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Developing efficient catalysts that resolve the activity-stability trade-off remains challenging for hydrogen production. Here, the authors report a steam-assisted, machine-learning-screened synthesis of self-healing Ru/TiMnO_x electrodes that resolve this challenge.

Electrocatalytic co-reduction of CO₂ and nitrate to synthesize urea is a sustainable and promising option to the alternative conventional Bosch-Meiser. Here, the authors report a CeO_x-integrated diatomic electrocatalyst overcomes the traditional trade-off between urea yield and Faradaic efficiency.

Hypoxic conditioning—controlled, brief and repeated exposure to moderate levels of low-oxygen air—is safe in people with Parkinson’s disease, with participants reporting mild, short-term improvement in Parkinson’s symptoms.

Non-uniform noise introduces bias in multivariate analysis of mass spectrometry data. Here, the authors study the noise structure of the widely used Orbitrap to develop a data scaling method that reduces this bias resulting in clearer separation of chemical information from noise in biological data.

The authors used deep metric learning to characterize 650 neuroactive compounds by zebrafish behavioral profiles. After redesigning a large screen to overcome AI/ML shortcut learning, zebrafish behavioral similarity found compounds acting on the same human receptors as structurally dissimilar drugs.

Alkaline hydrogen production needs stable catalysts, but the electrical double layer is overlooked. Here, the authors report a dense epitaxial hydroxide layer that strengthens the double layer, prevents catalyst leaching, and enhances material stability for 1,400 h in an industrial electrolyzer.

This study demonstrates that deep recurrent neural networks outperform other models (e.g., CNNs, Transformers) in capturing auditory cortex activity across species. It also introduces an automated tool to extract spatio-temporal receptive fields (STRFs) for each neural unit.

Ears encode sound with precisely timed spikes, but the perceptual role of this temporal coding remains uncertain. Here, the authors report that high-fidelity temporal coding is necessary for neural network models to reproduce human-like auditory behavior.

Dense calcium imaging combined with co-registered high-resolution electron microscopy reconstruction of the brain of the same mouse provide a functional connectomics map of tens of thousands of neurons of a region of the primary cortex and higher visual areas.

Developing durable catalysts for the acidic oxygen evolution reaction is crucial for proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers. Here, the authors report incorporating high-entropy atoms (Co, Ni, Cu, Mn, Sm) into RuO₂ via annealing, achieving stable operation at 1 A cm⁻² and 50 °C for 1500 h.

Analysis of a fossilized front flipper of the Jurassic ichthyosaur Temnodontosaurus that preserves details of soft tissue indicates the presence of a serrated trailing edge that would have reduced noise generated while swimming, enabling stealth hunting and hiding from predators.

IrO2 catalysts typically feature rutile structures with multiple facets. The authors develop an ammonia-induced method to synthesize single-faceted CuO₂ monolayers with the theoretically optimal (101) facet, resulting in high oxygen evolution activity and stability (>10,000 h) in a water electrolyser.

Ocean circulation moves heat and gases between the ocean and atmosphere, impacting the carbon cycle at decadal timescales. Here, a radiocarbon coral record of ocean mixing from Bermuda suggests that the formation of mode water, and thus carbon uptake, have been more stable over the past 200 years than previously thought.

The neural and computational mechanisms underpinning pitch perception remain unclear. Here, the authors trained deep neural networks to estimate the fundamental frequency of sounds and found that human pitch perception depends on precise spike timing in the auditory nerve, but is also adapted to the statistical tendencies of natural sounds.

The methanol oxidation reaction is crucial for direct methanol fuel cells but is hindered by CO poisoning of Pt-based catalysts. Here, the authors report high-entropy alloyed single-atom Pt catalysts that resist CO poisoning, achieving a mass activity of 35.3 A mg^-1 and maintaining high durability.

Propane oxidative dehydrogenation offers a promising path for propylene production, but selective propylene formation with minimal COx remains challenging. Here, the authors introduce dual-atom catalysts achieving just 5.2% COx selectivity at 46.1% propane conversion (520 °C) with stable performance for over 1000 hours.

Promoters are able to modulate the performance of catalysts for a given process, but this can be done through various mechanisms. Here the role of Mn as a promoter on Fe-based catalysts for CO₂ hydrogenation to olefins is comprehensively investigated via spectroscopic and kinetic analyses. The promoter induces a restructuring of the catalyst surface, balancing the strength of the adsorption of reactants and intermediates.

Improving kinetics for electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction is relevant to important sustainable energy technologies. The authors propose an atomic-scale bimetal assembly consisting Pt and Fe dual sites to regulate the inherent scaling relationship between intermediates for fast kinetics.

A brain-to-voice neuroprosthesis enables a man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to synthesize his voice in real time by decoding neural activity, demonstrating the potential of brain–computer interfaces to enable people with paralysis to speak intelligibly and expressively.

Birdsong is simultaneously repetitive and highly diverse. Sierro et al. resolve this apparent paradox through experiments in blue tits showing that consistent repetition is a fitness indicator, while song diversity reduces habituation during singing displays.

People are capable of making near-optimal decisions in volatile, changing environments. Here, the authors show how two neural decision signals encode distinct aspects of the belief updating process underpinning such adaptive decisions.

Recognition memory for other individuals forms quickly. Here the authors show that such memories are enabled by oxytocin and can be retrieved from reinforced and more distinct neural representations even when only limited sensory information is available.

Accurate segmentation of ischemic stroke lesions from brain MRI is crucial for timely diagnosis and treatment planning. Here, the authors present DeepISLES, an AI ensemble for stroke MRI analysis that outperforms previous methods and matches expert radiologist performance in identifying stroke lesions.

The photoluminescence of gold nanoclusters is affected by low-frequency acoustic vibrations. Here, the authors demonstrate that layer-by-layer ligand engineering can suppress such structural vibrations to achieve brighter emissions.

Nitrate electroreduction to ammonia offers a sustainable route, but designing efficient catalysts remains challenging. Here, the authors develop a pulsed discharge strategy to synthesize dual atom catalysts with asymmetric active sites, achieving high ammonia production efficiency and stability.

Nonlinear wave mixing has been explored in space plasma. Here the authors report beat-wave Brillouin scattering experiment at EISCAT, in which two radio waves at different transmitted frequencies are driving ion acoustic waves in the ionosphere, leading to stimulated Brillouin emissions escaping the plasma.

The photoluminescence of metal nanoclusters can be modulated through traps. Here, the authors show how H₂O molecules passivate oxygen vacancies allowing sensitive color tuning and boosting the emission efficiency.

Understanding the active state of electrocatalysts during operation is crucial for advancing catalyst development. Here, the authors report an operando X-ray absorption spectroscopic study revealing a structural change in Mn spinel oxide electrocatalysts in a fuel cell.

Dual-atom catalysts with precise active sites are gaining attention, but further studies are needed to optimise their construction and understand their catalytic synergy. Here the authors report a series of asymmetric selenium-based dual- atom catalysts that comprise heteronuclear SeN2–MN2 (M = Fe, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Mo, etc.) active sites for the efficient oxygen reduction reaction.

The exact crystal chemistry of perovskites containing 5f elements has remained a matter of debate. Here, the authors synthesise a BaO-deficient Pu-based perovskite with a composition close to Ba3PuO6 and study the Pu oxidation state, the crystal structure and Ba/Pu ratio, reporting on thermodynamic and magnetic properties and offering new insights into Ba-Pu-O solid-state chemistry.

A dual-site electrocatalyst is developed to greatly enhance methanol production from CO₂ reduction via a cascade process, taking advantage of molecular-scale CO spillover.

Extracting lithium from alternative aqueous sources becomes crucial in meeting increasing lithium demand. Here, authors design an economically feasible electrochemical process that achieves selective lithium extraction from geothermal brine and finally produce battery grade lithium hydroxide.

Theories predict teleportation of phase-coherent single electrons through a topological superconducting island. Here, the authors report persistent Coulomb blockade conductance peaks due to coherent transport of single electrons through patterned InAs-Al islands embedded in an Aharonov-Bohm interferometer.

A low-potential dual-side hydrogen production system is more efficient than water splitting but suffers from stability issues. Here, the authors report a self-reactivating PdCu catalyst that operates stably for 120 h, offering an alternative solution for energy-efficient hydrogen production.

During NREM sleep, spindles emerge from thalamocortical interactions. Here the authors carry out multisite thalamic and cortical recordings in freely behaving mice, to investigate the role of other non-classical thalamic sites in sleep spindle generation.

Rapid particle acceleration is possible using a fixed-field alternating-gradient machine—but ‘scaling’ in its design has been necessary to avoid beam blow-up and loss. The demonstration now of acceleration in such a machine without scaling has positive implications for future particle accelerators.

The electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction catalyzed by efficient and economical catalysts is critically important for sustainable energy devices. Here the authors report anchoring Pt atoms onto valence-adjustable CuO_x/Cu hybrid nanoparticle to dynamically tune the Pt 5d valence states at the initial reaction stage for optimizing oxygen reduction performance.

Vertical heat exchange over the Amundsen Sea shelf modulates sea ice and ice-shelf melting, according to combined mooring data from Antarctica and ice-ocean modeling.

Modulating the electronic structure of active metal sites is crucial to enhance the activity of anion-exchange membrane water electrolyzers. Here, the authors elaborate Cr-doped amorphous metal oxide catalysts with excellent activity and stability.

By coupling CrCEST MRI and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Armbruster et al. present a metabolic imaging protocol that enables a noninvasive, personalized and muscle-specific measurement of oxidative phosphorylation in healthy adults.

The development of superior and cost-effective catalysts for the oxygen reduction and evolution reactions is pivotal for the future hydrogen economy. Now a series of Ru-modified Li₂MnO₃ catalysts have been designed to optimize the electronic structure and achieve a high performance in both oxygen reduction and evolution reactions, as demonstrated in practical anion exchange membrane fuel cell and water electrolyser tests.

Elucidating the synergistic catalytic mechanism involving multiple active centers is of great significance for heterogeneous catalysis. Here the authors construct an asymmetric TeN₂–CuN₃ double atomic site catalyst featuring synergistic CO₂ activation and H₂O dissociation for CO₂ electroreduction.

Using data gathered from the microphones of the Perseverance rover, the first characterization of the acoustic environment on Mars is presented, showing two distinct values for the speed of sound in CO₂-dominated atmosphere.