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The synthesis of high molecular weight poly(disulfide)s typically requires harsh conditions or the complex cyclic disulfide monomers. Here, the authors report a mild, room-temperature multicomponent polymerisation using elemental sulfur to yield high molecular weight poly(ester disulfide)s

A population genomic analysis of 1,854 Listeria soil isolates collected across the contiguous United States identifies geographically prevalent phylogroups with increased pangenome openness and recombination, as a result of adaptation to variable environments.

Spatial transcriptomics (ST) technologies link tissue morphology with gene expression, but remain expensive to use; furthermore, models that predict ST data from histopathology images possess considerable limitations. Here, the authors develop STimage, a deep learning probabilistic framework for ST prediction from histopathology images while prioritising robustness and interpretability.

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

Industrial hydrogen production in acidic media is constrained by high overpotential and poor durability. Here, the authors report plasma-enhanced deposition of nanoedge enriched molybdenum oxycarbide electrocatalysts that enable efficient, durable, and high throughput hydrogen evolution.

Humanity’s Last Exam, a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, is designed to be an expert-level closed-ended academic benchmark with broad subject coverage.

Semi-metallic single crystals of antimony can be deposited using molecular beam epitaxy on molybdenum disulfide to create ohmic contacts with resistance of under 100 Ω µm at a contact length of 18 nm.

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 ALICE Collaboration provides details on the microscopic mechanism that ends up creating antideuteron in high-energy proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

Deterministically generated single photons are useful for quantum communications, but the processes that create such light are often non-deterministic. Here, the authors enhance the single-photon output probability by multiplexing photons from four temporal modes using fibre-integrated optics.

Here, the authors show that KDM2A regulates cell cycle progression, modulation of H3K36me2 and H3K27me3 chromatin states and gene repression which are critical for survival of differentiating spermatogonia. KDM2A regulates progression through meiosis as well.

A mechano-intelligent transmission mechanism based on the slipknot delivers precise force signals for clinical practice and robotic operations such as minimally invasive surgery and tendon-driven robotics.

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.

Organic materials potentially offer a low-cost, flexible and environment-friendly route to spintronics. Here, the authors demonstrate an organic spin-valve device in which an electric field can control both the magnitude and the sign of magnetoresistance.

Covalently tethered borane–oxyanion organocatalysts enable highly efficient ring-opening copolymerization of epoxides and cyclic anhydrides via intramolecular cooperation, achieving turnover frequencies up to 13,500 h⁻¹ and high molecular weights up to 174.0 kDa. These catalysts feature air stability, broad substrate scope, thermal stability and metal-free polyester production.

Intervertebral disc degeneration is a natural consequence of ageing and involves a loss of tissue structural integrity, which can lead to various pathological states. In this Primer, Hammoor et al. review the epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of the various pathologies. They also discuss the effects of disc pathology on patient quality of life and highlight emerging and future therapies to improve outcomes.

Composites of carbon nanotubes and superconductors provide technologically important new, or improved, functionalities. Here, with a chemical solution approach, well-aligned carbon nanotube forests embedded in a superconducting NbC matrix are shown to effectively enhance the superconducting properties of NbC.

The authors use time-resolved scanning near-field optical microscopy to probe the ultrafast excitonic processes and their impact on waveguide operation in transition metal dichalcogenide crystals. They observe significant modulation of the complex index by monitoring waveguide modes on the fs time scale, and identify both coherent and incoherent manipulations of WSe₂ excitonic resonances.

Replacing animal feathers and wool with synthetic materials can ameliorate the ethical and environmental issues associated with the production of clothing designed to retain warmth. Here the authors present synthetic nanofibre textiles that combine wearability, comfort, lightness and thermal insulation.

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.

A magnetic-spectrometer-free method for electron–proton scattering data reveals a proton charge radius 2.7 standard deviations smaller than the currently accepted value from electron–proton scattering, yet consistent with other recent experiments.

Intercalation-type metal oxides are promising anodes for Li-ion batteries but suffer from low energy and power density together with cycling instability. A nanostructured rock-salt Nb₂O₅ formed via amorphous-to-crystalline transformation during cycling with Li⁺ is shown to exhibit enhanced performance.

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide analyses identify 95 loci associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and implicate candidate genes, pathways and neurobiological systems underlying its pathophysiology.

Authors demonstrate that Ig-like binders targeting the C-terminal of α-synuclein fibrils block fibrils-induced pathological activities, including neuronal aggregation and neuroinflammation, suggesting potential molecular avenues for future Parkinson’s disease intervention.

The red fluorescent protein mScarlet3-H is bright, photostable and very robust to high temperature, chaotropic conditions and oxidative environments. mScarlet3-H works well in correlative light and electron microscopy, tissue clearing and time-lapse super-resolution microscopy.

Traditional photonic crystals consist of periodic media with a pre-defined optical response. Here, the authors combine nanostructured back-gate insulators with a continuous layer of graphene to demonstrate an electrically tunable two-dimensional photonic crystal suitable for controlling the propagation of surface plasmon polaritons.

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 conventional approach with applying self-assembled monolayer suffers from limited interface coverage and weaker dipole interactions. Here, authors employ ferroelectric molecule to construct a dipole layer, achieving certified efficiency of 25.36% for inverted perovskite solar cells.

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.

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

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.

Sparse labelling and whole-brain imaging are used to reconstruct and classify brain-wide complete morphologies of 1,741 individual neurons in the mouse brain, revealing a dependence on both brain region and transcriptomic profile.

The neural circuits that transmit cool signals remain not fully understood. Here, authors identify a spinal circuit in mice that transmits cool sensations from the skin to the brain, revealing a dedicated neural pathway for detecting innocuous cool temperatures.

Wide use of graphene nanosheets has raised concerns about the potential for environmental toxicity. Here, the authors explore the use of humic acid, traditionally considered to reduce graphene nanosheet toxicity, and show the coating has increased toxicity to model bacteria.

A key challenge in robotics is leveraging pre-training as a form of knowledge to generate movements. The authors propose a general learning framework for reusing pre-trained knowledge across different perception and task levels. The deployed robots exhibit lifelike agility and sophisticated game-playing strategies.

High-throughput computational screening of multicomponent molecular photocatalytic systems offers a strategy to minimize the screening of large numbers of photosensitizer–catalyst combinations. Here a machine learning-accelerated approach using multiple descriptors shows strong predictive power in experimentally validated systems for CO₂ reduction.

With the generation of large pan-cancer whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing projects, a question remains about how comparable these datasets are. Here, using The Cancer Genome Atlas samples analysed as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the authors explore the concordance of mutations called by whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing techniques.

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.

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.

Study shows PTSD predisposition shares distinct genes and genomic regions with several cardiovascular conditions. Here the findings reveal neuronal, immune, and metabolic pathways, and repurposed drug targets that further the understanding of the comorbidity.

Solar cells based on 3D/2D perovskite heterostructures show promising performance, but ion diffusion limits the device stability. Now Luo et al. suppress ion diffusion by inserting a cross-linked polymer between the 2D and 3D layers, improving the operational stability.

Kagome lattices host a plethora of topological phenomena. Here, the authors identify nearly flat spin-wave bands in part of the Brillouin zone and large orbital moments in the metallic kagome ferromagnet Fe₃Sn₂.

Near-infrared luminescence is useful for advance applications, but is challenging to achieve through clusteroluminescence. Here, the authors report the use of amine-initiated polyesters for amine-ester clusters with near-infrared emission.

Whole-genome sequencing data from more than 2,500 cancers of 38 tumour types reveal 16 signatures that can be used to classify somatic structural variants, highlighting the diversity of genomic rearrangements in cancer.

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.