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The inactive X chromosome condenses into a bipartite structure. Here the authors use cells with allelic deletions or inversions to show that the Dxz4 locus is necessary to maintain the bipartite structure and that Dxz4 orientation controls the distribution of contacts on the inactive X chromosome.

Ice is not piezoelectric, despite the polarity of water molecules, but bending ice may produce electricity. This has now been experimentally demonstrated, with a flexoelectric coefficient comparable to that of common ceramic materials.

This study presents a generative artificial intelligence approach for the high-throughput discovery of antimicrobials against multidrug-resistant bacteria.

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%.

Indonesian cattle are unique due to their history of admixture involving both zebu and banteng. Here, Wang et al. identify ~3.5 million novel introgressed SNP variants and provide a genomic map of banteng introgression within and across many cattle breeds, each with unique introgression histories.

The synthesis of atom-thin amorphous films remains challenging as their thermodynamically favourable grains are neither two dimensional nor layered. Here a droplet-driven nanoribbon-to-film growth strategy is reported to achieve amorphous metal chalcogenides at the single-layer limit.

The electronic behaviour of complex oxides such as LaNiO₃ depends on many intrinsic and extrinsic factors, making it challenging to identify microscopic mechanisms. Here the authors demonstrate the influence of oxygen vacancies on the thickness-dependent metal-insulator transition of LaNiO₃ films.

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 advance the foundations of exciton-polariton transport based on a field-theoretical approach. This provides microscopic insight on the experimentally observed group velocity renormalization effect.

It is unclear how often genetic mosaicism of chromosome X arises. Here, the authors examine women with cancer and cancer-free controls and show that X chromosome mosaicism occurs more frequently than on autosomes, especially on the inactive X chromosome, but is not linked to non-haematologic cancer risk

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.

Here, the authors show that Intracortical recordings in human motor cortex during attempted multi-finger movements reveal a largely linear code with two violations: magnitude normalization and greater shifts in tuning direction for weakly represented fingers.

The inactive X chromosome (Xi) is a model for establishment and maintenance of repressed chromatin and the function of polycomb repressive complexes. Here the authors show that Xi transiently relocates from the nuclear periphery during replication in a CIZ1-dependent manner, which plays a role in maintaining PRC-mediated repressed chromatin.

Complete sequences of chromosomes telomere-to-telomere from chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan and siamang provide a comprehensive and valuable resource for future evolutionary comparisons.

Three-dimensional genome organization can shape gene expression by facilitating interactions between regulatory elements. The authors review the process of X-chromosome inactivation with a focus on chromatin organization and subnuclear localization of the active and inactive X chromosomes, as well as the potential roles of long non-coding RNAs.

Mammalian X-chromosome inactivation is a paradigm for understanding gene silencing by heterochromatin formation. This Review discusses recent progress and outstanding questions surrounding the initiation and maintenance of X-chromosome inactivation and its reactivation during both normal development and artificial reprogramming.

Using spin-entangled baryon–antibaryon pairs, the BESIII Collaboration reports on high-precision measurements of potential charge conjugation and parity (CP)-symmetry-violating effects in hadrons.

Resonant X-ray excitation of the  ⁴⁵Sc nuclear isomeric state was achieved by irradiation of a Sc-metal foil with 12.4-keV photon pulses from a state-of-the-art X-ray free-electron laser, allowing a high-precision determination of the transition energy.

The ability to engineer novel protein structures has tremendous scientific and therapeutic impact. Here, authors develop a generative model acting upon an angular representation of protein structures to create high quality protein backbones.

The authors report an in-situ x-ray diffraction study of pressure and strain-induced phase transformations in silicon, an essential electronic material. They observe several different plastic strain-induced transformation phenomena which may inspire practical applications.

This study introduces the Cattle Cell Atlas, a single-cell expression resource including 1,793,854 cells from 59 tissues. Integrative analyses leveraging this atlas provide insights into the biology underlying bovine monogenic and complex traits.

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.

Cancer patients suffer from dysgeusia. Here, the authors propose a gustatory interface for operative assessment and taste decoding, offering potential to improve the quality of life of individuals suffering from tongue cancer.

A hybrid analogue–digital quantum simulator is used to demonstrate beyond-classical performance in benchmarking experiments and to study thermalization phenomena in an XY quantum magnet, including the breakdown of Kibble–Zurek scaling predictions and signatures of the Kosterlitz–Thouless phase transition.

CrI3 is a van der Waals material which exhibits magnetic ordering down to the monolayer limit. Here, using ultrafast optical spectroscopy, Padmanabhan and Buessen et al. investigate the coupling between the magnetically ordered spins and lattice distortions, finding a coherent spin-coupled phonon mode.

This work proposes a wet-chemical etching assisted aberration-enhanced single-pulsed femtosecond laser nanolithography, named “WEALTH”, for manufacturing small-size, large-area, deep holey nanostructures, promising for emerging nanophotonic devices.

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 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%.

The existence and properties of tetraquark states with two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks have been widely debated. Here, the authors use a unitarized model to study the properties of an exotic narrow state compatible with a doubly charmed tetraquark.

Disorder may play a dominant role in determining the nonlinear Hall effect in a topological material. Here, Du et al. derive formulas of the nonlinear Hall conductivity and construct the general scaling law of the nonlinear Hall effect in a tilted two dimensional Dirac model.

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

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.

A new methodology for the discovery of chalcogenides by tuning the temperature and flux ratios of systems using mixed fluxes is demonstrated, leading to the synthesis of 30 new and unreported compounds or compositions.

X-chromosome inactivation (XCI) celebrated its golden anniversary this year. This Review looks back on key discoveries for how XCI is achieved and highlights how the cell biological mechanisms underlying XCI provide an exemplary model for the control of gene expression.

The internal structure of the neutron has now been probed by highly energetic photons scattering off it. Combined with previous results for protons, these measurements reveal the contributions of quark flavours to the nucleon structure.

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.

High-enthalpy elastic metamaterials constructed from freely rotatable chiral metacells have high stiffness, large recoverable strain and improved buckling strength.

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.

This article examines whether heterochromatic instability might explain the loss of the heterochromatic inactive X chromosome (Barr body) in some breast and ovarian cancers. Might this mechanism have wider implications for the evolution of some cancer types?

Ultrafast control of materials draws interest. Here, the authors extend X-ray powder diffraction to the femtosecond timescale to follow the photo-induced semiconductor to metal transition in titanium pentaoxide, observing a phase front that moves at the speed of sound and proposing a little explored mechanism.

By doping ice with NaCl, it is shown that a flexoelectric coefficient of up to 10 μC m⁻¹ is generated, enabling effective piezoelectric coefficients that are comparable to those of ceramics. This arises from the streaming current of quasi-liquid flow through grain boundaries from one side of the sample to the other.

Analysis of whole-genome sequencing data from 3,023 human genomes from mainland Southeast Asia identifies high genetic heterogeneity among populations in the region and many unique small and structural variants.

A collective excitation called Higgs mode may arise in multi-band superconductors via strong interband interaction, but it is yet to be accessed. Here, the authors observe a tunable coherent amplitude oscillation of the order parameter in Ba(Fe_1−xCo_x)₂As₂, suggesting appearance and control of the Higgs mode by light tuning interband interaction.

Ytterbium oxide buffer layer for use in perovskite solar cells yields a certified power conversion efficiency of more than 25%, which enhances stability across a wide variety of perovskite compositions.

The interfaces in perovskite solar cells are critical to the device performance. Li et al. tune the bond strength of the interfacial molecule with the perovskite and the electron transport layer, increasing the power conversion efficiency of the cells.

Adatoms on the surface of silicon can create two-dimensional superconductivity, the order parameter symmetry of which is currently not known. Now, evidence suggests it might be a topological chiral d-wave state.