoms and telecom-band photons has now been demonstrated.

Nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond have established themselves as excellent candidates for solid-state quantum memories due to their optical addressability and long coherence times. Here, the authors report on a diamond-nanocavity system with improved spin-photon interface performances.

An optically addressable fluorescent-protein spin qubit is realized using enhanced yellow fluorescent protein; the qubit can be coherently controlled at liquid-nitrogen temperatures and the spin detected at room temperature in cells.

Laser excitation of the ²²⁹Th isomer, potentially relevant for nuclear clocks, is reported in thorium fluoride thin films, which are less radioactive and amenable to integration compared with existing thorium-doped crystals.

The transport properties of chromate ions in nuclear waste are influenced by complex interactions with the surrounding matrix. Here, the authors show that ⁵³Cr nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) can be applied to quantify chromate ions in multicomponent electrolytes replicating nuclear waste conditions, using relaxation-based methods and direct pulsed field gradient stimulated echo (PFGSTE) ⁵³Cr NMR to study the ion transport properties in alkaline solution.

Carbon nanotube-based single photon emitters allow for room-temperature operation, but suffer from vanishing indistinguishability due to strong dephasing. Following a theoretical proposal, the authors tackle the problem experimentally by using a cavity to enhance the photon coherence time and the emission spectral density in the regime of incoherent good cavity-coupling.

NMR shows that ATP- and ADP-actin differ globally, including ground and excited state structures and dynamic architecture. Analyses of an actin mutant suggest the high-energy conformer of ATP-actin may be on the pathway to filament nucleation.

Quantum computers based on superconducting transmon qubits are limited by single qubit lifetimes and coherence times, which are orders of magnitude shorter than limits imposed by bulk material properties. Here, the authors fabricate two-dimensional transmon qubits with both lifetimes and coherence times longer than 0.3 milliseconds by replacing niobium with tantalum in the device.

Schizophrenia is a complex disorder with high heritability but poorly understood genetics. Here Olde Loohuis et al.compare schizophrenia patients to unaffected individuals and identify an increased individual burden of rare deleterious mutations in patients.

Combining radiocarbon dating with ethnohistory, the authors describe the timing and tempo of the spread of peaches in eastern North America after the fruit’s introduction. They show that peaches were cultivated and managed by Indigenous communities independently of influence from Spanish colonizers.

Metal losses affect the performance of every plasmonic or metamaterial structure; dealing with them will determine the degree to which these structures will find practical applications.

The discrete quantum nature of plasmons may be exploited to make efficient single-photon sources. Despite the losses associated with metallic resonators, advantages over dielectric counterparts exist when it comes to producing efficient quantum emitters.

Pamela Sklar and colleagues report a genome-wide association study of bipolar disorder and identify variants in the genes encoding ankyrin-3 and the alpha-1C subunit of the L-type voltage-gated calcium channel as increasing risk.

A vacuum ultraviolet frequency comb is used to directly excite the narrow ²²⁹Th nuclear clock transition in a solid-state CaF₂ host material, marking the start of nuclear-based solid-state optical clocks.

Dominic Kwiatkowski and colleagues report a large multicenter genome-wide association study of Plasmodium falciparum resistance to artemisinin. They identify markers of a genetic background on which kelch13 mutations conferring artemisinin resistance are likely to emerge.

Dipole-dipole interactions give rise to a number of physical phenomena, but they are typically limited to the Coulombic near-field. Here authors demonstrate the existence of a class of real- and virtual-photon interactions which have a singularity in media with hyperbolic dispersion.

In some HIV-1-infected individuals, viraemia remains undetectable after antiretroviral treatment, but which of these patients will experience viral rebound is difficult to predict. Here the authors show that T cell exhaustion markers before treatment are predictive of shorter time to viral rebound.

Single-cell transcriptomics roadmap of human dermal fibroblasts reprogrammed to primed and naive pluripotency reveals a route for the direct reprogramming of somatic cells into induced trophoblast stem cells.

Dominic Kwiatkowski and colleagues report analysis of genetic variation in 826 Plasmodium falciparum samples collected from 10 locations in West Africa and southeast Asia. They characterize the population structure of this parasite in Cambodia and find evidence for multiple distinct subpopulations showing high levels of genetic differentiation and artemisinin resistance.

Efficiency of Raman measurements is increased by nearly four orders of magnitude with the help of sub-wavelength plasmonic gap waveguides.

This study uses gene expression predictors for the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other brain regions to perform a transcriptomic imputation analysis of schizophrenia, identifying 413 genic associations across 13 brain regions and 36 significantly enriched pathways.

A genome-wide association study including over 76,000 individuals with schizophrenia and over 243,000 control individuals identifies common variant associations at 287 genomic loci, and further fine-mapping analyses highlight the importance of genes involved in synaptic processes.

A teleported controlled-NOT gate is realized experimentally between two logical qubits implemented as superconducting cavity quantum memories, thus demonstrating an important tool for universal computation in a quantum modular architecture.

A thorough study comparing the performance of more than a hundred photonic and plasmonic lasers concludes that the latter are advantageous when their cavity volumes are close to the diffraction limit.

Stratified medicine promises to tailor treatment for individual patients, however it remains a major challenge to leverage genetic risk data to aid patient stratification. Here the authors introduce an approach to stratify individuals based on the aggregated impact of their genetic risk factor profiles on tissue-specific gene expression levels, and highlight its ability to identify biologically meaningful and clinically actionable patient subgroups, supporting the notion of different patient ‘biotypes’ characterized by partially distinct disease mechanisms.

EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer is routinely treated with EGFR inhibitors, although resistance inevitably develops. Here, the authors sequence circulating tumour DNA and show that resistance to the third-generation inhibitor rociletinib is heterogeneous and recurrently involves somatic alterations of MET, EGFR, PIK3CA, ERRB2, and KRAS.

Upconversion of light from its fundamental wavelength (FW) to its second harmonic (SH) is enhanced 32× in micron-scale lithium niobate (LiNbO₃) spheres through near-field interactions with gold (Au) nanoparticles.

Genome-wide analysis identifies 30 loci associated with bipolar disorder, allowing for comparisons of shared genes and pathways with other psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and depression.

The CNV analysis group of the Psychiatric Genomic Consortium analyzes a large schizophrenia cohort to examine genomic copy number variants (CNVs) and disease risk. They find an enrichment of CNV burden in cases versus controls and identify 8 genome-wide significant loci as well as novel suggestive loci conferring either risk or protection to schizophrenia.

In the second of three papers on the genetics of schizophrenia, a large genome-wide association study looking at common genetic variants underlying the risk of schizophrenia implicates the major histocompatibility complex — and thus, immunity — and provides molecular genetic evidence for a substantial polygenic component to the risk of schizophrenia. The latter involves thousands of common alleles of very small effect that also contribute to the risk of bipolar disorder.

The genetics of schizophrenia and other mental disorders are complex and poorly understood, and made even harder to study due to reduced reproduction resulting in negative selection pressure on risk alleles. Two independent large-scale genome wide studies of thousands of patients and controls by two international consortia confirm a previously identified locus, but also reveal novel associations. In this study, deletions were reported on chromosomes 1 and 15, as well as a greater overall frequency of copy number variation in the genome.

Rotary molecular machines, activated by ultraviolet light, are able to perturb and drill into cell membranes in a controllable manner, and more efficiently than those exhibiting flip-flopping or random motion.

Sexual dimorphism in genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia, systemic lupus erythematosus and Sjögren’s syndrome is linked to differential protein abundance from alleles of complement component 4.

CD1 molecules present diverse lipid ligands to TCRs expressed by NKT cells. Rossjohn, Moody and colleagues show a unique form of autoreactivity with human CD1c molecules, whereby TCRs recognize a closed conformation of CD1c molecules, which are loaded with a diverse array of ‘headless’ glycolipids.

Liu, Neve et al. use large-scale loss-of-function RNA-interference screens to identify circular RNAs that are direct regulators of important signalling pathways and also common essential and tissue-specific circRNAs.

The Schizophrenia Psychiatric Genome-Wide Association Study Consortium reports five genetic loci newly associated with risk of schizophrenia, involving 17,836 cases of schizophrenia and 33,859 healthy controls. The new locus with the strongest support of association was located within an intron for microRNA 137, a known regulator of neuronal development. Four other genome-wide significant loci for schizophrenia contain predicted targets of MIR137, suggesting that disruption to pathways involving MIR137 may be an etiologic mechanism in schizophrenia.

Relatives of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis have an unexpectedly high incidence of schizophrenia. Here, the authors show a genetic link between the two conditions, suggesting shared neurobiological mechanisms.

The authors defined a roadmap for investigating the genetic covariance between structural or functional brain phenotypes and risk for psychiatric disorders. Their proof-of-concept study using the largest available common variant data sets for schizophrenia and volumes of several (mainly subcortical) brain structures did not find evidence of genetic overlap.

Schizophrenia is a highly heritable genetic disorder, however, identification of specific genetic risk variants has proven difficult because of its complex polygenic nature—a large multi-stage genome-wide association study identifies 128 independent associations in over 100 loci (83 of which are new); key findings include identification of genes involved in glutamergic neurotransmission and support for a link between the immune system and schizophrenia.