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Over 20 species of geographically and phylogenetically diverse bird species produce convergent whining vocalizations towards their respective brood parasites. Model presentation and playback experiments across multiple continents suggest that these learned calls provoke an innate response even among allopatric species.

Here, the authors show learning tasks with similar structures can initially cause interference and slow down learning, but both the brain and artificial networks gradually reorganize information over time, enabling them to perform better and adapt more efficiently.

Test, trace, and isolate programmes are central to COVID-19 control. Here, Viola Priesemann and colleagues evaluate how to allocate scarce resources to keep numbers low, and find that if case numbers exceed test, trace and isolate capacity, there will be a self-accelerating spread.

Here, the authors present archaeology of the Namorotukunan site in Kenya’s Turkana Basin that demonstrates adaptive shifts in hominin tool-making behaviour spanning 300,000 years and increasing environmental variability. They contextualize these findings with paleoenvironmental proxies, dating, and geological descriptions.

Emerging fungal pathogens have detrimental impacts on crops, animals, and humans, however little is known about their transition to a pathogenic lifestyle. This study demonstrates that the transition from saprotroph to opportunistic human pathogen is likely facilitated by adaptive translation.

Brown seaweeds are multicellular eukaryotes that have been evolving independently of animals and plants for more than a billion years. The filamentous brown alga Ectocarpus has been used as a model to understand the biology of these enigmatic organisms and to shed light on a range of major questions, from the molecular basis of complex developmental patterns to the evolution of sex.

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.

The fungal SND pathway inserts a wide range of proteins into the ER membrane. Here, SND3 is identified as a membrane insertase within a distinct SEC61 translocon complex, implying a role in co-translational insertion of multipass membrane proteins.

Although our nearest neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, is falling towards us, slightly more distant galaxies all move away with the cosmic expansion because they are being pulled by a giant dark matter sheet.

This research finds a strong recency bias in information gathering, attenuated in those on the OCD spectrum—a possible mechanism for indecisiveness. Behavioural and MEG data show reduced evidence updating in high-OC individuals.

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.

Structural insights into ultrafast Ca²⁺ transport by plasma membrane Ca²⁺-ATPases are provided, highlighting an essential role for PtdIns(4,5)P₂ dynamics.

Pathogenic variants in UNC13A underlie a novel neurodevelopmental syndrome, with three subtypes defined by distinct genotypes with varying clinical and functional impacts characterized in cellular and animal models.

Using advanced imaging techniques and computer modelling, the authors were able to create a detailed structural model of a nuclear pore complex from a seed plant.

The authors propose a Generalized Latent Equilibrium framework for fully local credit assignment in physical, dynamical neuronal networks such as the brain. By exploiting dendritic structure and prospective coding in cortical neurons, it enables an online approximation of backpropagation through space and time.

Stress on land is dynamic, entailing swift and drastic changes. Integrated time-course stress and co-expression analysis predict a gene regulatory network that retraces a web of ancient signal convergences shared by land plants and their algal sisters.

Augmin is essential for microtubule nucleation during cell division. This study reveals how the conserved calponin homology domain of the augmin subunit HAUS6 binds to microtubules to orient augmin for microtubule branching.

iGluSnFR4f and iGluSnFR4s are the latest generation of genetically encoded glutamate sensors. They are advantageous for detecting rapid dynamics and large population activity, respectively, as demonstrated in a variety of applications in the mouse brain.

3D-printed gel microcilia arrays printed by two-photon polymerization and composed of a soft acrylic acid-co-acrylamide hydrogel with a nanometre-scale network structure are shown to respond to low-voltage electrical stimuli within milliseconds, enabling dynamic individual control and non-reciprocal 3D motion.

The ALICE Collaboration provides details on the microscopic mechanism that ends up creating antideuteron in high-energy proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

Using the valley degree of freedom in analogy to spin to encode qubits could be advantageous as many of the known decoherence mechanisms do not apply. Now long relaxation times are demonstrated for valley qubits in bilayer graphene quantum dots.

A map of the surface of a brown dwarf reveals features that suggest patchy clouds, providing the mechanism for the dispersal of atmospheric dust as brown dwarfs cool with age.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

Replication-dependent histone mRNA decay involves the RNA helicase UPF1, the histone stem-loop binding protein SLBP and the exoribonuclease 3’hExo. Here, the authors present evidence for assembly of a degradosome-like complex involving the three proteins and delineate the mechanism that drives their concerted action to achieve histone mRNA decay.

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

Studying four examples of the transition to co-sexuality in brown algae, the authors show extensive convergent changes in gene expression driven by selection, and greater similarity of co-sexual gene expression profiles to those of ancestral females than to those of ancestral males.

The genetic structure of modern-day brown bears mainly reflects contemporary population connectivity. Recent gene flow barriers have obscured the genomic signatures of postglacial recolonisation.

High near-surface nitrogen-fixation rates that promoted the recent growth of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt were tied to greater upwelling of phosphorus from the equatorial Atlantic, according to coral-bound nitrogen isotope records from the Caribbean.

CellWhisperer uses multimodal learning of transcriptomes and text to answer questions about single-cell RNA-sequencing data.

Ubiquitination is a versatile modification system in eukaryotic cells. Here, the authors unveil that the ubiquitin ligase HUWE1 can modify drug-like small-molecule substrates, beyond proteins. This discovery may be harnessed to develop specific tool substrates or inhibitors of HECT-type ligases.

Tissue stiffness mediated by Piezo1 is shown to regulate the expression of diffusive guidance cues in the developing Xenopus laevis brain, revealing a crosstalk between mechanical signals and long-range chemical signalling.

A dynamo mechanism similar to that in the Sun can produce the large-scale magnetic field that is needed to drive the relativistic outflows (and short gamma-ray burst) from binary neutron star mergers, according to a numerical relativity simulation.

When free electrons emit light, an entangled electron–photon state is created. Here measurements of the correlated multiparticle system have been used to produce non-classical photonic states.

Earth’s spectral long-wave feedback parameter can be directly observed using satellite measurements, revealing the influence of relative humidity on climate feedbacks.

Reversible protonic ceramic cells face electrode interface degradation challenges. This study introduces an atomic trapping strategy to restructure heterointerfaces, improving power output and long-term stability while reducing precious metal usage.

Genomic analyses applied to 14 childhood- and adult-onset psychiatric disorders identifies five underlying genomic factors that explain the majority of the genetic variance of the individual disorders.

Despite extensive investigations of mixed-valence complexes, molecules with intermediate spin states have remained elusive. Now, selenium- and tellurium-bridged mixed-valent iron dimers have been prepared in which a balance of Heisenberg exchange and double-exchange coupling of the unpaired electron, combined with moderate vibronic contributions, stabilizes S = 3/2 ground spin states.

Bergel et al. show that an infraslow rhythm connecting the brain and body during sleep is shared by lizards, mammals and birds, revealing an ancestral process and reshaping our understanding of the evolution of sleep states.

Gaseous pollutants such as ozone and carbon monoxide from Asia are lifted to altitudes of more than 10 km during the summer monsoon season. Satellite observations show that aerosol particles, too, can rise high and spread across thousands of kilometres.

Epicardial engineered heart muscle allografts from induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes can safely and effectively remuscularize chronically failing hearts in rhesus macaques, leading to improved cardiac function and paving the way for human clinical trials.

Erythropoietin (EPO) regulates energy metabolism via its receptor (EpoR) in adipose tissue. The authors demonstrate that EPO influences glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity, and fat mass and that EPO treatment reduces lipogenic gene expression through the EPO-EpoR-RUNX1 axis.

Building scalable quantum technologies requires generating robust many-body entanglement in solid-state platforms. This Review highlights how engineered light–matter interactions, optical nonlinearities and coupling to nanophotonic structures enable coherent many-body entangled states that are resilient to disorder and decoherence.

Analysis of the whole-brain fly connectome reveals high-dimensional dynamics supported by many small independent circuits, motivating a proposal for optogenetic perturbation to efficiently learn a whole-brain causal neural dynamics model.

Pleiotropy is the effect of a single locus on multiple traits, which can lead to undesirable outcomes during crop improvement. Here, the authors reveal regulatory variation controlling pleiotropy between maize leaf angle and tassel branching, two important agronomic traits.