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Genetic predictors of health outcomes often drop in accuracy when applied to people dissimilar to participants of large genetic studies. Here, the authors investigate the root causes and highlight open questions underlying this problem.

Photonic time crystals (PTCs) have unveiled unusual band structures and phenomena due to temporal modulation of optical properties. Here, the authors address non-Hermitian features of PTCs within a purely Hermitian Hamiltonian description, bridging classical and quantum approaches.

The CMS Collaboration reports the measurement of the spin, parity, and charge conjugation properties of all-charm tetraquarks, exotic fleeting particles formed in proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

Absorption in one-port passive systems is known to be bound by causality constraints. Here, authors study reflection and transmission of a two-port system to introduce a generalized causality constraint based on duality symmetry. Experimentally, the broadened bandwidth of their meta-absorbers shows the untapped absorption potential of broadband acoustic metamaterials.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

Trained and validated on multimodal data from 14.5 million images from multicountry datasets, a foundation model is shown to increase diagnostic and referral accuracy of clinicians when used as an assistant in a trial involving 16 ophthalmologists and 668 patients.

Correlated oxide materials are of interest for solar cell applications that, in combination with properties such as magnetism, could offer novel functionalities. Here, the authors find that by applying strain or magnetic fields the photocurrent in La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 thin films can be significantly enhanced.

K11/K48 branched ubiquitin chains regulate protein degradation and cell cycle progression. Here, the authors report the structural basis of how such a branched ubiquitin chain is recognized by the human 26S proteasome, revealing a multivalent binding mode that underlies selective recognition.

Developing porous crystalline materials with tailored properties is challenging because of the vast design space and the high cost of screening. Now, highly fluorescent covalent organic frameworks have been identified through an AI-assisted iterative experiment–learning cycle workflow that integrates electronic configuration and quantum-level insights into the learning process.

Spin defects in 2D materials offer practical advantages for quantum sensing over their 3D counterparts. Here, the authors demonstrate quantum sensing under high pressure using boron vacancy centers in hBN placed inside a diamond anvil cell and use it to detect both stress gradient inside the pressure chamber and pressure-induced magnetic phase transitions.

Silicon dioxide is one of the most abundant natural compounds and its various crystalline phases are widely studied. Here, using synchrotron X-ray diffraction and theoretical modelling, the authors discover a polymorphic phase transition involving previously unknown triclinic phases of silicon dioxide.

Many two-dimensional materials exhibit isotropic properties, but anisotropy can extend the functionality of future devices. Here, the authors fabricate field-effect transistors from single and few-layer rhenium disulfide and observe an anisotropic ratio of three to one along the two principle axes

Three-dimensional laser-written waveguide arrays are used to demonstrate type-II Weyl points, along with Fermi arc-like surface states, for light at optical wavelengths.

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.

Large language models (LLMs) are emerging as powerful tools in healthcare, with a growing role in global health, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This Perspective examines the current progress, challenges and prospects of LLMs in addressing health system disparities and supporting achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

DeepRETStroke is a deep learning system using retinal photographs to detect silent brain infarction and predict future stroke events.

Heterogeneous photocatalysts are easily separable and recyclable, but homogeneous ones are precisely tunable. Here, the authors merge the benefits of these two catalyst types by incorporating diverse dyes into solution-processable, porous polymers.

A super-pangenome analysis incorporating 123 newly sequenced bryophyte genomes reveals that bryophytes exhibit a larger number of unique and lineage-specific gene families than vascular plants.

Enfortumab vedotin (EV) is the current standard treatment for advanced bladder cancer, but resistance typically develops within a year, highlighting the need for new therapies. This study demonstrates that NECTIN4-targeting CAR T cells are effective against bladder cancer, including EV-resistant cells, and their potency can be further enhanced by using rosiglitazone to boost NECTIN4 expression.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have improved our understanding of the genetic basis of lung adenocarcinoma but known susceptibility variants explain only a small fraction of the familial risk. Here, the authors perform a two-stage GWAS and report 12 novel genetic loci associated with lung adenocarcinoma in East Asians.

A unified framework is presented that integrates observed spatial patterns of individual trees in forests with ecological processes into a novel coexistence theory.

A deep learning algorithm shows promising performance in predicting progression to diabetic retinopathy in patients, up to 5 years in advance, potentially providing support for medical treatment decisions and indications for personalized screening frequency in a real-world cohort.

Whether multimorbidity accelerates brain Aβ deposition in humans remains largely unknown. Here, the authors demonstrate that higher self-reported multimorbidity burden predicts increased brain Aβ accumulation rates in the ADNI cohort.

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.

Developmental and epileptic encephalopathies are devastating neurological disorders. Here, the authors establish a cohort of patients with variants in the gene DENND5A and use human stem cells to discover a disease mechanism involving altered cell division.

Electronic proximity effects between neighbouring nanoscale materials are an important theme in condensed matter physics. Here, the authors experimentally demonstrate a proximity induced charge density wave in graphene due to the nearby presence of 1T-TaS₂.

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.

Soil biodiversity is poorly studied compared to aboveground biodiversity, but is an important driver of ecosystem functioning. This Review discusses advances in research into the relationships between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, highlighting that integrative and causal study approaches will be needed to fill the gaps in our understanding.

By utilizing a microstructured optical waveguide around a microsphere, an optical anlogue of the effects of gravity on the motion of light rays is demonstrated. Both far-field gravitational-lensing effects and the critical phenomenon that occurs close to the photon sphere of astrophysical objects under hydrostatic equilibrium are experimentally demonstrated.

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.

A pan-cancer genomic analysis reports the effects of structural variations on chromatin domains (TADs). Most TAD disruptions do not result in appreciable changes in expression of nearby genes.

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.

Trees come in all shapes and size, but what drives this incredible variation in tree form remains poorly understood. Using a global dataset, the authors show that a combination of climate, competition, disturbance and evolutionary history shape the crown architecture of the world’s trees and thereby constrain the 3D structure of woody ecosystems.

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.

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.

The authors achieve precise strain control of freestanding SrTiO₃ membranes, enabling reversible ferroelectric transition. In-situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy unveils classical-to-quantum crossover in ferroelectric phase transition at low temperatures.

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.

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.