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A new artificial intelligence model, DeepSeek-R1, is introduced, demonstrating that the reasoning abilities of large language models can be incentivized through pure reinforcement learning, removing the need for human-annotated demonstrations.

The quark structure of the f₀(980) hadron is still unknown after 50 years of its discovery. Here, the CMS Collaboration reports a measurement of the elliptic flow of the f₀(980) state in proton-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 8.16 TeV, providing strong evidence that the state is an ordinary meson.

Covalent polymers with helical conformations offer an adaptive scaffold for smart materials, but polymer-to-monomer deconstruction is inhibited by the covalent backbone. Now it has been shown that poly(disulfide)s can be folded into helices driven by side-chain hydrogen-bonding self-assembly, resulting in a synthetic helical polymer that can be fully recycled.

Reframing of arousal as a latent dynamical system can reconstruct multidimensional measurements of large-scale spatiotemporal brain dynamics on the timescale of seconds in mice.

Efficient electro-optic conversion is central to photonic computing, and thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) offers this capability. Here, the authors demonstrate computing circuits on the TFLN platform, enabling the next generation of photonic computing systems featuring both high-speed and low-power.

The Einstein Probe has discovered a fast X-ray transient, EP240414a, associated with a broad-lined type Ic supernova. Its unusually soft spectrum and weak jet add to the diversity of stellar deaths and suggest a previously unknown Wolf–Rayet star explosion mechanism.

While Bell inequalities have been violated several times—mostly in photonic systems—their violations within particle physics experiments are less explored. Here, the BESIII Collaboration showcases Bell-violating nonlocal correlations between entangled hyperon pairs.

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

The growth of wafer-scale single-crystalline 2D semiconductors on sapphire is important for their electronic applications, but the underlying mechanisms are not yet fully understood. Here, the authors study the influence of air-induced sapphire surface hydrolysis on the growth process of 2D WS₂ and propose an ultraviolet light healing method to repair the degraded substrates.

There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

The authors present SVclone, a computational method for inferring the cancer cell fraction of structural variants from whole-genome sequencing data.

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.

The semileptonic decay channels of the Λc baryon can give important insights into weak interaction, but decay into a neutron, positron and electron neutrino has not been reported so far, due to difficulties in the final products’ identification. Here, the BESIII Collaboration reports its observation in e+e- collision data, exploiting machine-learning-based identification techniques.

Genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 screening reveals novel modulators of heparan sulfate proteoglycans that regulate cellular uptake of α-synuclein fibrils, including in human dopaminergic neurons.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

The authors propose a graded ball milling strategy to improve the strength and efficiency of brittle Zintl thermoelectrics, enabling robust, high-performance modules for stable and scalable waste heat energy harvesting.

Analyses of 2,658 whole genomes across 38 types of cancer identify the contribution of non-coding point mutations and structural variants to driving cancer.

The LHCb experiment at CERN has observed significant asymmetries between the decay rates of the beauty baryon and its CP-conjugated antibaryon, thus demonstrating CP violation in baryon decays.

Using the well-established foundry-based lithium niobate nanophotonics platform, a general electro-optic digital-to-analogue link with ultrahigh bandwidth (>150 Gb s⁻¹) and ultralow power consumption (0.058 pJ b⁻¹) is demonstrated, providing a direct, energy-efficient, high-speed and scalable solution for interfacing digital electronics and photonics.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

The death of massive stars has traditionally been discovered by explosive events in the gamma-ray band. Liu et al. show that the sensitive wide-field monitor on board Einstein Probe can reveal a weak soft-X-ray signal much earlier than gamma rays.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

The CMS Collaboration reports evidence for off-shell Higgs boson contributions in the production of Z boson pairs, and measures the width of the Higgs boson, which is inversely related to its lifetime.

Passive immunisation for respiratory syncytial virus for infants is recommended by the World Health Organization but products currently available have limited duration of protection. Here, the authors investigate the age distribution of infant hospitalisation for respiratory syncytial virus to inform optimal timing of immunisation.

Systematic studies are needed to discover molecular determinants of blood brain barrier dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease. This study identifies perturbed pericytic SMAD3-astrocytic VEGFA interactions as a potential driver of this dysfunction.

There is a long-standing trade-off between piezoelectric coefficient and mechanical quality factor for piezoceramics. Here, authors embed local defect dipoles into phase boundary engineering to relieve this relationship in (K, Na) NbO3 piezoceramics.

Theory predicts that phonons—quanta of lattice vibrations—can carry finite angular momentum and thus influence physical properties of materials. Now phonons with angular momentum have been seen in tellurium with a chiral crystal structure.

Investigating the inner structure of baryons is important to further our understanding of the strong interaction. Here, the BESIII Collaboration extracts the absolute value of the ratio of the electric to magnetic form factors and its relative phase for e + e − → J/ψ → ΛΣ decays, enhancing the signal thanks to the vacuum polarisation effect at the J/ψ peak.

Entanglement was observed in top–antitop quark events by the ATLAS experiment produced at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN using a proton–proton collision dataset with a centre-of-mass energy of √s  = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 fb⁻¹.

An ultra-low-loss integrated photonic chip fabricated on a customized multilayer silicon nitride 300-mm wafer platform, coupled over fibre with high-efficiency photon number resolving detectors, is used to generate Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill qubit states.

In somatic cells the mechanisms maintaining the chromosome ends are normally inactivated; however, cancer cells can re-activate these pathways to support continuous growth. Here, the authors characterize the telomeric landscapes across tumour types and identify genomic alterations associated with different telomere maintenance mechanisms.

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.

Conserving and restoring ecosystems requires understanding what natural vegetation would look like without human disturbance. This study maps the most likely global cover of trees, short vegetation, and bare ground, showing that land management through fire and herbivory may influence ecosystems more than climate change alone.

Observations of γ-rays with energies up to 1.4 PeV find that 12 sources in the Galaxy are PeVatrons, one of which is the Crab Nebula.

Excitonic pairing in fractional quantum Hall states shows two new quantum phases, including a fractional exciton condensate and an unusual type of exciton that obeys fermionic or anyonic quantum statistics.

A scanning tunnelling microscopy study of monolayer FeSe on strontium titanate reveals that this intriguing system has a plain s-wave pairing symmetry.

Applications of rare-earth nickelates are hampered by lack of global understanding of the interplay among various degrees of freedom. Here, Mercy et al. propose that the metal-insulator transition of nickelates arises from the softening of an oxygen breathing distortion, providing a united picture of electronic, structural and magnetic properties.

By controlling the flow or composition of liquids, optofluidics provides numerous possibilities for devices, and so has great potential for transformation optics. Here, a multi-mode optofluidic waveguide is presented, which manipulates light to produce controllable chirped focussing and interference.

Bound states in continuum have attracted attention in various platforms, and recently condensation of bound states in continuum polariton modes was demonstrated at low temperatures. Here the authors report the observation of such a state in a periodic air-hole perovskite-based photonic crystal at room temperature.

The existence and properties of tetraquark states with two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks have been widely debated. Here, the authors use a unitarized model to study the properties of an exotic narrow state compatible with a doubly charmed tetraquark.

Phonons are quanta of the vibrations of the lattice in solids. They can carry angular momentum and allow an emergent chirality. This Perspective defines various types of chiral phonon and classifies the previously observed manifestations of them.

Grasslands tend to be limited by both nutrient and water availability. Here the authors use standardized field experiments to show that the effects of nutrient addition on grassland biomass may cancel out the negative impact of drought, but the outcome depends on aridity and other local conditions.

An analysis of 2,954 genomes from 38 cancer subtypes identified 19,166 retrotransposition events in 35% of samples. Aberrant LINE-1 retrotranspositions can lead to the deletion of tumor-suppressor genes as well as the amplification of oncogenes.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

Strong coupling between magnons and photons allows coupling of magnongs to qubits, suggesting that magnon-polaritons could find applications in quantum information. Here, Zhang et al. observe an exceptional point and spontaneous symmetry breaking in a cavity magnon-polariton system.

SEAM is a platform for the analysis of high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry imaging that allows spatially resolved nuclear metabolomic profiling at the single-cell level.

Disorder has been a prime challenge to study the topological properties in a hybrid system. Here, Zhanget al. report ballistic superconductivity in InSb nanowires interfacing with a NbTiN superconductor, paving the way for disorder-free Majorana devices.