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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.

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.

Strategic carbon–nitrogen co-sequestration and fertilizer use were insufficient in northeastern China’s warming-vulnerable black soil, causing a loss of about 3.9 Mg carbon per hectare of soil organic carbon from 1980 to 2010, based on 721 soil samples across northern China.

Tissue-specific mRNA or gene editing machinery delivery is achieved with lipid nanoparticles containing peptides with specific sequences, which tune the protein corona of the particles by mechanical optimization of peptide–protein binding affinities.

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.

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 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.

6R-TaS2 is a natural van der Waals heterostructure formed by 1H- and 1T-phase TaS₂ layers, which can individually exhibit Ising superconductivity, correlated states and charge density waves. Here, the authors show experimental evidence of emergent nematic Ising superconductivity with simultaneous hidden magnetism (extrinsic anomalous Hall effect and Kondo screening) in 6R-TaS₂ under 30 K.

The 4Pi-SIM microscope combines the benefits of structured illumination microscopy with 4Pi geometry for improved axial resolution, offering isotropic, multicolor super-resolution imaging of dynamic processes in living cells.

Limited by challenges in light-atom imaging, microscopic investigations of ferroelectricity have used cation–cation displacements as a proxy for the true cation–anion distortions. Using electron ptychography, oxygen anions can be tracked to observe an otherwise-hidden ferroelectric mechanism in thin-film NaNbO₃, which would have appeared antiferroelectric from cations alone.

The m6A binding protein YTHDF1 is frequently upregulated in cancer. Here the authors report that USP5 deubiquitinates and stabilizes YTHDF1, associated with cancer growth and immune evasion, and that targeting USP5 potentiates response to anti-PD-L1 in preclinical models.

The clinical significance of inferring cell spatial profiles from histology images from cancer patients remains to be explored. Here, the authors develop a weakly-supervised deep-learning method, HistoCell, for the direct prediction of super-resolution cell spatial profiles from histology images at the single-nucleus-level.

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.

The precise placement of thioester bonds into sequence-controlled polymers remains challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate the versatile synthesis of sequence-controlled polymers from the step polymerization of cyclic thioanhydrides, diacrylates, and diols/diamines.

Hyperbolic exciton polaritons (HEPs) are anisotropic light-matter excitations with promising applications, but their steady-state observation is challenging. Here, the authors report experimental evidence of HEPs in a van der Waals magnet, CrSBr, via cryogenic infrared near-field microscopy.

Here, Shao et. al attribute the reduction in bone mechano-responsiveness seen in type 2 diabetes to abnormal osteocytic calcium dynamics. They identify reduced SERCA2 pump activity as a mediator of this process and show that rescuing SERCA2 significantly improves bone mechanical adaptation in this context.

The semileptonic decay channels of the Λc baryon can give important insights into weak interaction, but decay into a neutron, positron and electron neutrino has not been reported so far, due to difficulties in the final products’ identification. Here, the BESIII Collaboration reports its observation in e+e- collision data, exploiting machine-learning-based identification techniques.

The design of legged robots with agility and speed is challenging. The authors present a method with reinforcement learning-based controllers for locomotion control of quadruped robots. The pipeline achieves improvements in performance, such as running speed.

Twisted bilayers of 2D semiconductors are being intensively investigated due to their emergent physical properties, but their controlled bottom-up synthesis remains challenging. Here, the authors report a confined-space chemical vapour deposition strategy to synthesize MoS₂ bilayers with twist angles ranging from 0° to 120°.

Investigating the inner structure of baryons is important to further our understanding of the strong interaction. Here, the BESIII Collaboration extracts the absolute value of the ratio of the electric to magnetic form factors and its relative phase for e + e − → J/ψ → ΛΣ decays, enhancing the signal thanks to the vacuum polarisation effect at the J/ψ peak.

The tropism of adenoviruses is influenced by the binding of host blood factors. Here, the authors show the N-terminal non-polar residues of γ-carboxyglutamic acid domains of vitamin K-dependent blood clotting factors interact with the hexon cavities on the surface of species-C adenoviruses.

A transformer-based representation-learning model that processes multimodal input in a unified manner outperformed non-unified multimodal models in two clinical diagnostic tasks.

The authors address spin–orbit torques and magnetization switching in MnPd₃/CoFeB hetrostructures.

SEAM is a platform for the analysis of high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry imaging that allows spatially resolved nuclear metabolomic profiling at the single-cell level.

In the typical spin-hall effect, spin-current, charge current, and spin polarisation are all mutually perpendicular, a feature enforced by symmetry. Here, using an anti-ferromagnet with a triangular spin structure, the authors demonstrate a spin-hall effect without a perpendicular spin alignment.

Tailored to provide diabetes management recommendations from large training and validation datasets, an artificial intelligence system integrating language and computer vision capabilities is shown to improve self-management of patients in a prospective implementation study.

Fibers derived from non-silk proteins hold potential for various biomedical applications, but mechanically-balanced and highly-biocompatible regenerated protein fibers are elusive. Here, the authors report an entanglement-reinforced strategy to fabricate keratin/albumin bio-fibers that show high strength and toughness, along with favorable biocompatibility, degradability and immunocompatibility.

Adipocyte hyperplasia is thought to have beneficial metabolic effects in obesity, but definitive evidence is lacking. Here, Shao et al. promote de novo formation of adipocytes in visceral white adipose tissue (WAT) of adult mice through inducible overexpression of Pparg in Pdgfrβ⁺ preadipocytes and show that this protects from pathological WAT remodeling.

The collective-flow-assisted nuclear shape-imaging method images the nuclear global shape by colliding them at ultrarelativistic speeds and analysing the collective response of outgoing debris.

How complex microbial communities assemble through the animal’s life, and how predictable the assembly process is, remains poorly understood. Here, the authors profile the cow gut microbiome from birth to adulthood in animals born in C-section or natural birth and show that chance events early in life have a strong impact on microbiome development.

Effectively delivering medications to the renal tubule to delay or halt chronic kidney disease progression remains a significant unmet clinical challenge. Here, authors introduce an innovative strategy for renal tubule targeting using biomimetic high-density lipoprotein (bHDL) nanoparticles.

Psoriasis is a skin disease associated with neurogenic inflammation. Here, the authors activation of ASIC3 on sensory neurons that leads to the release of CGRP, which triggers inflammation through dendritic cells and drives psoriatic inflammation.

Knowledge of effective Coulomb interactions is central to understand emergent quantum phases in strongly correlated systems. Here, Boschini et al. report a dynamic quasi-circular spectrum of charge density wave fluctuations in the CuO₂ plane of Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+δ, shedding a light on understanding how Coulomb interactions can lead to rotational and translational symmetry breaking in the cuprates.

Cross-linking mass spectrometry can provide insights into protein structures and interactions but its scope depends on the reactivity of the cross-linker. Here, the authors develop Arg-Arg and Lys-Arg cross-linkers, which provide structural information elusive to the widely used Lys-Lys cross-linkers.

The EMDataResource Ligand Model Challenge aimed at assessing the reliability and reproducibility of modeling ligands bound to protein and protein–nucleic acid complexes in cryo-EM maps determined at near-atomic resolution. This analysis presents the results and recommends best practices for assessing cryo-EM structures of liganded macromolecules.

The high cost of Pt severely limits fuel cell deployment, but alternative Pt-free catalysts suffer from a low activity and, especially, durability. Now, a low-Pt-content catalyst consisting of Pt and Fe single atoms, dispersed on a nitrogen-doped carbon matrix, and Pt–Fe nanoparticles is shown to exhibit excellent activity and durability in fuel cells.

During a photoinduced phase transition, electronic rearrangements are usually faster than lattice ones. Time-resolved measurements now show that the insulator-to-metal transition in a thin-film Mott insulator is preceded by lattice reconfiguration.

An antimatter hypernucleus formed by an anti-lambda hadron, an antiproton and two antineutrons was observed through its two-body decay after production in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Liang and colleagues show that the ORF45 protein from the Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus activates NLRP1 by binding to its Linker1 region through a mechanism distinct from the previously described, host protease DPP9-dependent mechanism of NLRP1 activation.

An 8-hour radio observational campaign of the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154, assisted by multi-wavelength data, indicates that associations between fast radio bursts and soft γ-ray bursts are rare.

Observations of γ-rays with energies up to 1.4 PeV find that 12 sources in the Galaxy are PeVatrons, one of which is the Crab Nebula.

Triply degenerate electronic structure—three-component fermions—protected by crystal symmetries is observed in tungsten carbide. The observed Fermi arcs associated with the surface states provide evidence of the non-trivial topology of the states.

At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, observations of two meson species produced by heavy-ion collisions, ϕ and K^*0, show surprising patterns of global spin alignment, being unexpectedly large and consistent with zero, respectively.

Peptide-protein interactions play fundamental roles in cellular processes and are crucial for designing peptide therapeutics. Here, the authors present a deep learning framework for simultaneously predicting peptide-protein interactions and identifying peptide binding residues involved in the interactions.

Molecular systems with rigid macrocyclic backbones self-assemble into synthetic nanopores that mimic the mass-transport characteristics of biological channels. Zhouet al. produce self-assembling hydrophobic nanopores that mediate highly selective transmembrane ion transport and highly efficient transmembrane water permeability.

Intensive research efforts are underway to enable applications of layered lithium transition metal oxides in batteries. Here the authors report an oxidative chemical vapour deposition technique to conformally coat both the primary and the secondary particles of these oxides to unleash potential applications.

Barocaloric materials, undergoing thermal changes in response to applied pressure, may provide energy efficient and zero-emission solid-state cooling. Here the authors report a mechanism for achieving large reversible barocaloric effects near ambient temperature, leveraging volume and conformational entropy changes within the organic bilayers of two-dimensional metal–halide perovskites.