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Proxy records from Lake Baikal show that rapid cooling coincided with Northern Hemisphere ice sheet expansion 2.7 million years ago, a change accompanied by a transition to open steppe ecosystems.

The Rustenburg Layered Suite of the Bushveld Complex, South Africa, has long been regarded as a textbook result of fractional crystallization from a melt-dominated magma chamber. Here, the authors find that the Rustenburg Layered Suite can be derived from crustal assimilation by komatiitic magma to form magmatic mushes without requiring the existence of a magma chamber by using thermodynamic models.

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.

High-order modes of hyperbolic polaritons – hybrid light-matter interactions – in anisotropic van der Waals materials hold potential for nanophotonics applications. Here, the authors report the observation of polariton mode conversion in step-shaped terraces of hexagonal boron nitride and α-MoO3.

Analysis of dendrite initiation, owing to filling of pores with lithium by means of microcracks, and propagation, caused by wedge opening, shows that there are two separate processes during dendrite failure of lithium metal solid-state batteries.

Human impacts on marine ecosystems are increasing the likelihood of pathogenic outbreaks, harmful algal blooms and coral stress. Here the authors develop a CRISPR biomonitoring tool that can help detect key marine species that are important to public health, the aquaculture sector and marine ecosystems.

The granulin/epithelin protein motif has an unusual structure consisting of a parallel stack of β-hairpins stapled together by six disulphide bonds. The new structure also contains a folding subdomain shared by small toxins, protease inhibitors as well as the EGF-like protein modules.

Mechanisms ensuring the maintenance of the nuclear envelope -- a structure with roles in mechanical integrity, chromatin organization, and nucleocytoplasmic transport -- are not fully understood. Here, the authors show that dynamins preserve nuclear envelope homeostasis via their GTPase activity and microtubule interactions.

Mechanisms for generating spin-polarized currents may be helpful for applications. Now one such mechanism that uses the unusual Landau-level spectrum of WSe₂ under a strong magnetic field is demonstrated.

An optical archival storage technology based on femtosecond laser direct writing in glass addresses the practical demands of archival storage.

Muscularis macrophages, housekeepers of enteric nervous system integrity and intestinal homeostasis, modulate α-synuclein pathology and neurodegeneration in models of Parkinson’s disease, and understanding the accompanying mechanisms could pave the way for early-stage biomarkers.

Mid-infrared 2 μm InAs/InP quantum-dot lasers is first demonstrated, with a low threshold current density of 118 A cm⁻² per layer and a maximum operating temperature of 50 °C.

Neville, Ferguson et al. show that non-canonical Polycomb repressive complex 1.1-mediated gene silencing is antagonized by DOT1L and is required for the therapeutic efficacy of Menin and DOT1L inhibitors in mixed-lineage leukaemia.

Wafer-scale realization of a nanoscale magnetic tunnel junction hosting a single, ambient skyrmion enables its large readout, efficient switching, and compatibility with lateral manipulation, and thereby provides the backbone for all-electrical skyrmionic device architectures.

Dense calcium imaging combined with co-registered high-resolution electron microscopy reconstruction of the brain of the same mouse provide a functional connectomics map of tens of thousands of neurons of a region of the primary cortex and higher visual areas.

Researchers created a periodically poled van der Waals semiconductor (3R-MoS₂) and achieved a macroscopic frequency conversion efficiency of 0.03% over a thickness of 3.4 μm. The quasi-phase-matched second harmonic signal surpasses the usual quadratic enhancement by 50% and broadband generation of photon pairs at telecom wavelength is demonstrated with a coincidence-to-accidental ratio of 638 ± 75.

Ferroelectric ordering of moiré excitons and collective photon emission emerge in WSe₂/WS₂ heterobilayers near the Mott state driven by strong dipolar interactions and a transition to symmetry-broken ferroelectric phases.

RNAi therapy has huge potential but effective delivery to target location is a major issue. Here, the authors report on the delivery of RNAi to tumors using self-agglomerating nanohydrogels that can overcome the different delivery barriers and supply multiple RNAi payloads.

In this work, authors show how the enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) protease EatA cleaves the human mucus protein MUC2 at a C-terminal site, allowing bacteria to cross the intestinal mucus, reach epithelial cells, and promote infection, as demonstrated using a human MUC2 transgenic mouse model.

Using a cryogenic 300-mm wafer prober, a new approach for the testing of hundreds of industry-manufactured spin qubit devices at 1.6 K provides high-volume data on performance, allowing optimization of the complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible fabrication process.

Plant traits drive ecosystem dynamics yet are challenging to map globally due to sparse measurements. Here, the authors combine crowdsourced biodiversity observations with Earth observation data to accurately map 31 plant traits at 1 km² resolution.

The anterior cingulate cortex encodes affective pain behaviours modulated by opioids; targeting opioid-sensitive neurons through a new chemogenetic gene therapy replicates the analgesic effects of morphine, providing precise chronic pain relief without affecting sensory detection.

Asymmetric cell division often requires alignment of the mitotic spindle to cortical polarity cues. Here the authors show that cortical Wnt signaling induces formation of a complex between NuMA/dynein microtubule motors, LRP6 and β-catenin that promotes asymmetric division.

Salinity reconstructions show that Indian Ocean surface salinity increased during glacial periods and that the release of this water via the Agulhas Leakage during deglaciation can trigger abrupt changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

Volume EM provides connectomic data but lacks necessary molecular information. Here, authors show fluorescent scFvs enable multiplexed immunolabeling and correlated light and electron microscopy, suggesting potential for molecularly annotated connectomic data.

This Resource paper presents a global SARS-CoV-2 phylogenetic tree of 4,471,579 high-quality genomes consistently constructed by Viridian, an efficient amplicon-aware assembler.

dSHERLOCK is a nucleic acid platform for the quantification of double-stranded DNA targets using CRISPR/Cas and isothermal amplification and is applied to quantify pathogen C. auris in clinical surveillance swab samples.

Multiangle projection imaging accelerates volumetric imaging by up to two orders of magnitude and is readily implemented on diverse microscopes, including spinning disk confocal and light-sheet microscopes.

Wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells suffer from instability under rapid thermal cycling. Here, Sun et al. investigate the degradation mechanism, showing that temperature-induced structural strain, phase transition, and increased non-radiative defects drive the degradation processes.

A deep learning-based model, developed using the rich, multimodal data available from polysomnography-derived sleep recordings, performs well on common sleep analysis tasks and predicts future disease risk across a range of diseases.

We demonstrated high-speed VCSEL in-memory neural networks that deliver billion optical convolutions per second for massively parallel edge intelligence at ultralow energy and latency.

Xu et al. report a Pockels photonic memory by integrating ferroelectric field-effect transistor with lithium niobate on insulator micro ring resonator. Through the manipulation of ferroelectric domains and the Pockels effect, the device achieves energy consumption at fJ/state level.

Atomic force microscopy is used to investigate the adsorption and organization of ions on charged surfaces. Trivalent ions adopt complex networks, clusters and layers associated with overcharging, whereas divalent ions follow classical predictions.

Synapse dysfunction contributes to cognitive decline with age. Here, the authors show that aging-related changes in microglia and the extracellular matrix are associated with synapse abundance, extracellular matrix buildup, and cognitive deficits in aging mice.

Structural studies of tyrocidine synthetase using site-selective crosslinking probes to link condensation domains with carrier protein substrates define key interactions and molecular mechanisms of non-ribosomal protein synthesis.

Self-organized criticality can occur in cellular systems, but its origins remain unclear. Now it is shown that cytoskeletal criticality is influenced by the F-actin architecture and myosin active stress.

The Toxoplasma gondii effector TgROP1 mimics host factors to bind VAPA/B, thereby establishing parasite–host ER contact sites.

A flexible micro-electrocorticography brain–computer interface that integrates a 256 × 256 array of electrodes, signal processing, data telemetry and wireless powering on a single complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor substrate can provide stable, chronic in vivo recordings.

The perceived toxicity of organometallic reagents has limited their use in living systems. Now it has been shown that balancing flexible chelation with biocompatible ligands without precluding chemical reactivity enables organonickel-mediated S-arylation inside cells. This reaction enables deep chemical surveys of reactive proteins and covalent tracking of intracellular viral and bacterial pathogens.

High plating currents are achieved in solid-state batteries without dendrites by densifying Li₆PS₅Cl, with modelling showing how specific microstructural changes increase the critical current density.

There is a limited endogenous subventricular zone (SVZ)-derived neurogenic response for brain repair. Here, the authors report that cortical stroke-evoked environmental changes in the SVZ alter microglia-neural stem/precursor cells cross-communication, limiting the neurogenic repair response.

Bacterial Type I polyketide synthases are responsible for producing both lifesaving medicines and virulence factors, yet their stepwise mechanism remains elusive. Here, Burkart et al. characterize acyl carrier protein bound states of mycocerosic acid synthase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis through crosslinking and cryo-EM.

Indium tin oxide, the predominant material used as transparent electrodes in organic LEDs, is expensive and brittle. Ning Li and colleagues form transparent electrodes using single-layer graphene to construct organic LEDs with unprecedented performance that are suitable for both displays and lighting.

Understanding synapse loss in Alzheimer’s disease has been hampered by a lack of human model systems. Here, the authors show that manipulation of physiological or pathological Aβ has differing effects on synapses in live human brain slice cultures.

Polaritons are confined hybrid light-matter excitations holding potential for optoelectronic and sensing applications, but their characterization is usually limited to optical spectroscopy. Here, the authors report the electrical spectroscopy of mid-infrared plasmon-phonon polaritons in Au/hBN/graphene nanoresonators, showing high lateral confinement and quality factors.

Organic semiconductors provide a platform for flexible lasers, but these are still produced on rigid, thick substrates. Here, Karl et al. develop a method to make freestanding membrane lasers that can be transferred onto any substrate and show that these could be used as anti-counterfeiting labels.

BamA is the catalytic core of the BAM complex, which inserts proteins into bacterial outer membranes. Here, the authors show that hinge flexibility between BamA’s β-barrel and POTRA domains is vital, demonstrating how evolution has fine-tuned the BamA sequence and structure for function.