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Studies in zebra finches show that dopamine has a key role as a reinforcement signal in the trial-and-error process of learning that underlies complex natural behaviours.

Climate change threatens the future of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Here the authors show that individual drainage basins have different thresholds and loss patterns, suggesting the need to consider the dynamical interactive nature of the basins and their individual tipping points.

Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

The study by Russo et al. demonstrates alterations in the presence of senescence hallmarks across cell types, inducers, and model systems. These findings spotlight TFAP4 as a key regulator of senescence phenotypes in aging and Parkinson’s Disease.

Exploration of the chemistry of allylic, benzylic, propargylic and allenylic oxonium ions is lacking despite the latest developments in onium ion chemistry. Now, a unified approach for the synthesis and NMR spectroscopic characterization of these unusual species is reported, helping to understand their reactivity.

Atypical intraductal proliferation is a prostate biopsy finding with morphological features intermediate between high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia and intraductal carcinoma. This Review discusses histopathological features, molecular characteristics and clinical outcomes associated with AIP, and highlights the clinical implications of AIP, primarily due to the frequent association of AIP with clinically significant prostate cancer.

PCNA–PAF15 has a key role in determining replisome dynamics during genome replication and protecting against genome instability.

Neural processing speed slows with age, but the relationship between this slowing and brain atrophy is unknown. Here, authors show that age-related functional brain differences in auditory and visual processing are partly due to structural differences in the distinct brain regions underlying these processes.

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.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) plays an important role in decarbonization pathways to meet climate goals, but some methods are land-intensive. Multimodel analysis reveals conflicts between biodiversity and CDR that are distributed unevenly, and shows that synergies are crucial to meet climate and conservation goals.

Using the single-cell Deep Visual Proteomics technique, the authors develop a resource providing spatially resolved proteomic analysis of individual cells in human liver tissue.

Using 63 globally distributed grassland and shrubland sites from the International Drought Experiment, this study identified plant traits linked to drought resistance after 1 year of extreme drought across growth forms, lifespans and climate.

One-shot tissue dynamics reconstruction can infer changes in tissue composition over time, from single-time-point spatial proteomics of human cancers.

With its attribution to Paranthropus, a 2.6-million-year-old partial mandible expands the range of the genus into the Afar region of Ethiopia and adds to our understanding of hominin evolution in eastern Africa.

Bång-Rudenstam et al. report that the acidic tumour microenvironment facilitates the assembly of chondroitin sulfate-enriched glycocalyx to disrupt lipid scavenging and prevent ferroptosis, thereby providing an adaptive mechanism upon tumour acidosis.

In one-shot perceptual learning, what we see can be dramatically altered by a single past experience. Using psychophysics, fMRI, iEEG, and DNNs, the authors identify neural and computational mechanisms underlying this remarkable ability in humans.

Repetitive head impacts from contact sports are associated with brain inflammation, vascular damage and neuron loss that are independent of hyperphosphorylated tau pathology.

The authors identify key enzymes, including four cytochrome P450s, a dehydrogenase and a sulfotransferase, that together build the core chemical scaffold of withanolides, medicinal compounds from ashwagandha with neurological and anti-cancer activities.

The Late Miocene terrestrial climate in eastern North Greenland displayed elevated temperatures at moderate atmospheric CO₂ levels and was highly variable, reflecting the shifting orbital and ocean circulation forcings in the Arctic as the world cooled, according to proxy records from speleothems.

The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task in mice.

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.

Here, the authors develop an AI tool called MindGlide that can extract key information from brain images acquired as part of the routine care of multiple-sclerosis patients to help interpret treatment effects, which previously required manual analysis.

This study uncovers how light polarization governs ultrafast charge transfer between gold and gallium nitride (GaN), revealing a low-loss, nonthermal electron pathway that could advance solar energy conversion and optoelectronic technologies.

Risk associated with genetically defined forms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can propagate by means of transcriptional regulation to affect convergently dysregulated pathways, providing insight into the convergent impact of ASD genetic risk on human neurodevelopment.

Bright electron bunches power particle physics and photon science. Here, reproducible bunches were generated in a plasma with simultaneous high charge per unit energy and low emittance, advancing a scheme to produce ultra-bright bunches in future.

Variation in responses to bacterial and viral stimuli between Batwa rainforest hunter-gatherers and Bakiga agriculturalists from Uganda suggests population-level divergence under natural selection, with hunter-gatherers disproportionately showing signatures of positive selection.

A multiancestry phenome-wide analysis of copy number variants in the UK Biobank genomes increases power to detect genetic associations with complex traits across human populations.

The common description of strong-field light–matter interaction neglects the quantum-optical nature of the driving field. Now signatures of strong-field photoemission appear in electron energy spectra when driving with non-classical light.

Multiomic single-cell analyses of 15 Down syndrome fetal cortical samples identify widespread disruption of neurodevelopmental transcriptional programs, driven by three dosage-sensitive chromosome 21 transcription factors.

Experiments with human volunteers and macaques show that expectations produced by probabilistic cueing of future sensory inputs shape motor circuit dynamics in order to increase the efficiency of movement responses.

The transmission spectrum of the exoplanet WASP-39b is obtained using observations from the Single-Object Slitless Spectroscopy mode of the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph instrument aboard the JWST.

Dissolved oxygen levels in the Proterozoic surface ocean decreased from the Equator towards the mid–high latitudes, the opposite of the modern latitudinal gradient, according to a compilation of I/Ca proxy records and Earth system modelling.

The authors of this study map the human E3 ubiquitin ligome using a metric learning approach, revealing a unified classification framework that explains preserved patterns and functional segregation of E3 families, linking enzymes to substrates and drug interactions, and guiding strategies for targeted therapies.

Quantum error correction codes protect quantum information, but running algorithms also requires the ability to perform gates on logical qubits. A lattice surgery scheme for fault-tolerant gates has now been demonstrated in a quantum repetition code.

Radiation reaction (RR) on particles in strong fields is the subject of intense experimental research, but previous efforts lacked statistical significance due to the extreme regimes required. Here, the authors report a 5σ observation of RR and obtain strong, quantitative evidence favouring quantum models over classical, using an all-optical setup where electrons are accelerated by a laser in a gas jet before colliding with a second, intense pulse.

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.

Detection of ultracold molecules based on absorption imaging have inherent limitations. Here, the authors demonstrate spatially resolved detection of single ultracold 87Rb133Cs molecules in the bulk, extending recent microscopy developments from ultracold atoms to molecules.

Uncertainty-aware machine learning models predict human toxicity for more than 100,000 chemicals, highlighting potency and uncertainty hotspots to guide safer use and to focus efforts to improve prediction confidence.

The existing ENCODE registry of candidate human and mouse cis-regulatory elements is expanded with the addition of new ENCODE data, integrating new functional data as well as new cell and tissue types.

Solar photovoltaics is entering a multi-terawatt era, driven by decades of cost, performance and reliability gains. In this Perspective Alberi et al. discuss the role of historical and future learning, highlighting the increasing importance of sustainability considerations.

A personalized virtual-heart model that determines optimal radio-frequency ablation targets for infarct-related tachycardia is validated in retrospective large-animal and patient studies, and in a prospective study in patients.

Walpole et al. show that the Salmonella effector SopB generates phosphatidylinositol 3,4-bisphosphate de novo via a phosphotransferase mechanism, independently of phosphoinositide 3-kinases and ATP.

Inversion of C3 stereochemistry of monoterpenoid indole alkaloids (MIAs) has to occur at some point during their biosynthesis; however, the mechanism has remained unresolved. Here, the authors report an oxidase–reductase enzyme pair encoded within a gene cluster and demonstrate their collaborative role in inverting MIA C3 stereochemistry.

This study supports neurofilament light chain protein (NfL) in both cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood as an early marker of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease but suggests that NfL in CSF may be better suited than blood for monitoring clinical trial outcomes in symptomatic patients.

In this work, the researchers levitate charged glass micro-spheres using electrical forces and use an event based camera to track the motion of whole clouds of particles at once. The amount of data produced is minimal, enabling the authors to generate real-time feedback signals to control the motion of each particle in an array.

This study investigates the role of SMAD2 genetic variants associated with congenital heart disease on renal development using a CRISPR-engineered human induced pluripotent stem cell model on a microphysiological system.

DOT1L slows transcription elongation and promotes RNAPII pausing, altering gene expression and creating conditions that enhance AID activity for antibody diversification but also facilitate off-target mutagenesis.

Solid-state emitters enable broadband quantum information storage, but they are affected by decoherence resulting from inhomogeneous broadening. Here the authors suppress this effect via cavity protection at the single photon level in an ensemble of rare-earth ions coupled to a nanophotonic resonator.