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Most studies assessing food self-sufficiency look at calories and neglect nutrient gaps. Comparing food demand and potential food production under land and water constraints, this study quantifies 9 key nutrient gaps for each of African’s 54 countries.

The contribution of ether lipid species in cancer cell fate has not been fully understood yet. Here the authors show that malignant cancer cells employ ether lipids to modulate membrane biophysical properties, enhancing iron endocytosis and ferroptosis susceptibility.

Realising scalable entangled photon sources with quantum dots requires compensating for both wavelength mismatches and exciton fine-structure splitting (FSS). So far, multiple QDs with the same emission wavelength and near-zero FSS have not been demonstrated. Here, the authors fill this gap, reaching high entanglement fidelity for multiple QDs tuned into resonance with each other or with Rb atoms.

Transition of superfluid to insulator is observed in the layer-imbalanced regime of bilayer magnetoexcitons.

Optical spin orientation of itinerant ferromagnets in twisted MoTe₂ homobilayers is demonstrated, enabling control of topological Chern numbers with circularly polarized light.

Microcavity exciton-polaritons in atomically thin semiconductors are a promising platform for valley manipulation. Here, the authors show valley-selective control of polariton energies in monolayer WS2 using the optical Stark effect, thereby extending coherent valley manipulation to a hybrid light-matter regime

Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering interferometry reveals a highly entangled electronic phase in Nd₂Ir₂O₇, enabling extraction of its entanglement structure and confirming the cubic-symmetry-breaking order predicted from complementary Raman spectroscopy.

Xeno-learning uses preclinical data from one species to boost the performance of neural networks applied to another species when exploring physiological responses.

Quantum error correction codes protect quantum information, but running algorithms also requires the ability to perform gates on logical qubits. A lattice surgery scheme for fault-tolerant gates has now been demonstrated in a quantum repetition code.

Berghoff et al. discover that polycrystalline MAPbI₃ undergoes transient Wannier Stark localization at moderate field strengths, exhibiting substantial optical modulation with a fast response time. Since the polycrystallinity does not hinder the switching behaviour, this low-cost material is promising for light modulation and photonic applications.

Here, the authors show the dynamic tuning of the moiré potential in a WS₂/WSe₂ heterobilayer by gate voltage and optical power, allowing for simultaneous observation of the first and second order Stark shift for the ground state and first excited state, respectively, of the moiré trapped exciton.

A multimedia e-learning chatbot codesigned with community stakeholders increased health awareness in a randomized trial of 2,113 participants in urban and rural areas across 11 Chinese provinces.

Engineering motif-specific 'hot spots' into an antibody scaffold yields antibodies with high affinity to targets containing phosphoserine, phosphothreonine or phosphotyrosine.

This study uses single-cell DNA sequencing to analyze genomic evolution in pancreatic cancer using a cohort of multiregionally and longitudinally sampled patients’ tissues across various clinical contexts.

Atomic force microscopy is used to investigate the adsorption and organization of ions on charged surfaces. Trivalent ions adopt complex networks, clusters and layers associated with overcharging, whereas divalent ions follow classical predictions.

An allosteric site on the E3 ligase adapter cereblon can be targeted to modulate the efficacy of cereblon in targeted protein degradation applications.

Floquet engineering is often limited by weak light–matter coupling and heating. Now it is shown that exciton-driven fields in monolayer semiconductors produce stronger, longer-lived Floquet effects and reveal hybridization linked to excitonic phases.

Cullin-RING ligases are regulated by the COP9 signalosome (CSN) through deneddylation. Here, authors report high-resolution cryo-EM structures that capture catalytic and dissociation intermediates, identify CSNAP within the complex, and reveal a stepwise pathway for CSN disengagement.

Bohlen and colleagues report that the E3 ubiquitin ligase CBL is necessary for the development, tolerance and activation of B cells in humans, unlike in mice where CBL deficiency results in loss of T cells.

Bacteria secrete polysaccharides essential for colonization and infections. Here, the authors reveal the structure and mechanism of WzaB, a Class-3 OPX protein, uncovering a distinct trans-envelope secretion complex driving critical polysaccharide export in diderm bacteria.

Experiments with a trapped-ion quantum simulator observe Stark many-body localization, in which the quantum system evades thermalization despite having no disorder.

The quantum-confined Stark effect is conventionally observed in inorganic semiconductor multilayer quantum well structures that are expensive to make. Here Walters et al. report large Stark effects in easily made layered hybrid perovskites and exploit the orientational polarizability of dipolar cations.

Women of reproductive age may have specific concerns relating to perceived impacts on fertility and menstrual cycles that make them hesitant to receive COVID-19 vaccination. In this study, the authors explore COVID-19 vaccine uptake rates in women of reproductive age using linked data for ~13 million women in England.

Disease heterogeneity complicates precision medicine, which focuses on single conditions and ignores shared mechanisms. Here the authors introduce ‘pan-disease’ analysis using a deep learning model on multi-organ data, identifying 11 AI-derived biomarkers that reveal new therapeutic targets and pathways, enhancing patient stratification for disease risk monitoring and drug discovery.

One of three back-to-back papers to show that dosage of BACH2 can modulate T cell differentiation and function and how we might apply this to enhance CAR T cell therapies for cancer.

In strong enough electric fields the non-linear response of electrons in crystals is expected to lead to spatial localization but so far this has only been seen in artificial structures. Schmidt et al. present evidence of this Wannier-Stark localization effect in bulk GaAs driven by intense mid-infrared pulses.

A library of 400 phage protein-coding genes is used to find a trove of antiphage systems, revealing systems that target tail fibre and major capsid proteins.

Two-dimensional poly(arylene vinylene) frameworks are promising polymer semiconductors, yet obtaining highly crystalline materials is a major challenge. Now a series of 11 highly crystalline or single-crystalline 2D poly(arylene vinylene)s have been prepared—from 2D imine-linked covalent organic frameworks through a Mannich-elimination strategy—with diverse lattices, enhanced conjugation and specific surface areas up to 2,000 m² g⁻¹.

Wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells suffer from instability under rapid thermal cycling. Here, Sun et al. investigate the degradation mechanism, showing that temperature-induced structural strain, phase transition, and increased non-radiative defects drive the degradation processes.

Rydberg atoms have the potential to serve as broadband receivers but require lasers with  > 100 GHz scan ranges to observe multiple states. We bridge this major gap with an optical frequency comb for rapid preparation of over 7 Rydberg states.

Kim, Wang, Clow and colleagues show that long-range chromatin loops bringing distal enhancers or super-enhancers together with promoters are cohesin dependent and cell type specific, whereas most short-range and promoter-centric transcriptional loops are cohesin independent and constitutive.

A completely solid-state, single-chip, microwave-frequency surface acoustic wave phonon laser can generate coherent phonons from thermal noise or resonantly amplify injected phonons using only a direct current bias field.

Multi-omics profiling of the mucosal mycobiome in individuals with Crohn’s disease identifies C. sphaerospermum as a protective fungal species that counteracts intestinal inflammation and reinforces the intestinal barrier.

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

Here, the authors use a molecular epidemiological approach to investigate the frequency and intensity of clustering of HIV with different set-point viral loads and find that frequently transmitted strains in genetic transmission clusters have significantly higher viral loads than nonclustered viruses.

Stable adipocytes resist lipolysis in healthy states but are highly susceptible to a catecholamine-independent, neurosystemic pathway-driven catabolic state.

Light-induced phonon dynamics in 2D (BA)₂PbI₄ films reveal transient lattice shifts to a tetragonal phase, driven by Higgs-mode vibrations. Below-bandgap excitation causes larger spectral shifts, showing strong optomechanical coupling in perovskites.

Cosgun et al. show that, in B cell leukemia, β-catenin expression is maintained at low levels through glycogen synthase kinase 3B (GSK3β)-mediated phosphorylation. Inhibition of GSK3β results in β-catenin–Ikaros–NuRD complex formation, leading to B-ALL cell death through MYC repression.

RNAi therapy has huge potential but effective delivery to target location is a major issue. Here, the authors report on the delivery of RNAi to tumors using self-agglomerating nanohydrogels that can overcome the different delivery barriers and supply multiple RNAi payloads.

Exciton propagation in CrSBr is strongly influenced by magnetic properties, particularly peaking at the Néel temperature. Its transport is not governed by classical diffusion but rather by an interaction with the spin degree of freedom, specifically through a magnon–exciton drag effect.

Analysis of the 3D chromatin architecture and cis-regulatory elements in a sea urchin and a sea star reveals mechanisms of 3D chromatin organization in echinoderms and the long-term evolutionary dynamics of cis-regulatory elements in animals.

The development of robust catalysts that could work under high current densities brings promise but is a challenge in CO₂ electroreduction. Here, the authors report a wettability-engineered electrode design for ethylene electrosynthesis that operates over 1000 h without salt precipitation.

Quantifying intermolecular coupling and local morphology is important to understand soft matter systems. Pollard et al. show how multispectral vibrational near-field optical microscopy can be used to image molecular-scale morphology and intermolecular interactions with nanometre spatial resolution.

The field effect tunability of 2D semiconductors is at the basis of their technological appeal, but it is usually implemented via electrostatic gating. Here, the authors demonstrate an ultrafast THz field effect in 2D MoS₂ embedded in a nanoantenna converting the incident radiation field into an out-of-plane electric field of ~ MV/cm scale.

Magnesium metal batteries hold great promise for next-generation energy storage but struggle with limited understanding of their deposition mechanisms. Here, authors employ cryogenic electron microscopy to uncover how interfacial chemistry governs magnesium deposition across diverse electrolytes.