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CO₂ hydrogenation on Cu/Al₂O₃ is limited by low activity. Herein, high-velocity gas collisions create transient distorted Cu sites, tripling CO₂ conversion, boosting methanol selectivity to 95 % and increasing the space-time-yield six times.

The mechanisms underlying the invasiveness and aggressiveness of pituitary neuroendocrine tumours (PitNETs) remain poorly understood. Here, the authors perform single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to characterise the tumour microenvironment of PitNETs and identify potential therapeutic targets.

Skyrmions are objects with whirled magnetization protected by their topology that can be created by different means, however, without control of their position. Here, the authors present a method exploiting x-rays to create skyrmions at the beam position allowing for creation of artificial skyrmion lattices.

Pt/CeO₂ ensemble catalysts show great potential for hydrocarbon oxidation, but the nature of active sites and interfacial evolution during reaction has been debated. Here, the authors demonstrate metallic Pt ensembles serve as the true active sites for C₃H₆ oxidation, and confirm dynamic nature of oxygen activation with the threshold temperature around 170 °C.

Lithium cobalt oxide is widely studied for electrocatalytic applications. Here, the authors develop a technique for delithiating the material in organic electrolyte, and demonstrate that the oxygen evolution catalytic activity is significantly improved after the treatment.

Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures with type II band alignment have generated wide interest in device physics at the two-dimensional limit. Here, Rivera et al. observe interlayer excitons in vertically stacked MoSe2–WSe2 heterostructures and demonstrate tunability of the energy and luminescence.

α-tubulin acetylation is an evolutionarily conserved modification but despite its prevalence, the physiological function of this process remains poorly understood. Here, the authors show that α-tubulin acetylation regulates p38 kinase signalling and expression of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 in macrophages.

The controllable modification of graphene by chemical functionalization can modulate its optical and electronic properties. Sunet al. devise a functionalisation-based method to pattern graphane/graphene superlattices within a single sheet of graphene.

Single layers of group-VI transition metal dichalcogenides have emerged as direct bandgap semiconductors in the two-dimensional limit. The authors show that monolayer molybdenum diselenide is an ideal system enabling electrostatic tunability of charging effects in neutral and charged electron-hole pairs, so-called excitons.

Van der Waals heterostructures offer a platform for harnessing the spin-valley degree of freedom for information processing. Here, the authors transfer optically generated spin-valley polarization from one layer to another in a two-dimensional molybdenum diselenide–tungsten diselenide heterostructure.

Control of light absorption in optical devices, such as solar cells, can be achieved through resonant features like whispering gallery modes. Here, these modes are exploited in spherical silicon nanoshells to enhance absorption over a broad spectral range in nanometre-scale flexible layers.

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.

It is uncertain how much life expectancy of the Chinese population would improve under current and greater policy targets on lifestyle-based risk factors for chronic diseases and mortality behaviours. Here we report a simulation of how improvements in four risk factors, namely smoking, alcohol use, physical activity and diet, could affect mortality. We show that in the ideal scenario, that is, all people who currently smokers quit smoking, excessive alcohol userswas reduced to moderate intake, people under 65 increased moderate physical activity by one hour and those aged 65 and older increased by half an hour per day, and all participants ate 200 g more fresh fruits and 50 g more fish/seafood per day, life expectancy at age 30 would increase by 4.83 and 5.39 years for men and women, respectively. In a more moderate risk reduction scenario referred to as the practical scenario, where improvements in each lifestyle factor were approximately halved, the gains in life expectancy at age 30 could be half those of the ideal scenario. However, the validity of these estimates in practise may be influenced by population-wide adherence to lifestyle recommendations. Our findings suggest that the current policy targets set by the Healthy China Initiative could be adjusted dynamically, and a greater increase in life expectancy would be achieved.

By unifying ultra-high optical gain and broadband electro-optic dynamics in an Er-doped lithium niobate thin-film platform, the authors demonstrate an exciting monolithic integration of amplification and modulation on a compact photonic chip. This exciting work showcases record performance for on-chip amplifiers while enabling self-amplified 50 Gbps digital encoding and pre-amplified RF front-end signal recovery.

Jian Ma et al. present HuDiff, a diffusion-based deep learning framework that humanizes antibodies and nanobodies (a small type of antibody) without templates. The model achieves improved humanness while preserving or enhancing binding strength, and the authors show promising results in virus neutralization experiments.

Atomic precision Au clusters show biocompatibility and characteristic emission in the NIR region and find various applications in biosensing and imaging. Here, the authors demonstrate stable and highly dissymmetric circularly polarized emission in both visible and NIR regions from cholesteric liquid crystals overlaid on a uniform Au cluster film.

Here, authors use Cryo-FIB and Cryo-TEM to reveal the atomic structures of the sulfide electrolyte/Si electrode interfaces, showing that the continuous lithium-ion consumption during interfacial reaction rather than interface impedance leads to capacity fade and battery failure.

The use of Pt(IV) complexes has been largely limited to chemotherapy. Here, the authors reveal that Pt(IV) complexes photolyze under 365 nm light and generate reactive species, and show that Pt(IV) complexes can act as photoinitiators for fabricating multifunctional hydrogels, and as photocrosslinkers for protein labeling and direct gelatin hydrogelation.

Monocytes derived from bone marrow leucocytes are chemically conjugated with a Tau-specific aptamer via bioorthogonal chemistry, enabling systemic delivery across the blood–brain barrier and targeted clearance of extracellular Tau in Alzheimer’s disease mouse models.

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.

Ferromagnetic systems rarely display a large or non-saturating magnetoresistance, due to the low Fermi velocity of the predominant charge carrier. Here, the authors show that MnBi, a ferromagnet, bucks this trend, showing both large and non-saturating magnetoresistance, and high charge carrier motilities.

Socioeconomic status is multidimensional and can change over time. Xu, Lui, Ji et al. found dimension-specific, late-stage-specific and change-specific socioeconomic effects on brain, cognition, personality and emotion.

Here the authors demonstrate an on-demand generation of perfect soliton crystal using synthesized potential field. The individual solitons can also be controlled, for example oscillate around their equilibrium position, by the external field.

A dual-gated moiré superlattice device made of trilayer WSe₂/WS₂/WSe₂ enables controlling quadrupolar excitons by driving quadrupolar-to-dipolar exciton transitions via tuning the excitation intensity and doping.

Exploring new linkage chemistry for covalent organic frameworks (COFs) provides a strong driving force to promote the development of this class porous materials. Here, the authors report a strategy to synthesize COFs with azo linkages based on an in situ linker exchange strategy which transforms imine-linked COFs into their azo-linked counterparts, and explore the unique properties of azo-linked COFs.

Enantiopure aliphatic amines are frequently encountered as chiral auxiliaries and synthetic intermediates for bioactive compounds. Here, the authors report a mild nickel-catalysed asymmetric reductive hydroalkylation to convert enamides and enecarbamates into α-branched chiral amines and derivatives.

A pangenome of oat, assembled from 33 wild and domesticated oat lines, sheds light on the evolution and genetic diversity of this cereal crop and will aid genomics-assisted breeding to improve productivity and sustainability.

Anxiety is thought to be evolutionarily rooted in predator defense. Yan et al. show that GABAergic neurons in the anterior hypothalamic nucleus (AHN), a node in the predator defense network, play an essential role in anxiety-like behaviors.

Here the authors show that the growth plate (GP)-epiphysis interface possesses a strong modulus transition and acts as a mineralization inhibition zone, while the GP-metaphysis interface has a gradual transition and stimulates bone formation. They also identify proteins at these boundaries which inhibit or promote bone mineralization.

The authors introduce a structural design with a well-ordered local structure for barium titanate-based ceramics, which decreases Curie temperature while preserves a sharp phase transition, enabling tunable polarization, large dielectric constant and intrinsic electrocaloric effect near room temperature.

Topological quasiparticle with higher Chern number is promising to realize large-quantized photogalvanic effect. Here, the authors observe splitting of both topological surface and bulk states in a chiral crystal PtGa, suggesting multifold fermions with a maximal Chern number of ±4.

In the next generation of display technology for portable devices, lasers could replace LEDs to achieve more vibrant colours. Here, Zhao et al. demonstrate a dynamic full-color display in which each pixel is made up of three printed organic microlasers to cover the RGB space.

Hu and colleagues show how biologically informed representations clarify TGF-β driven EMT regulation, highlighting phase-specific coupling in either G1 or G2/M of the cell cycle.

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.

Cross-ancestry genome-wide association studies of 3,414 brain imaging phenotypes in Chinese Han and white British participants identify autosomal and X-chromosomal associations in more diverse populations.

Typical quantum error correcting codes assign fixed roles to the underlying physical qubits. Now the performance benefits of alternative, dynamic error correction schemes have been demonstrated on a superconducting quantum processor.

Hollow carbon nanospheres form a stable solid electrolyte interphase on lithium metal anodes that suppresses dendrite growth and improves cycling Coulombic efficiency.

The oxidative dehydrogenation of propane by CO₂ (CO₂-ODHP) can potentially fill the gap of propylene production while consuming a greenhouse gas. Here, the authors identify non-precious FeNi and precious NiPt catalysts supported on CeO₂ as promising catalysts for CO₂-ODHP and dry reforming, respectively, in flow reactor studies.

Valleytronics leverages the valley degree of freedom to engineer light-matter interaction. Here, the authors demonstrate a room temperature, bias-free valley effect in bulk SnS by means of spectroscopic measurements, previously unattainable using atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides.

Aqueous lithium-ion batteries have great potential as stationary power sources, but they have had problems with poor stability. A significant improvement in their cycling stability has been achieved by eliminating oxygen, adjusting the electrolyte pH values, and using a carbon-coated electrode material.

Methylation of nucleolar ribosomal DNA shifts during aging and in cellular senescence. Yan and colleagues engineer sensitive and photostable rRNA-selective dyes and present a fluorescence lifetime imaging strategy to quantify aging and senescence in cells, tissues, C. elegans, mice and human samples.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

Dissolution of sulphur into electrolyte is a major problem in lithium–sulphur batteries. Here, Yao et al.use an indium oxide-carbon interface and a polysulphide catholyte, and show that polysulphides preferentially deposit onto the oxide surface during electrochemical processes, thus alleviating the sulphur loss.

At cell–cell adhesions, α-catenin contains a cryptic vinculin-binding site. Here, Yao et al. demonstrate, using magnetic tweezers, that physiologically relevant forces unfurl α-catenin to reveal the vinculin-binding site, and allow the reversible binding of vinculin to mechanically reinforce the adhesion.

In this work the authors develop PACES (protein-assembly complex for elimination system) which uses cell-selective nanofibers with bioorthogonal decoration of an E3 recruiter to trap and degrade proteins. This strategy complements PROTACs and PPI-based approaches, expanding the degradable proteome.