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Managing power exhaust in fusion reactors is a key challenge, especially in compact designs for cost-effective commercial energy. This study shows how alternative divertor configurations improve exhaust control, enhance stability, absorb transients and enable independent plasma regulation.

Plasma turbulence is the main driver to deteriorate the performance of fusion power plants. This work presents an unprecedented comparison of plasma turbulence between experiment and simulation, proving that the gyrokinetic model GENE reached a high level of maturity to predict core turbulence.

Edge-localized plasma modes in a tokamak can damage its innermost wall. Simulations now show that fast ions can modify the spatio-temporal structure of these modes. These effects need to be considered in the optimization of control techniques.

Fine-mapping of causal variants and integration of epigenetic and chromatin conformation data identify likely target genes for 150 breast cancer risk regions.

Confining plasma and managing disruptions in tokamak devices is a challenge. Here the authors demonstrate a method predicting and possibly preventing disruptions and macroscopic instabilities in tokamak plasma using data from JET.

Breast cancer risk for BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation carriers varies depending on other genetic factors. Here, the authors perform a case-only genome-wide association study and highlight novel loci associated with breast cancer risk for BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation carriers.

Rotational fission may explain the formation of pairs of asteroids that have similar heliocentric orbits but are not bound together. These authors report photometric observations of a sample of asteroid pairs revealing that the primaries of pairs with mass ratios much less than 0.2 rotate rapidly, near their critical fission frequency. In agreement with crucial predictions, they do not find asteroid pairs with mass ratios larger than 0.2, and as the mass ratio approaches 0.2 the primary period grows long.

The impact of the DART spacecraft on the asteroid Dimorphos is reported and reconstructed, demonstrating that kinetic impactor technology is a viable technique to potentially defend Earth from asteroids.

The suppression of edge-localized modes in tokamak plasmas is crucial to prevent them from damaging the walls of the chamber. Now experiments confirm the role that magnetic islands play in suppressing these detrimental modes.

The icy dwarf planet Makemake has projected axes of 1,430 ± 9 and 1,502 ± 45 km and a V-band geometric albedo larger than Pluto’s but smaller than Eris’s, with no global Pluto-like atmosphere.

Observations of a stellar occultation by (10199) Chariklo, a minor body that orbits the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune, reveal that it has a ring system, a property previously observed only for the four giant planets of the Solar System.

The measurement of the total cross-section of proton–proton collisions is of fundamental importance for particle physics. Here, the first measurement of the inelastic cross-section is presented for proton–proton collisions at an energy of 7 teraelectronvolts using the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider.

Experiments at the Joint European Torus tokamak show improved thermal ion confinement in the presence of highly energetic ions and Alfvénic instabilities in the plasma.

Triggering and sustaining fusion reactions — with the goal of overall energy production — in a tokamak plasma requires efficient heating. Radio-frequency heating of a three-ion plasma is now experimentally shown to be a potentially viable technique.

Cytokines and their associated pathways can affect survival ofMycobacterium tuberculosis in macrophages, representing potential targets for host-directed therapies. Here, Péan et al. show that cytokine-STAT signalling promotes mycobacterial survival within macrophages by deregulating lipid droplet homeostasis.

The heart arises from distinct progenitor cells of both the first and second heart fields (FHF and SHF). Here, the authors generated precardiac organoids from mouse and human pluripotent cells and show that FHF and SHF cells form similarly to their in vivo counterparts in response to BMP and Wnt signalling, respectively.

Power exhaust is one of the biggest challenges stopping fusion energy. This article shows experimental evidence for strategically shaping the power exhaust region as a solution to this challenge, utilising physics understanding to strike a balance between engineering complexity and power exhaust benefits, consistent with reduced models and simulations.

SPHERE at the VLT observed Hygiea, the fourth largest body in the main belt and the parent body of a big asteroid family, at unprecedented spatial resolution. Its unexpected spherical shape without any impact crater is explained by numerical simulations with a big impact that fluidized the body, reassembling it in a rotational equilibrium regime.

Observations of a stellar occultation of Haumea, one of the four known trans-Neptunian dwarf planets, constrain its size, shape and density, and reveal a ring coplanar with Haumea’s largest moon.

The Innovative Medicines Initiative Consortium RESOLUTE has started to develop tools and produce data sets to de-orphanize transporters in the solute carrier protein (SLC) superfamily, thereby lowering the barrier for the scientific community to explore SLCs as an attractive drug target class.

Tokamak plasmas are prone to sudden collapses that terminate the nuclear fusion reactions. This perspective discusses the prediction of these so-called disruptions with artificial intelligence techniques.

A stochastic background of gravitational waves is expected to arise from a superposition of a large number of unresolved gravitational-wave sources and should carry unique signatures from the earliest epochs of the Universe. Limits on the amplitude of the stochastic gravitational-wave background are now reported using the data from a two-year science run of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. These limits rule out certain models of early Universe evolution.

Phase vortices and skyrmions manifest as rotational entities in condensates, superfluids, and optics, typically revealed by the analysis of the Berry curvature. Via two-component microcavity polaritons, the authors imprint a dynamical pseudospin texture to the emitted light, generating a continuous vortex with two ultrafast spiraling cores.