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The spatial and temporal control of material properties at a distance have been so far achieved with light, heat, or sound. Here, the authors control chemical reactions and further polymerization of composites with an electric field via inverse piezo-effect resulting in multi-stiffness gels.

Limited diagnostic capacity for asymptomatic individuals hinders malaria elimination efforts in Africa. Here, the authors present a near point-of-care method based on colorimetric LAMP detection that outperforms expert microscopy and commercial rapid diagnostic tests for Plasmodium detection in asymptomatic and submicroscopic individuals.

The authors developed a screen to find compounds that modulate intracellular Staphylococcus aureus metabolism and discovered KL1, which sensitizes persisters to antibiotics by reversing host-induced tolerance.

Precise separation of ions with similar valence and size is critical. Here, authors designed a selective membrane that precisely extract Li+ from Na+ and Ca²⁺ interferences. The high selectivity and permeability enable energy-efficient, precise, and chemical-free lithium extraction using the electrodialysis process.

This study demonstrates GHz-speed electro-optic modulation using ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals, offering dual-phase shifting, poling-free operation, low loss, and CMOS compatibility-enabling scalable hybrid silicon-organic photonics.

A combination of whole-genome NanoSeq with deep whole-exome and targeted NanoSeq is used to accurately characterize mutation rates and genes under positive selection in sperm cells.

During plant cultivation, denitrification process can release greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N₂O) to atmosphere. Here, the authors develop a soybean–bradyrhizobial symbiosis system with enhanced capacity to reduce N₂O emissions using the incompatibility between two soybean R genes and their effector present in bradyrhizobia.

This work introduces a solvent-free method to directly synthesise MOF glasses without needing a crystalline precursor, enabling device integration, magnetic studies, and functional tuning.

The Zika viral protease NS2B-NS3 is a crucial target for antiviral drug development due to its role in processing viral polyproteins. Here, the authors utilize crystallographic fragment screening and deep mutational scanning to identify binding sites for resistance-resilient inhibitors.

Rapid discovery of functional resistance genes is enabled by a high-expression signature and high-throughput transformation. This approach identified 31 new resistance genes for wheat and can be applied across crops to support food security.

The precision of determining the phase of an optical atomic clock is increased above the standard quantum limit in a new spectroscopic method.

This study shows that deep-learning-based co-folding models often produce physically unrealistic structures and are unsusceptible in their predictions to significant binding site modifications, demonstrating bias towards training data and underscoring the need for stronger integration of physical principles.

A systematic statistical genetics approach discovers CES drivers as hotspots of human de novo mutation and shows that clonal expansions in germline may both modulate the prevalence of disorders and lead to false-positive disease associations.

Determinants of Vibrio cholerae transmission are incompletely understood. Here, the authors use an infant mouse model to show that events in the intestine govern inter-animal transmission and that bacterial motility along with cholera toxin-driven diarrhea are critical for pathogen spread.

Giotto Suite provides a comprehensive, flexible and scalable platform for technology-agnostic spatial omics analysis using R.

New field measurements and modeling show meltwater refreezing in Greenland’s bare ice may reduce runoff to surrounding oceans, highlighting a process climate models can incorporate for improved predictions of future sea-level rise.

An operational satellite-based monitoring system using NASA/USGS and ESA imagery enables rapid tracking of global land change, with the area of conversion due to direct human action and fire equaling the size of California in 2023.

Adherent-invasive strains of E. coli are commonly isolated from patients with Crohn’s disease. Here, the authors show that an AIEC harbours a hybrid Type IV secretion system (T4SS) that mediates pilin polymerization and biofilm formation in vivo.

Polygenic risk scores can help identify individuals at higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Here, the authors characterise a multi-ancestry score across nearly 900,000 people, showing that its predictive value depends on demographic and clinical context and extends to related traits and complications.

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.

A significant challenge in modern drug development is the comprehensive profiling of covalent inhibitors. Here, the authors develop COOKIE-Pro, an unbiased method for quantifying the binding kinetics of irreversible covalent inhibitors on a proteome-wide scale.

This study shows that p300/CBP-dependent H2B acetylation is crucial for maintaining transcription of oncogenic gene programs in androgen receptor-driven prostate cancer.

A sunlight-activated chemical spray increases wheat yield in field trials across rainfall conditions.

Megaraptoran theropod dinosaur anatomy and evolution is unclear due to the fragmentary nature of most available fossils. Here the authors report a well-preserved, late surviving megaraptoran from Argentina that clarifies our understanding of the morphology of this group and potentially provides insights into its diet and feeding strategies.

The placenta plays vital roles in supporting fetal development. Here, Richards et al. develop a high-throughput bioprinted trophoblast organoid model to recapitulate the microenvironment of the early placenta, enabling investigation of placenta development and evaluation of therapeutics for placenta dysfunction disorders.

A microinterfacial solvothermal polymerization strategy is developed for irreversible coupling reactions to form porous crystalline sp-carbon-conjugated covalent organic frameworks with diverse topologies. These two-dimensional frameworks exhibit enhanced conductivity and tunable magnetic properties.

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.

Meltwater ponding reduces Greenland Ice Sheet albedo, but this process is not included in models. This study uses drone imagery to show that small streams and ponds, often missed by satellites, considerably increase the energy available for melt.

Interacting electrons in Hofstadter bands can form symmetry-broken topological states. These are now revealed in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, and their properties are influenced by non-uniform quantum geometry.

Opposing forces generated by exopolysaccharide trail binding versus type IV pilus retraction generate a high cyclic diGMP–high cyclic AMP state in Pseudomonas aeruginosa that promotes social motility.

The major ion chemistry of a North American river shows decreased lateral carbon transport due to exacerbated secondary carbonate formation and CO₂ evasion, according to analyses conducted during a 195-day drought.

Microsoft researchers found a biological zero-day vulnerability — and created a software patch.

Authors measure plasma proteins in a cohort of hospitalised patients presenting to the emergency department with suspected infection, revealing six discrete host response clusters that were driven by pathogen exposure and organ dysfunction, and had distinct clinical characteristics, hospital courses, and responses to treatment.

This study explores the relationship between telomere length and clonal hematopoiesis. Splicing factor and PPM1D gene mutations are more frequent in people with genetically predicted shorter telomere lengths, suggesting that these mutations protect against the consequences of telomere attrition.

Using visible-light-induced crosslinking, a local stiffening approach is developed for ex vivo mouse and human lung tissue as an early lung injury model, directing epithelial cell mechanosensing, differentiation and nascent protein deposition.

In this Stage 2 Registered Report, Buchanan et al. show evidence confirming the phenomenon of semantic priming across speakers of 19 diverse languages.

Magnetic reconnection, thought to drive solar eruptions, has been studied with remote sensing. The Parker Solar Probe has directly measured reconnection-associated plasma properties in situ in the solar corona, deepening our understanding of the process.

Engineering of semiconductor nanocrystals requires a detailed understanding of their formation. Here, the authors use signal-enhanced NMR and theoretical calculations to decode the structural transition from metastable CdSe clusters to mature quantum dots.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

In a magnetoelectric material, an applied electric field can drive changes in the magnetic order. This feature has profound technology prospects and here, Moody et al demonstrate deterministic control of the direction of magnetic spiral order via an applied electric field in Cu₂OSeO₃.

Dual cyclin A/B RxL inhibitors selectively kill small cell lung cancer cells and other cancer cells with high E2F activity.

Using well-calibrated statistical methods the authors jointly analyze Undiagnosed Diseases Network genomes, identifying known and novel disease genes. Software is publicly available to support future cross-cohort rare disease discovery efforts.

Genome-wide analyses for 7,266 traits leveraging data from several genetic ancestry groups in UK Biobank identify new associations and enhance resources for interpreting risk variants across diverse populations.

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.

Madruga and colleagues present an open-source, miniature 2-photon microscope that can fit on a mouse’s head. Using this system, the authors perform high-resolution brain activity measurements in fine neuronal structures, which they can achieve even in conditions where the mouse is freely-moving within its cage.

Despite observed routinely from spacecrafts landing on, e.g., lunar soil, the origin of radial streak patterns has been unclear up to now. Here, the authors report an experimental study of such instabilities in the coupled dynamics of rocket plumes and sand surfaces.

This work advances multimodal structural refinements to generate 3D polarization maps for relaxor ferroelectrics, revealing continuous textures with vortex meron features tied to chemical disorder and deepening understanding of relaxor phenomena.

Monitoring T cell metabolism during chimeric antigen receptor T manufacturing using optical metabolic imaging enables fine-tuning of manufacturing conditions to increase T cell yield and fitness.

Here, a combination of forward genetics and genome-wide association analyses has been used to show that variation at a single genetic locus in Arabidopsis thaliana underlies phenotypic variation in vegetative growth as well as resistance to infection. The strong enhancement of resistance mediated by one of the alleles at this locus explains the allele's persistence in natural populations throughout the world, even though it drastically reduces the production of new leaves.

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.