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M. Aghajan and colleagues recorded hippocampal activity in rats foraging in a two-dimensional virtual reality (VR) environment. Spatial selectivity was absent but phase precession was intact, occurring within 2-s-long hippocampal motifs. Selectivity to space and distance traveled were greatly enhanced when the rats repeatedly followed systematic paths. The results demonstrate that distal visual cues alone are insufficient to generate a robust hippocampal rate code for space but are sufficient to generate a temporal code.

The structure of the ligand-free HIV-1–Env trimer allows conformational fixation of Env and generation of an antigen that binds CD4 with high affinity and is recognized by broadly neutralizing antibodies but not poorly neutralizing ones.

Chromosome-scale assembly for the cultivated octoploid strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) uncovers the origin and evolutionary processes that shaped this complex allopolyploid, providing a useful resource for genome-wide analyses and molecular breeding.

An alternative HIV vaccine design facilitates generation of HIV-1-antibodies, with promising neutralization breadth in rodents and nonhuman primates.

Here, using cryo-EM and smFRET, Henderson et al. show how tryptophan 571 in the HIV-1 Env acts as a conformational switch during receptor-mediated viral entry and design HIV-1 Env proteins that cannot undergo conformational changes. This has important implications for HIV-1 vaccine design.

It is hoped that simulations of molecules and materials will provide a near-term application of quantum computers. A study of the performance of error mitigation highlights the obstacles to scaling up these calculations to practically useful sizes.

The ATLAS Collaboration reports the observation of the electroweak production of two jets and a Z-boson pair. This process is related to vector-boson scattering and allows the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking to be probed.

Measurements of the inelastic cross section of anti-³He allow the estimation of the transparency of the Milky Way to the propagation of these light antinuclei produced in either cosmic-ray collisions or annihilation of dark-matter particles.

Episodic memory and allocentric spatial navigation are interwoven in the activity of hippocampal neuron ensembles via Hebbian plasticity, which allows rats to encode journey-specific episodes.

Molecules that form liquid crystals are usually rod-like, but bend them and a new liquid-crystal phase — a biaxial nematic — should form. Strong evidence for the existence of this phase has only now emerged.

The ATLAS Collaboration reports a measurement of the ratio of the decay rates of W bosons to τ leptons and muons, in agreement with universal lepton couplings as postulated in the standard model of particle physics.

The direct measurement of the QCD dead cone in charm quark fragmentation is reported, using iterative declustering of jets tagged with a fully reconstructed charmed hadron.

Here the authors deliver aerosolized human monoclonal antibodies to SARS-CoV-2-infected rhesus macaques and show that the treatment significantly reduces viral RNA and infectious virus in the respiratory tracts, limits lung pathology, and decreases inflammatory cytokines.

Measurement-induced phases of quantum information have been observed in a system of 70 superconducting qubits.

Two below-threshold surface code memories on superconducting processors markedly reduce logical error rates, achieving high efficiency and real-time decoding, indicating potential for practical large-scale fault-tolerant quantum algorithms.

Patterson, Firulyova, et al. report that TREM2 is a key regulator of foamy macrophage differentiation. Myeloid-specific deletion of Trem2 caused increased macrophage susceptibility to cholesterol-mediated toxicity and cell death and significantly attenuated atherosclerotic plaque progression in mice.

Active and passive demethylation pathways have been implicated in the genome-wide erasure of 5mC accompanying mammalian preimplantation development. Here the authors reveal a recently evolved, mammalian-specific pathway in which global hypomethylation is achieved by the coupling of active and passive demethylation.

The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider reports a search for charged-lepton-flavour violation in decays of Z bosons into a τ lepton and an electron or muon of opposite charge.

Characterization of bacterial microbiomes associated with >1,000 microscopic marine invertebrates reveals that phylosymbiosis is rare across animal lineages.

Thin films of BaTiO₃ do not possess the same small switching fields and energies as the single-crystal form, hindering applications. Here, thin films are synthesized that enable switching for voltages <100 mV and fields <10 kV cm^–1, and a pathway to subnanosecond switching is presented.

Physical realizations of qubits are often vulnerable to leakage errors, where the system ends up outside the basis used to store quantum information. A leakage removal protocol can suppress the impact of leakage on quantum error-correcting codes.

An experimental investigation of the dynamics of the spin ½ Floquet XXZ model finds bound states as predicted, and also robustness to noise and non-integrability when theoretical descriptions start to fail.

Correlations in momentum space between hadrons created by ultrarelativistic proton–proton collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider provide insights into the strong interaction, particularly the short-range dynamics of hyperons—baryons that contain strange quarks.

In children, adolescents and adults with mutated ALK-driven relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma, a third-generation ALK inhibitor with or without chemotherapy was well tolerated, and recommended phase 2 doses were successfully identified in all patient groups.

Immunization of macaques with nanoparticle-conjugated receptor-binding domain of SARS-CoV-2 adjuvanted with 3M-052 and alum results in cross-neutralizing antibodies against bat coronaviruses, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 variants, and may provide a platform for developing pan-coronavirus vaccines.

Quantum electrodynamics predicts a rare process in which light is scattered by light. The ATLAS Collaboration reports signs of this elusive effect in the collisions of ultra-relativistic lead ions.

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.

Here, the authors show that neutralization of human sera from both BNT162b2 vaccine recipients and from convalescent COVID-19 patients is less efficient against SARS- CoV-2 variants B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 and negatively associated with patient age.

During blood vessel development, endothelial cells become specified toward arterial or venous fates. Chavkin et al find that distinct endothelial cell cycle states provide windows of opportunity for the molecular induction of arterial or venous fate.

MRI scans of glioblastoma patients can be misleading and some patients appear to show features of progressive disease although they respond to treatment. Here, the authors use MRI images of progressive disease or pseudoprogression and build a classifier using machine learning to distinguish the two.

Ten years after the discovery of the Higgs boson, the ATLAS  experiment at CERN probes its kinematic properties with a significantly larger dataset from 2015–2018 and provides further insights on its interaction with other known particles.

A unitary protocol for braiding projective non-Abelian Ising anyons in a generalized stabilizer code is implemented on a superconducting processor, allowing for verification of their fusion rules and realization of their exchange statistics.

SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are needed to fight the pandemic. Here, authors show protective efficacy and immunogenicity of the inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine BBV152 in rhesus macaques. This vaccine is currently in clinical development.

Reconstitution of the activation of the MLH1–MLH3 endonuclease shows how crossovers are formed during meiosis.

A crystal structure of the human immunodeficiency virus Env trimer, used by the virus to infect cells, is determined here; the new structure, which shows the pre-fusion form of Env, increases our understanding of the fusion mechanism and of how the conformation of Env allows the virus to evade the immune response.

Inflammation induces changes in the extracellular matrix density and composition. Fowell and colleagues show that CD4⁺ effector T cells use integrin α_V for interstitial migration on fibronectin in inflamed tissues.