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This study uses brain recordings, self-reports, and facial analysis to decode acute pain in epilepsy patients. Machine learning reveals stable neural markers in mesolimbic, striatal, and cortical regions, plus facial cues, enabling reliable pain detection in naturalistic settings.

ATF6α activation in human and preclinical models of hepatocellular carcinoma is significantly associated with an aggressive tumour phenotype characterized by reduced survival, glycolytic reprogramming and local immunosuppression.

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.

Visible-light-mediated intramolecular [2+2] cycloaddition of aza-1,6-dienes gives bridged, not fused, heterocycles, in violation of the ‘rule-of-five’, which dictates that five-membered rings are preferentially formed. This method allows a variety of bridged bicyclic scaffolds to be accessed, enabling drug-relevant properties to be readily tuned.

Diamond anvils are widely used in high-pressure research to investigate matter under extreme conditions. Here, broadband spectroscopy is used to measure pressure-driven opacity of diamond anvils to 520 GPa, revealing bandgap narrowing and optical behavior that redefines the limits of high-pressure spectroscopy.

In this work, researchers build a scalable photonic Chern insulator by twisting a fibre during fabrication, breaking an effective time-reversal symmetry and inducing a pseudo-magnetic field. The team reveals a ‘Goldilocks’ regime that guarantees topological protection against fabrication-induced disorder of any symmetry class in the fibre cross-section.

Authors study links between amyloid secondary nucleation and growth defects, demonstrating these sites on Aβ40/Aβ42 fibrils are rare compared to the number of protein molecules. Re-analysis of published data suggests that defects may also drive secondary nucleation generally.

Aqueous two-phase systems have potential as biomimetic materials, but often lack stability and are prone to collapse. Here, the authors use interfacial assembly of chitin nanofibres and cellulose nanocrystals to prepare a biobased system with permeability and switchable motility.

The open interfaces of a three-dimensional all-dielectric photonic topological insulator operate as effective metasurfaces with helical surface states, enabling spin-dependent steering and directional control of far-field surface state emission.

People constantly decide whether to stop what they are doing to do something else. Here, the authors show that the quality of available options has a greater influence on people’s decisions to help others than to help themselves.

Viral ribonucleoprotein–viral protein networks form pre-replication centres that nucleate viral factories and drive respiratory syncytial virus replication.

Here the authors compare genetic testing strategies in rare movement disorders, improve diagnostic yield with genome analysis, and establish CD99L2 as an X-linked spastic ataxia gene, showing that CD99L2–CAPN1 signaling disruption likely drives neurodegeneration.

Genome-wide association meta-analysis identifies 58 independent risk loci for major anxiety disorders among individuals of European ancestry and implicates GABAergic signaling as a potential mechanism underlying genetic risk for these disorders.

Werner et al. present the results of the 201 Trial, a 12-week randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled phase 2a study of risvodetinib, in patients with early untreated Parkinson’s disease. Risvodetinib was found to be safe and well tolerated.

The authors present a genetically encoded tool based on a bifunctional enzyme that can regenerate NAD⁺ while executing an engineered glycerol shunt. The tool successfully restored redox imbalance and modulated lipid metabolism in vitro and in a mouse hepatic steatosis model.

A pragmatic, cluster randomized trial in rural Guangdong, China, showed that 12-month implementation of a comprehensive antibiotic stewardship program involving physician training, point-of-care prompts, monthly peer review feedback and smartphone-based patient education substantially reduced antibiotic prescriptions for acute respiratory infections compared to control consultations.

Aperiodic composite crystals were discovered that emulate 2D moiré materials, demonstrating a potentially scalable approach for producing moiré materials for next-generation electronics and a generalizable approach for realizing theoretical predictions of higher-dimensional quantum phenomena.

Here, the authors conduct a GWAS for eGFR, then a three-stage regional meta-analysis using GWAS summary data from the Eastern, Western, and Southern African geographical regions. Followed by fine mapping, colocalization, functional annotation, pathway analysis, and phenome-wide association studies showing weaker APOL1 effects in Africa.

It is unclear whether the harsh abiotic conditions of drylands hinder biological invasions. This global analysis shows that drylands are vulnerable to non-native plants and are likely to become more so as native plant diversity declines and grazing pressure intensifies.

Extending their previous findings of brain changes in a first pregnancy, the authors show that a second pregnancy uniquely alters women’s brains, involving both a further fine-tuning of first-pregnancy effects and distinct changes in other networks.

Here, the authors show that 2’-O-methylated RNA fragments from ribosomal RNA naturally block TLR7 and TLR8, helping to avoid avoid harmful self-RNA detection and autoimmunity.

Boosting mitochondrial metabolism in neurons in central memory circuits by enhancing Ca²⁺ retention in the mitochondrial matrix is shown to improve long-term memory formation in flies and mice.

Natural products inspire the development of pseudo-natural products through combinations of fragments of compound classes that are chemically and biologically distinct. Here, the authors report a library of 244 pseudo-natural products, evaluate them in the cell painting essays and identify the phenotypic role of individual fragments.

Terahertz microspectroscopic imaging at subgap millielectronvolt energies of a two-dimensional superfluid plasmon in few-layer Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+x is demonstrated, allowing the spatial resolution of its deeply subdiffractive terahertz electrodynamics.

Climate and land-use changes will redistribute fire across the planet. Larger, more frequent, and intense wildfires are projected in extra-tropical regions, while human-driven declines in fire activity are reversed under the highest degrees of warming.

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.

From 2014–2017, marine heatwaves caused global mass coral bleaching, where the corals lose their symbiotic algae. The authors find, this event exceeded the severity of all prior global bleaching events in recorded history, with approximately half the world’s reefs bleaching and 15% experiencing substantial mortality.

A measurement strategy is described that is able to read out the parity of minimal two-site Kitaev chains in real time, by coupling two Majoranas and resolving their quantum capacitance.

The mechanisms of increased EPAS1 transcription in clear cell renal cell carcinoma remain to be explored. Here, the authors propose a regulatory circuitry of EPAS1 expression which is dependent on HIF and lineage-specific transcription factors.

The transcription factor ATF4 and its effector lipocalin 2 (LCN2) have a key role in immune evasion and tumour progression, and targeting the ATF4–LCN2 axis might provide a way to treat several types of solid tumour by increasing anti-cancer immunity.

A follow-up analysis of a clinical trial that evaluated anti-PD-1 therapy in patients with cancer who are living with HIV provides mechanistic insights into transcriptomic, cellular and cytokine changes related to immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment and identifies a signature associated with clinical response.

In this study, the authors present optimization and efficacy testing of apolipoprotein-based lipid nanoparticles for delivering various nucleic acid therapeutics in vivo to immune cells and their progenitors in the bone marrow.

This study investigates whether genetic predisposition to systemic inflammation affects cortical thinning trajectories and the risk for psychopathology in adolescents, using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.

Vertical transmission is thought to favour beneficial host–microbe interactions, but these may also be context dependent. Here Bruijning et al. show with a model that variable environments can select for bet-hedging by hosts via imperfect vertical transmission of microbes.

The electronic behaviour of complex oxides such as LaNiO₃ depends on many intrinsic and extrinsic factors, making it challenging to identify microscopic mechanisms. Here the authors demonstrate the influence of oxygen vacancies on the thickness-dependent metal-insulator transition of LaNiO₃ films.

Short-lived halogens have a substantial indirect cooling effect on climate and this cooling effect has increased since pre-industrial times owing to anthropogenic amplification of natural halogen emissions.

JWST imaged three of the gas giants orbiting the star HR 8799 to study their atmospheres. The uniform enrichment of heavy elements, including sulfur, indicates that they formed like Jupiter and Saturn by accreting a lot of icy and rocky solids.

Experimentally assessing entropy production in nanosystems is challenging. Now, the dissipation is visualized in a time-dependently driven non-Markovian quantum-dot blinking process in real time.

A spatial and single-cell transcriptomics study across multiple mammalian species identifies epidermal BMP signalling as a functional requirement for rete ridge formation, providing insight into mechanisms underlying hair density loss and wound healing.

Whether orientation-selectivity is discernable via fMRI remains unclear. Here, by analyzing a public dataset of responses to natural scenes using neurally-inspired image-computable models, the authors isolate and characterize a coarse-scale orientation map and demonstrate that orientation-selective BOLD responses reflect multiple distinct computations at a range of spatial scales.

The STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory demonstrates evidence of spin correlations in \(\Lambda \bar{\Lambda }\) hyperon pairs inherited from virtual spin-correlated strange quark–antiquark pairs during QCD confinement.

Neuroinflammation triggers DNA damage and subsequent parthanatos-mediated neuron death. Inhibiting parthanatos in a mouse model of autoimmune inflammation is neuroprotective and reduces disease-associated paralysis.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

Low glume coverage is the preferred for easy threshing in grain production, but the genetic basis remains unclear. Here, the authors report the gene GC1, which encodes an atypical G protein γ subunit, negatively regulates sorghum glume coverage and the naturally truncated alleles can be useful in the naked grain breeding.

This study shows how the bacterial retron Eco2 defends against viruses. Phage nucleases trigger activation of Eco2, which cuts RNAs, shuts down protein production and stops phage replication.

By combining satellite observations with ground-based data and expert validation, this analysis demonstrates considerable misestimation of grassland extent and thereby carbon stock estimates in previous global assessments based on remote sensing.

cellSTAAR advances noncoding rare variant association analysis by integrating single-cell genomics data.

Battery electrode binders are hard to image but strongly affect battery performance. Here, authors use silver and bromine staining to reveal common cellulose- and rubber-based binders in graphite and Si negative electrodes and identify processing that reduces electrode resistance.