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Estimating rates of pertussis infections is challenging due to the large proportion of asymptomatic infections and lack of a reliable serological correlate of protection. Here, the authors develop a transmission model to evaluate the reliability of pertussis serosurveys for quantifying recent infections.

The temporal characterization of few-femtosecond vacuum ultraviolet pulses bring new opportunities for investigating ultrafast light-matter interactions.

OrganoidTracker 2.0 enables fast and accurate cell tracking in complex systems such as developing organoids. A key aspect of the work is determining cell tracks with error probabilities for any tracking feature, from cell cycles to lineage trees.

Using inbred medaka strains, the authors mapped 59 genetic loci linked to heart rate. Gene editing validated conserved genes affecting heart rate and morphology, highlighting the power of isogenic strains in uncovering mechanisms of cardiac traits and disease.

Regulations on the amount of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances allowed in drinking water are getting more and more stringent, and detecting small amounts is challenging. A sensing platform based on a remote gate field-effect transistor allows a sensitivity higher than that required by the US Environmental Protection Agency to be reached.

3D correlative nanoscale tomography on an Fe-W alloy shows that topology requires secondary grain boundary dislocations which strongly control patterned solute segregation, reshaping segregation energy spectra and opening routes for advanced alloy design.

Observed 730 Myr after the Big Bang, a little red dot is found to anchor an overdensity of eight galaxies and seems to be embedded in a massive host dark matter halo.

Two regions of superconductivity are observed in the phase diagram of magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene. This may yield insight into the superconducting mechanism in moiré materials.

Virtual nature exposure reduces self-reported pain and is associated with decreased brain responses linked to somatosensory and nociceptive processing, providing new insights into the underlying mechanisms of nature-induced analgesia.

HippoMaps provides an open-source resource for studying the human hippocampus at different scales and with different modalities such as histology, fMRI, structural MRI and EEG.

A single-shot full-vector-field measurement technique for intense, ultrashort laser pulses is studied, demonstrating the approach on systems ranging from high-repetition-rate oscillators to petawatt-class lasers.

The authors present magnetotransport measurements of tetralayer WSe₂, which serves as a simulator for correlated Dirac fermion physics. They tune the interactions using the twist angle and electric field, resulting in a semimetal–Mott insulator transition.

Here the authors show that MRAP2 tunes the melanocortin-4 receptor by boosting its G-protein signaling while limiting β-arrestin2 interaction and destabilizing receptor oligomers, shaping appetite regulation.

The authors report on an experimental study of attosecond time delays of photoelectrons emitted from CO₂ molecules. This clarifies the role of internal dynamics of ions and ionelectron entanglement on the photoionization dynamics.

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.

An untethered jamming mechanism uses magnetic fields to control interactions between soft-ferromagnetic composites with designed magnetization profiles. Stiffness, damping, and shapelocking are tuned for programmable robotic materials.

Engineering structurally and functionally complex synthetic cells remains a key challenge. Here DNA condensate synthetic cells combine phase separation and DNA nanostructures to reveal how switchable artificial cytoskeletons assemble in viscoelastic confinements. These cytoskeletons improve the mechanical properties of synthetic cells and enable stable mechano-interfaces with mammalian cells.

By combining left- and right-handed DNA-PAINT probes, Unterauer et al. achieve simple, robust, and highly multiplexed super-resolution. They show 13-plex neuronal maps, revealing nanoscale organization of cytoskeleton, organelles, and synapses.

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.

Graph Neural Networks achieve accurate predictions of optical spectra after finetuning on only a few hundreds of spectra from a higher rung on Jacob’s ladder of optoelectronic properties, offering an efficient route towards experimental accuracy.

The treatment potential of psilocybin for postpartum depression was investigated in a preclinical mouse model. Here the authors show both acute and long-term effects of psilocybin in mothers and their offspring who were exposed via lactation.

Multicellular tissues behave akin to nematic liquid crystals, which are fluid as well as ordered. Here, the authors develop an image analysis method to capture the nematic ordering of tissues with the complex geometries typical of morphogenesis.

Membrane-free complex coacervate microdroplets are compelling models for primitive compartmentalization, but it is unclear how molecular co-operativity influences physicochemical properties and activity of membrane-free compartments. Here, the authors use RNA/peptide coacervates as a model to reveal the relationship between coacervate properties and ribozyme activity.

This study characterizes the interaction between the clinical candidate anle138b and Aβ₄₀ fibrils in a lipid environment. The compound reduced fibril formation by approximately 75%, providing insights relevant to Alzheimer’s drug development.

The authors present electrical transport-based evidence of generalized Wigner crystal states in twisted bilayer MoSe₂ at fractional electron fillings ν = 2/5, 1/2, 3/5, 2/3, 8/9, 10/9, and 4/3, together with a Mott state at ν = 1. They further demonstrate continuous quantum melting transitions in a multi-parameter space of electron density, displacement and magnetic fields.

The authors demonstrate deeply subwavelength light confinement in the terahertz spectral range by exploiting the strong light–matter coupling and hyperbolicity of phonon polaritons in hafnium-based dichalcogenides.

Transcription factors must retain specificity despite recognising a variety of DNA sequences. Here, the authors find that the transcription factor AflR does this by using its structured and disordered regions together to recognise DNA sequences.

Polymeric semiconductors suffer from high exciton binding energy. Here, the authors report a crystal structure engineering strategy for producing poly(triazine imide) with the capability of spontaneous exciton dissociation into free charges, enabling efficient photocatalytic overall water splitting.

The transcriptional regulation of oligodendrocytes has an essential role in myelin formation and maintenance. Here, the authors identify the transcription factor Tfii-i as a regulator of myelin genes expression in the nervous system and show that its loss enhances myelin thickness and nerve conduction.

How the brain combines sensory with non-sensory information is unknown. Here, the authors find that sensory input from the thalamus to the apical dendrites of the main cortical output neurons enables the first stage of this combination process.

Biomolecular condensates are made of multiple components but current techniques cannot capture their complex composition quantitatively. Now it has been shown that the dense-phase binodal point defining the composition of multicomponent condensates can be inferred precisely from the intersection of a spectrometrically determined tie-line with an isorefractive line obtained from quantitative phase imaging.

Spin-enhanced lateral flow tests use nanodiamonds for the sensitive, robust detection of disease biomarkers. Here, authors report a clinical evaluation of a test for SARS-CoV-2 antigen, finding 95.1% sensitivity (Ct ≤ 30) and 100% specificity, with detection 2.0 days earlier than conventional tests.

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.

This genomic study of magnetic resonance imaging-based brain age in 56,348 people identifies 59 genetic loci, links brain aging to mental and physical health, and suggests high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes as causal factors of brain aging.

Sensor failures and limited resolution challenge many complex systems. Here, authors develop a multimodal AI method to generate super-resolution of a sensor using other available sensors in the system, revealing hidden dynamics in fusion plasmas and enabling cost-effective, high-resolution diagnostics.

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.

ParABS systems partition chromosomal DNA and low-copy plasmids in bacteria. Here, the authors elucidate the mode of interaction between ParA and ParB and clarify how ParB stimulates the ATPase activity of ParA to drive the segregation process.

Myeloperoxidase, a highly expressed neutrophil protein, disassembles nucleosomes, facilitating neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) formation, and binds stably to NETs extracellularly.

Manipulating the physical properties of solid matter using only photons is a major challenge in materials science. Here, the authors present the photochemistry occurring in a single crystal of a Mo(III) cyanide complex which undergoes a reversible breaking and reformation of dative bonds and spin state change upon exposure to visible light.

Plasma proteomics plays a key role in advancing clinical research and biomarker discovery. Here, the authors show in a large MSCoreSys multicenter benchmark study that DIA outperforms DDA, delivering robust, precise, and reproducible label-free protein quantification across sites.

Here, the authors present archaeological excavations from two sites paired with life-size rock engravings from 12,800 to 11,400 years ago in the Nefud desert of northern Arabia. These engravings, depicting camels, ibex and more, combined with stone tools from associated archaeological deposits and sediment analyses of playa deposits, provide evidence of human populations exploiting seasonal waterbodies.

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.

Brain age gaps (BAGs) highlight deviations from healthy brain aging, yet their biophysical underpinnings in aging and dementia are not well understood. Here, the authors use EEG connectivity and generative modeling across diverse populations to reveal that BAGs are influenced by geography, income, sex and education, with implications for understanding accelerated aging and dementia.

Nimbus, a deep learning model, uses a large multiplexed imaging dataset to predict the likelihood of marker positivity in single cells.

Tau aggregation, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, disrupts neuron structure. Aging weakens chaperone defenses like Hsp90. This study designs β-Hsp90, a small peptide mimicking Hsp90, to prevent Tau aggregation, offering promise for new amyloid disease drugs.

Spatial cell distribution within a tissue microenvironment is a rapidly advancing field. Here, authors assess three commercially available single-cell resolution spatial transcriptomics approaches (CosMx, MERFISH, and Xenium) to inform which technology outperforms for immune profiling of solid tumors using patient samples.

Galland et al. present soSMARt, a method for in-depth single molecule localisation microscopy using microfabricated devices, which enables single-objective light-sheet microscopy, adaptive optics correction, real-time registration, and axially extended volume reconstruction with nanometer precision.

A nanoparticle-based microfluidic assay enables rapid sterility testing of biopharmaceuticals, such as those derived from human mesenchymal stem cells and T cells, by detecting microbial contamination within 18 h.

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.

Max Kieker explains how a technique described in a paper from 1994 inspired him to change his research subject.