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Model thiophene-decorated nickel porphyrins are synthesized to examine how sulfur promotes CO₂-to-CO conversion and tandem CO₂-to-C₂ product conversion in electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction. Combined theoretical and experimental analyses show that thiophene substituents generate a ligand hole character that modulates the nickel-centred electronic structure, enhancing overall catalytic performance.

Native crystallographic defects are often introduced during synthesis of battery materials, but has been overlooked. Here, using in situ synchrotron X-ray probes and electron microscopy, the authors have revealed their adverse effect during battery operation.

A combination of adenovirus-vectored and subunit protein intranasal vaccine enhances immune response against SARS-CoV-2 variants in animal models and humans.

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.

Coastal settlement retreat reflects human behavioural adaptation to increasing coastal climate hazards. Using night-time light data over 1992–2019, this study finds that over half of global coastal settlements have retreated, driven by insufficient infrastructure protection and adaptive capacity.

Experiments under upper-tropospheric conditions map the chemical formation of isoprene oxygenated organic molecules (important molecules for new particle formation) and reveal that relative radical ratios control their composition

An EC-NBI-based CAD system with advanced multi-stage pre-training fills endoscopy’s real-time diagnosis gap for colorectal lesions. It was shown to outperform other supervised methods and guides real-time biopsies.

Managing power exhaust in fusion reactors is a key challenge, especially in compact designs for cost-effective commercial energy. This study shows how alternative divertor configurations improve exhaust control, enhance stability, absorb transients and enable independent plasma regulation.

The insertion of thin layers of cobalt can stabilize β-tungsten under back-end-of-line thermal constraints, allowing a 64-kb spin–orbit torque magnetic random-access memory to be fabricated that offers a spin–orbit torque switching of 1 ns, data retention of more than 10 years and a tunnelling magnetoresistance of 146%.

Ancient genomes from Neolithic rice-farming populations at Baligang reveal a demographic shift around 4,200 years ago and a 5,000-year-old patrilineal social structure, providing insights into the population history of East Asia.

An approach that integrates electrochemical CO₂ reduction and biological denitrification provides a new solution for nitrogen removal, where the formate obtained from CO₂ is used directly as the carbon source in the denitrification process in wastewater treatment.

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.

Long-lasting oxygen catalysts are crucial for rechargeable zinc-air batteries. Here, the authors report that placing tungsten atoms next to iron atoms within N₄ units creates durable Fe-N₄/W-N₄ diatomic sites, enabling a zinc-air battery to cycle reliably for more than 10,000 h.

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.

Red light- or ultrasound-controlled proximity labelling is engineered to stimulate clustering-induced receptor activation and downstream signalling amplification to promote antitumour immune responses.

The dorsal peduncular area of the mouse brain functions as a network hub that integrates diverse cortical and thalamic inputs to regulate neuroendocrine and autonomic responses.

An ex vivo model and pre-clinical study in a brain-dead recipient provide enzyme-converted O organs to avoid hyperacute rejection in ABO-incompatible kidney transplant patients.

Zinc-ion batteries face challenges like dendrite formation, limiting their performance. Here, authors reveal that high-current deposition forms (002) textured Zn, enhancing cycling life, and propose guidelines for optimizing battery cycling protocols based on advanced in situ XRD analysis.

The synthesis of crystalline 2D polymers typically relies on reversible dynamic covalent reactions, but achieving 2D polymers through irreversible carbon-carbon coupling reactions remains a formidable challenge. Here, the authors present an on-liquid surface synthesis method for constructing diyne-linked 2D polymers.

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

The primary entry route of vanilloid ligands to the vanilloid-binding site in transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) is found to be a distinct and targetable hydrophobic pathway at the TRPV1–cell membrane interface rather than through direct membrane penetration.

Finite momentum superconducting pairing refers to a class of unconventional superconducting states where Cooper pairs acquire a non-zero momentum. Here the authors report a new superconducting state in bulk 4Hb-TaS₂, where magnetic fields induce finite momentum pairing via magnetoelectric coupling.

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.

Authors use a high-entropy engineering approach to produce fully amorphous BiTO films by exfoliation and annealing, creating crystalline regions, leading to flexible ceramics with dielectric properties.

Parity-time symmetry breaking and related non-Hermitian phenomena, such as high-order exceptional points, have attracted significant interest across various experimental platforms. Here the authors demonstrate a third-order exceptional point induced by parity-time symmetry breaking in a dissipative trapped ion.

Self-assembled multidomain supramolecular peptide hydrogels that engage in dynamic covalent bonding with small-molecule drugs and biologics are shown to offer sustained release, extend the activity, and maintain safe and potent drug levels in vivo.

Optically generated microwaves offer exceptionally low noise, crucial for radar and communications. Here, authors demonstrate a compact photonic chip-based interleaver multiplying pulse rates of mode-locked lasers to 14 GHz, significantly enhancing microwave power and reducing phase noise.

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.

Photoelectrochemical etching relies on light-driven carrier migration to catalyze reactions on semiconductor surfaces. Here, the authors show that lateral photon gradients induce anomalous etching of undoped semiconductor materials.

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.

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.

The authors identify reusable ‘dynamical motifs’ in artificial neural networks. These motifs enable flexible recombination of previously learned capabilities, promoting modular, compositional computation and rapid transfer learning. This discovery sheds light on the fundamental building blocks of intelligent behavior.

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

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.

Xue et al. report self-powered photoelectrochemical photodetectors based on CuOx decorated AlGaN nanowires with staggered energy band structure. High-energy photons can be absorbed by CuOx to trigger the multiexciton generation effect, enabling an external quantum efficiency of 131.5% at 255 nm.

Topological states are exploited based on crystalline symmetry, but under artificial gauge fields, symmetries may satisfy projective algebras, which remains less studied. Here, the authors reveal that projective symmetry algebra leads to momentum-space nonsymmorphic symmetry, resulting in new topological states over a momentum-space Klein bottle.

The study of isotopes away from the beta stability valley is crucial for the understanding of nuclear structure, especially for neutron-deficient heavy nuclei. Here, the authors report the observation of the alpha-decay isotope 210-protactinium (Pa), extending the alpha-decay systematics of underexplored regions of the nuclides chart.

Water has a role to play in the future of cooling but is currently limited by the lack of meaningful control methods. Here, authors demonstrate the ability of electrostatic fields to act as a catalyst for water-based evaporative cooling, paving the way for widescale adoption of evaporative cooling.

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 understanding of the reemergence of pressure induced superconductivity in alkali-metal intercalated FeSe is hampered by sample complexities. Here, Sun et al. report the electronic properties of (Li_1–xFe _x )OHFe_1–ySe single crystal not only in the reemerged superconducting state but also in the normal state.

The realization of high-performance flexible perovskite/crystalline-silicon tandem solar cells requires efficient photocarrier transport and mitigation of residual stress. Here, authors reveal the critical role of perovskite phase homogeneity, achieving flexible devices with efficiency of 29.88%.

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.

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.

Here, using a meta-analysis approach the authors compile a database of microbes hosted by insectivores, showing that a majority of them are viruses, that shrews and hedgehogs particularly contribute to the global virus sharing networks and that insectivores may spread of viruses of potential public health concern.

Nickelate superconductors attract enormous attention in the field of high-temperature superconductivity. Here the authors report observation of perfect diamagnetism and interfacial effect on the electronic structures in infinite layer Nd_0.8Sr_0.2NiO₂ superconductors.

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.

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.