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Across 97% of forest area from eight million sampled forested locations worldwide, the density of aboveground biomass is lower near forest edges than in forest interiors. Given widespread forest fragmentation, this edge effect is estimated to be responsible for 9% reduction in forest aboveground biomass.

Engineering of semiconductor nanocrystals requires a detailed understanding of their formation. Here, the authors use signal-enhanced NMR and theoretical calculations to decode the structural transition from metastable CdSe clusters to mature quantum dots.

Song et al. report stochastic edge detection enabled by integrating memristor-based stochastic number encoders with logic gates to perform bitwise logic operations with statistical probabilities. A hardware Roberts cross operator achieves 95% less computational cost while withstands up to 50% bit-flip errors.

Charge-to-spin conversion is critical element for spintronic devices. In most materials, there are several sources of charge-to-spin conversion, which are often challenging to disentangle. Here, Chen et al succeed in disentangling spin Hall and Rashba-Edelstein contributions to charge-to-spin conversion in ultrathin MoTe2 using position dependent measurements of the current-induced spin accumulation.

Electronic health records are a rich source of clinical data but identifying associations with outcomes is complex. Here, the authors propose a modelling framework ‘InfEHR’ that identifies patient trajectories in electronic health records and generates a likelihood for clinical phenotypes.

Predictive coding is a popular theory of brain function, but it remains unclear if and how it may be implemented in the brain. The authors present a spiking neural network model that offers a fresh perspective on predictive coding and reproduces many observations from visual cortex.

‘Ultrathin’ gold interlayers are shown to form nanoparticles that balance optical losses and electrical contact, enabling efficient perovskite–perovskite integration for scalable and durable triple-junction photovoltaics.

Reducing non-radiative recombination at the perovskite/electron transport layer interface remains a critical challenge for achieving efficient perovskite/TOPCon silicon tandem solar cells. Here, authors employ bilayer passivation using AlOx/PDAI2 treatment, achieving device efficiency of 31.6%.

Fracture behaviours in multilayer h-BN, involving interlayer-friction toughening and edge-reconstruction embrittlement, are identified through in situ experiments and theoretical analyses.

Little is known about how edge states in topological materials interact with each other. Here, a quantum spin Hall insulator is used to show that when edge states are brought close together, additional gaps appear in the spectrum.

The developing heart integrates several progenitor cell types. Here they show that the pericardium enveloping the heart develops among cells that form the mesothelium around inner organs and body cavities, distinct from the classic heart field.

The quantum anomalous Hall effect has so far been limited to temperature of the order of 20 mK. Here, Fijalkowski et al. report the existence of chiral edge channels up to the Curie temperature of bulk ferromagnetism of the magnetic topological insulator with a multi-terminal Corbino geometry.

Graphene nanostructures—like nanoribbons or quantum dots—hold great potential for applications. An extensive STM study elucidates how the details of the nanostructure edges heavily influence the electronic properties, which can vary between metallic and semiconducting according to the predominancy of zigzag or armchair edges.

Quantum spin Hall edge states are protected by time-reversal symmetry and are expected to disappear in a strong magnetic field. Here, the authors use microwave impedance microscopy and find, surprisingly, edge conduction in mercury telluride quantum wells that survives up to 9 T with little change.

BioID detection of Ebola virus–host interactions when computationally integrated with existing host protein-protein networks, revealed functional cell protein complexes supporting infection, including the RNA decapping complex.

Optimizing the crystallization of the active materials in organic solar cells is challenging. Fu et al. use an acenaphthene additive to induce a two-step crystallization of the non-fullerene acceptor, achieving a certified 20.5% power conversion efficiency.

Warm Atlantic water circulates cyclonically around the Nordic Seas while gradually cooling. Here, the authors show that the retreat of the ice edge toward Greenland has led to further transformation of this water mass, which is no longer situated underneath sea ice when transiting the western Iceland Sea in winter.

The realization of cold and dense electron–hole systems by optical excitation is hindered by the heating caused by particle recombination. Now, cold and dense electron–hole systems have been observed in heterostructures with separated electron and hole layers.

Using chiroptical imaging, the optical activity of a metal-organic framework (MOF) was directly correlated with its enantiomorphous (mirror-image) crystal shapes, a milestone that was unachievable in Pasteur’s era.

Polar skyrmions are nanoscale topological structures of electric polarizations. Their collective modes, dubbed as “skyrons”, are discovered by the terahertz-field-excitation, femtosecond x-ray diffraction measurements and advanced modeling.

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.

In this study, the authors combine interpolation techniques and deep learning methods, introducing Interpolating Neural Networks (INNs) to model complex systems with high accuracy and low computational cost.

A temporal-signal processor based on two in-materia computing hardware platforms—reconfigurable nonlinear-processing units (RNPUs) and analogue in-memory computing (AIMC)—is used for both feature extraction and classification, advancing compactness, efficiency, and performance of heterogeneous smart edge devices.

Smargon et al. show that small nuclear RNAs can improve the cellular safety and efficacy of endogenous protein-mediated RNA base editing, enhancing nuclear RNA editing and the rescue of premature termination codon disease.

The authors report the implementation of a Transformer-based model on the same architecture used in Large Language Models in a 14nm analog AI accelerator with 35 million Phase Change Memory devices, which achieves near iso-accuracy despite hardware imperfections and noise.

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.

In this work, authors tracked a pneumococcal serotype 3 strain persisting for a year in a healthy adult, revealing limited genetic change but stable multidrug resistance and features linked to vaccine escape.

Energy relaxation crucially impacts transport properties of mesoscopic devices. Here the authors show that energy can be distributed between distant parts of the sample, which may provide a resolution to an outstanding puzzle concerning energy conservation in transport through quantum Hall edges.

Owing to electron localization, two-dimensional materials are not expected to be metallic at low temperatures, but a field-induced quantum metal phase emerges in NbSe₂, whose behaviour is consistent with the Bose-metal model.

The quantum spin Hall state is predicted to consist of two oppositely polarized spin currents travelling in opposite directions around the edges of a topological insulator. Non-local measurements of the transport in HgTe quantum wells confirm the polarized nature of these edge states.

Skin prick testing for allergy diagnosis is limited by variability due to differences in test setting and operator expertise. Here, the authors develop and validate an AI-assisted readout method for reading allergy skin test results, and find that integrating AI enhances standardization throughout the skin prick testing process.

The quantum spin Hall effect disappears at high magnetic fields when the band inversion is lifted. The authors demonstrate that in contrast, in disordered samples, counter-propagating topological and quantum Hall edge channels prevent the detection of the trivial gap, explaining a previous observation.

Construction of chiral nanostructures is impeded by the entropic barrier of dissymmetric blocks. Here, the authors report a dynamic assembly/disassembly strategy to yield single-unit organometallic helices for enantioselective amyloid inhibition.

Thermally assisted spin–orbit torque is used to switch the edge current chirality in mesoscopic quantum anomalous Hall devices.

Damaging energy bursts in a tokamak are a major obstacle to achieving stable high-fusion performance. Here, the authors demonstrate the use of adaptive and machine-learning control to optimize the 3D magnetic field to prevent edge bursts and maximize fusion performance in two different fusion devices, DIII-D and KSTAR.

Multi-step planning is a challenge for LLMs. Here, the authors introduce a brain-inspired Modular Agentic Planner that decomposes planning into specialized LLM modules, improving performance across tasks and highlighting the value of cognitive neuroscience for LLM design.

Two ‘outrigger’ telescopes were added to CHIME, leading to the localization at detection of FRB 20210603A. The burst originated from deep within the star-forming disk of its host galaxy.

Here the authors use a range of approaches to examine the interplay between genetic variants linked to risk for polygenic skin diseases and transcription factors (TFs) important for skin homeostasis. The findings implicate dysregulated binding of specific TF families in risk for diverse skin diseases.

Indium phosphide is the material of choice for bright and color-pure quantum dots for next-generation displays. This study identifies the photophysical processes that have until now prevented the development of lasers based on these particles.

Early Pleistocene artefacts at Calio suggest that Sulawesi was populated by hominins at around the same time as Flores, if not earlier.

Resolution of G4s has been suggested to be required for efficient DNA replication. Here, the authors show that the nuclease DNA2 and the DNA repair complex MutSα (MSH2-MSH6) are required to remove G4 stabilized by environmental compounds to allow efficient telomere replication.

A better-ventilated North Pacific could have reduced the carbon of water upwelled in the Southern Ocean, reducing outgassing and revealing a remote influence on Southern Ocean biogeochemistry in glacial times.

The strength in BCC high-entropy alloys is associated with the type of mobile dislocations. Here the authors demonstrate by means of an ample array of experimental techniques that edge dislocations can control the strength of BCC high-entropy alloys.

A cost-effective all-in-one halide cathode material with high energy density and exceptional cycling stability can be used to achieve energy-dense, durable cathodes for the next generation of all-solid-state batteries.