Search

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pseudocapacitors are emerging as alternatives to conventional supercapacitors. Here, authors showed an uncommon charge storage mechanism in a high-rate conjugated polyelectrolyte and demonstrated practical pouch and solid-state pseudocapacitor devices with competitive energy up to 71 μWh cm⁻² and power performance up to 160 mW cm⁻².

Quark–antiquark annihilation measurements provide a precise determination of the ratio of down and up antiquarks within protons as a function of momentum, which confirms the asymmetry between the abundance of down and up antiquarks.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Spatial multiomics methods have deepened our understanding of cellular niches within the tumour microenvironment, but deriving clinical insights remains challenging. Here, the authors develop stClinic, a dynamic graph model that integrates spatial multi-slice multiomics data with phenotype data to reveal clinically relevant cell niches in cancer.

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.

Enantioselective catalytic C(sp³)–H fluorination has been limited to electrophilic fluorine sources. Now chiral palladium catalysts bearing amino sulfonamide ligands enable enantioselective incorporation of nucleophilic fluoride into unactivated aliphatic C–H bonds with demonstrated applications to ¹⁸F-radiolabelling using [¹⁸F]KF.

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.

DNA transactions promote torsional constraints that pose inherent risks to genome integrity. Here the authors identify the macro-histone splice variant macroH2A1.1 as an epigenetic modulator of topoisomerase 1-associated genome maintenance. MacroH2A1.1 expression determines sensitivity to TOP1 poisons and may present a cancer vulnerability.

Using remote sensing, this study establishes the nitrogen budget for 5,768 lakes. Results show that reducing watershed nitrogen input improves water quality nonlinearly, emphasizing targeted watershed management to meet the SDG of global clean water.

The soils of urban greenspaces are strikingly rich. This study finds that the variety of microbial life there is linked to acidic conditions and that this diversity is more homogenous than found in farmland soils.

Solution-grown perovskite heterojunctions and quantum wells bring new opportunities for exploring semiconductor physics in a convenient manner

Intercalating alkali metals into picene—a hydrocarbon with five linearly fused benzene rings—results in superconducting materials. Now, alkali-metal-doped phenanthrene, which consists of three fused benzene rings, is also found to be superconducting, opening up a broader class of organic superconductors.

Earth-abundant TiO₂ is a promising negative electrode material for low-cost sodium-ion batteries. Here, authors show that ordered rocksalt NaTiO₂ nanograins are in situ formed by electrochemically cycling with Na⁺ ions in anatase TiO₂, which determines the pseudocapacitive high-rate capability.

Colour code on a superconducting qubit quantum processor is demonstrated, reporting above-breakeven performance and logical error scaling with increased code size by a factor of 1.56 moving from distance-3 to distance-5 code.

The nature of unconventional charge density wave in kagome metals is currently under intense debate. Here the authors report the coexistence of the 2 × 2 × 1 charge density wave in the kagome sublattice and the Sb 5p-electron assisted 2 × 2 × 2 charge density waves in CsV₃Sb₅.

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 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.

This study aims to address a critical knowledge gap concerning the unique microstructure in 3D-printed metals by quantitatively characterizing the phase and dislocation density during the printing process using operando synchrotron X-ray diffraction.

Water scarcity is a global issue that demands urgent resolution, but current approaches are inadequate. Now a metre-scale atmospheric water harvester, featuring a hygroscopic origami hydrogel panel and a window-like glass chamber, demonstrates exceptional efficiency in extracting water from air, even in extremely arid conditions.

The CMS Collaboration reports the study of three simultaneous hard interactions between quarks and gluons in proton–proton collisions. This manifests through the concurrent production of three J/ψ mesons, which consist of a charm-quark–antiquark pair.

Erbium-doped lead magnesium niobium titanate ceramics demonstrate ultrahigh strain and piezoelectric coefficients under low electric fields, setting a benchmark for piezoelectric materials and offering versatile applications in precision actuators and sensors.

The exact mechanism for superconductivity in iron-based superconductors remains elusive, but is thought to involve complex interactions between many orbitals. Using angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, Liuet al. report the electronic structure of the single-layer parent compound FeSe.

Zhang et al. show that YAP binds to TDP-43 to promote TDP-43 multimerization and phase separation. YAP and TDP-43 may co-localize in multiple cell types in oxidative stress and in brain samples from individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

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.

The formation of organelles was a pivotal point in eukaryotic evolution. Here they show that Archaea possess Arf-like GTPases that can perform key organelle-producing mechanisms when expressed in a eukaryotic cell, laying the foundation for the evolution of endomembrane organelles.

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.

A three-dimensional metal stamp can be used to selectively exfoliate two-dimensional materials, allowing the remaining material to be patterned into two-dimensional arrays without leaving chemical or polymer residues.

The most up-to-date combination of results on the properties of the Higgs boson is reported, which indicate that its properties are consistent with the standard model predictions, within the precision achieved to date.

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.

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.

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.

Heusler compounds have been predicted to host topological order with other emergent properties, which yet awaits for experimental evidence. Here, Liu et al. report a direct observation of topological surface states on half-Heusler compounds LnPtBi.

The underlying mechanism of lithium dendrite penetration through ceramic electrolytes is debated. Here, authors employ MD simulations to enable atomic-scale investigation in the process of dendrite penetration and the concurrent development of cracks during solid state lithium battery operation.

A special class of topological Weyl semimetal state is predicted without respecting Lorentz symmetry. Here, Jianget al. report direct visualization of the unique surface Fermi arcs of MoTe₂, confirming its type-II topological Weyl semimetal nature.

A vanadium-based lithium-rich disordered rock salt oxide is shown to work as a low-potential anode with rapid intercalation kinetics for lithium-ion batteries.

Surface Fermi arcs (SFAs) are characteristic features of a topological Weyl semimetal but there is no easy way to manipulate them so far. Here, the authors report manipulation of the shape, size and connections of SFAs in a Weyl semimetal NbAs, leading to an unusual topological Lifshitz transition.

A magnetoresistance effect that occurs in a platinum layer deposited on a magnon junction consisting of two insulating magnetic yttrium iron garnet layers separated by an antiferromagnetic nickel oxide spacer layer could be used to create spintronic and magnonic devices that are free from Joule heating.

The interaction between ferroelectricity and magnetism is of interest for the use in magnetic information storage devices. Here, the authors achieve the coupling of ferroelectric and ferromagnetic order in an oxide heterostructure by ultrashort optical pulses, offering the optical control of these effects.

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

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.

The anomalous Hall effect has been observed in high-quality epitaxial thin films of non-collinear antiferromagnet Mn₃Pt, and can be switched on and off using an electric field.