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Garnet-type LLZO electrolytes are considered among the most promising solid-state electrolytes for all-solid-state batteries; however, numerous challenges need to be addressed before they are integrated into a cell. By precipitating amorphous zirconium oxide onto grain boundaries, increased ionic conductivity is observed and dendrite growth is suppressed.

Native top-down proteomics reveals epidermal growth factor receptor–estrogen receptor-alpha (EGFR–ER) signaling crosstalk in breast cancer cells and dissociation of nuclear transport factor 2 (NUTF2) dimers to modulate ER signaling and cell growth.

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.

Li-rich oxides suffer from severe degradation in lithium-ion batteries. To investigate this, authors employ operando methodologies to follow microstructural changes and demonstrate that interlayer twinning structures and intralayer frustrations formed during cycling drive performance degradation.

Radiative cooling is an emerging technology for cooling with reduced energy consumption. Here the authors present photoluminescent composites that combine subambient cooling with aesthetic colour, hydrophobicity and durability.

Ferromagnetic systems produced by the transition metal doping of semiconductors may be used as components of spintronic devices. Here, a new ferromagnet, Li_1+y(Zn_1-xMn_x)As, is prepared in bulk quantities and shown to have a critical temperature approaching 50 K.

Human host-associated cellular products may act as induction agents for bacteriophages.

Efficient adenine base editors (ABEs) often induce bystander and off-target effects. Here, Shang et al. developed a YA (Y = T or C) motif preferred ABE(ABE8e-YA) that minimizes these effects, enabling precise and effective pathogenic mutation correction, disease modeling, and in vivo gene therapy.

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.

Activity in a set of parabranchial neurons in the mouse brain is increased during chronic pain, predicts coping behaviour, and can be modulated by circuits activated by survival threats.

Particles produced by intense biomass burning can be transported, potentially by deep convection, in large numbers to the lower stratosphere, changing the stratospheric aerosol layer’s chemical and radiative properties, according to in situ measurements during an active fire season.

Whether paternal pre-conceptual SARS-CoV-2 infection impacts sperm RNA content, or effects offspring phenotypes, has not been previously investigated. Here authors report changes in sperm noncoding RNAs in SARS-CoV-2 infected sires and increased anxiety-like behaviors in offspring.

Wu, Zhang and colleagues introduce ‘compare and contrast spatial transcriptomics’ (CoCo-ST), a graph contrastive learning-based method for spatial transcriptomics analysis that detects low-variance structures.

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.

This study introduces a system called TArgeted Cohesin Loader (TACL) that recruits cohesin complexes at defined genomic regions and induces loop extrusion events in living cells, exploring its impact on chromatin organization and gene expression.

Beck et al. develop a model where striosomes create a flexible “decision-space” that adapts to environmental context and internal state. It explains how we make choices and why decision-making varies between people, and in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Programming stimulus responsiveness into living systems enables advanced biocomputation. Here, the authors autonomously compile proteins with defined topology that can be site-specifically tethered to and conditionally released from biomaterials and cells following user-specified Boolean logic.

The authors conduct a national inventory on individual tree carbon stocks in Rwanda using aerial imagery and deep learning. Most mapped trees are located in farmlands; new methods allow partitioning to any landscape categories, effective planning and optimization of carbon sequestration and the economic benefits of trees.

Aqueous and non-aqueous Li-based electrolyte solutions have narrow electrochemical stability windows, which hinder the operation of batteries at high cell potentials. Here, to circumvent this limitation, the authors propose the combined use of tailored aqueous and non-aqueous electrolyte solutions in various Li-based cell configurations.

The electronic ground state of a correlated oxide interface is reversibly switched by light. Stemming from interfacial reconstructions, electrostatic confinement and photodoping, this effect opens a path towards engineering the optical response of oxides.

Genomic deletions in poxviruses are not well understood, the authors found large deletions in >2% of Mpox virus genomes during routine surveillance, highlighting their role in poxvirus evolution and potential impact on diagnostics and therapeutics.

The authors reveal an inherent trade-off between logarithmic average phonon frequency and the electron-phonon coupling constant in conventional BCS superconductors. The analysis suggests that achieving room-temperature conventional superconductivity at ambient pressure is extremely unlikely.

A new version of nanorate DNA sequencing, with an error rate lower than five errors per billion base pairs and compatible with whole-exome and targeted capture, enables epidemiological-scale studies of somatic mutation and selection and the generation of high-resolution selection maps across coding and non-coding sites for many genes.

Solid-state electrolyte reduction and Li dendrite growth limit the stability of all-solid-state Li metal batteries. Here the authors show that reductive electrophiles gain electrons and metal cations from metal–nucleophile materials on contact, allowing the electrochemical formation of a dense, electron-blocking film that improves the stability of both the anode and high-voltage cathode.

A super-pangenome analysis incorporating 123 newly sequenced bryophyte genomes reveals that bryophytes exhibit a larger number of unique and lineage-specific gene families than vascular plants.

Monitoring the nucleation of dendrites in Li-ion batteries during cell cycling is important for the development of new electrochemical materials. Here, the authors use the spectral-spatial mode in electron paramagnetic resonance imaging to visualize the spatial distribution of metallic sub-micrometric lithium structures.

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.

Alcohol use disorder drives transcriptional and regulatory changes in the caudate nucleus. Here, authors show, using a single-cell multiomic analysis, cell type-specific disruptions of gene expression, chromatin accessibility, and cell communication.

A facile and cost-effective synthesis of MXenes is not yet available. Here, the authors propose a one-pot molten salt-based method of MXenes synthesis from elemental precursors in an air atmosphere. Li-ion storage properties of the MXenes are also reported and discussed.

High-resolution ALMA observations reveal a gravitationally bound septuple protostar system in NGC 6334IN, formed through disk fragmentation. This discovery sheds light on the formation of extreme high-order multiplicity in massive stellar clusters.

Covalent polymers with helical conformations offer an adaptive scaffold for smart materials, but polymer-to-monomer deconstruction is inhibited by the covalent backbone. Now it has been shown that poly(disulfide)s can be folded into helices driven by side-chain hydrogen-bonding self-assembly, resulting in a synthetic helical polymer that can be fully recycled.

Achieving high selectivity in CO₂-to-methanol conversion remains challenging. This study uses defect-engineered In₂O₃/ZrO₂ catalysts featuring abundant oxygen vacancies, significantly boosting methanol productivity and selectivity.

Correlated photons from parametric down-coversion driven by a CW laser are used for time- and frequency-resolved spectroscopy, enabling sub-second acquisition times on biological samples and single-photon excitation of photosynthetic processes.

The authors identify two coexisting incommensurate charge density waves whose interplay leads to joint commensuration and a long-period moiré structure.

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.

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.

Tree cover gains in the moist tropics (1982–2015) were 56% naturally regenerated forests and 27% managed tree systems, with forest type influencing carbon recovery. Effective forest restoration requires robust tracking of forest types established by restoration efforts.

Plasmodium vivax reticulocyte binding protein 2b (PvRBP2b) is important for invasion of reticulocytes and PvRBP2b antibodies correlate with protection. Here, Chan et al. isolate and characterize anti-PvRBP2b human monoclonal antibodies and describe mechanisms by which these antibodies inhibit invasion.

The utilization of oxygen redox is a promising way of designing high-energy cathode materials for batteries. Here, Tarascon and colleagues report a class of Li-rich layered sulfides and unravel the potential of sulfur redox.

While the ligand coordination microenvironment surrounding catalytic centres influences reactivity, dynamic oxygen reconstruction during water oxidation electrocatalysis complicates structure-based mechanistic insights. Now the in situ formation of lattice O–O ligands has been shown to activate Fe centres in metal oxides and hydroxides, thereby enhancing their oxygen evolution reaction activity.

Here, Ni-anchored Ru/RuO₂ heterostructure nanosheets serve as CO-tolerant hydrogen oxidation catalyst delivering a peak power density of 1.76 W cm^-2, along with long-term stability in an alkaline exchange membrane fuel cell operating under H₂/Air conditions.

Fanjiang Kong, Zhixi Tian, Xingliang Hou, Baohui Liu and colleagues report the cloning and functional characterization of J, the locus underlying the long-juvenile (LJ) trait that has enabled tropical cultivation of soybean. They show that J, an ortholog of Arabidopsis ELF3, downregulates the expression of E1, thereby promoting flowering under short-day conditions.

iSCALE leverages histology and spatial transcriptomics to infer gene expression at super resolution in large tissues.

Here the authors perform a trans expression quantitative trait locus meta-analysis study of over 3,700 people and link a USP18 variant to expression of 50 inflammation genes and lupus risk, highlighting how genetic regulation of immune responses drives autoimmune disease and informs new therapies.

¹³⁴Ce and ¹³⁴La have great potential as companion diagnostic isotopes for radiotherapeutics labelled with α-emitting ²²⁵Ac and ²²⁷Th. Now, by controlling the Ce^III/Ce^IV redox couple, the large-scale production, purification and characterization of ¹³⁴Ce- and ¹³⁴La-based radiolabels has been achieved and their use for in vivo positron emission tomography is demonstrated.

Quantum sensing of lithium and post-lithium batteries is introduced to visualize how electrons and ions flow and react during operation. Here, authors show how this facilitates operando imaging of heterogeneous redox reactions, buried current distributions, and dendrite formation.

NMR spectroscopy and imaging show that dendrites in a solid-state Li battery are formed from Li plating on the electrode and Li⁺ reduction at solid electrolyte grain boundaries, with an interlapped stalled growth period.

GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs) often contain regulatory PH domains. In this work, Soubias et al, using an integrated structure-function approach, discovered a mechanism where a GAP PH domain binds directly to a GTPase to induce allosteric changes facilitating GTP hydrolysis.