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Brown dwarfs are substellar objects subject to variability and colour changes. A 3D general circulation model shows that clouds explain this observed behaviour and highlights their role as a driver of atmospheric dynamics and climate.

Kinematic measurements of the Perseus galaxy cluster reveal two drivers of gas motions: a small-scale driver in the inner core associated with black-hole feedback and a large-scale driver in the outer core powered by mergers.

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.

The study introduces radio interferometric multiplexed spectroscopy (RIMS), a method designed to efficiently monitor the radio emissions of massive samples of stars. Applying it to LOFAR data, the authors identify stellar bursts, offering clues to possible star–planet magnetic interactions.

The protospacer-adjacent motif specificity of several Cas enzymes is customized using protein language models.

Producing isolated single-photon emitters in hexagonal boron nitride with predefined spin transitions is challenging. Oxygen annealing enables the controlled fabrication of narrowband quantum emitters with optically active spin for quantum applications.

AI is a powerful tool for facilitating data science programming in biomedicine. This study benchmarks the performance of existing tools and introduces a reliable AI agent copilot.

Generation of orbital currents in a non-magnetic material can be useful to build efficient orbitronic devices. Now, the interplay of chiral phonons and electrons is shown to produce orbital currents in α-quartz.

Human impacts on marine ecosystems are increasing the likelihood of pathogenic outbreaks, harmful algal blooms and coral stress. Here the authors develop a CRISPR biomonitoring tool that can help detect key marine species that are important to public health, the aquaculture sector and marine ecosystems.

The authors propose a Generalized Latent Equilibrium framework for fully local credit assignment in physical, dynamical neuronal networks such as the brain. By exploiting dendritic structure and prospective coding in cortical neurons, it enables an online approximation of backpropagation through space and time.

cellSTAAR advances noncoding rare variant association analysis by integrating single-cell genomics data.

Based on two waves of data collection from 748 households in Hong Kong, this analysis sheds light on the number of transmission events that occurred before manifestation of symptoms in influenza A and B cases.

Boucherie et al. apply physics-based models to the arrangement of locations to study how geography shapes human movement. They find an underlying pattern in how people choose to move, independent of geographical layout.

MultiSuSiE is an extension of the Sum of Single Effects fine-mapping model that allows causal effect sizes to vary across ancestries. Applying MultiSuSiE to quantitative traits in All of Us identifies fine-mapped variants not implicated by other methods.

The use of antimicrobial agents can exacerbate the proliferation of antimicrobial resistance genes, which can put public health at risk; evaluating this risk requires proper monitoring. An extensive investigation of Australian wastewater reveals a distinct correlation between the type of antimicrobial used and the socioeconomic status of the population.

Humanity’s Last Exam, a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, is designed to be an expert-level closed-ended academic benchmark with broad subject coverage.

Analysis of the local branching geometries of several physical networks shows violations of predictions of length and volume minimization, leading to the hypothesis that estimating the material cost requires accounting for the full three-dimensional geometry.

A van der Waals heterostructure made from atomic layers of ferroelectric CuCrP₂S₆ and ferromagnetic Fe₃GeTe₂ can offer reversible, non-volatile ferroelectric control of two-dimensional magnetism.

The structural anisotropy necessary for the powered directional rotation of chemically fuelled molecular motors had previously been provided by chiral fuels or enzymes. Now it has been shown that asymmetry in the organocatalyst itself is sufficient for directional fuelled rotation. This informs how chemical energy is transduced through catalysis, the fundamental process that powers biology.

Programmable self-assembly can help construct complex nanostructures. Now a mathematical framework can identify if and how a particular structure can be assembled.

This study demonstrates a femtosecond laser technique for imaging solvated oxygen atoms, offering an approach to investigate the behaviour of atomic radicals in liquid.

Carta leverages lineage tracing data to infer the optimal trajectory of cell differentiation.

The inability of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells to shift the circadian clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus during daytime is caused by light-dependent depolarization block of these cells.

Organisms improve their fitness by adjusting their gene expression to the environment, for example bacteria scale the expression of metabolic enzymes near linearly to their growth rate. Here, the authors show that such linear scaling often maximizes growth rate, but that linear scaling is suboptimal under some conditions.

The ~500-metre-thick Prudhoe Dome in northwestern Greenland completely deglaciated 7,000 years ago, highlighting the sensitivity of the ice sheet to mid-Holocene warming, according to luminescence and geochemical data from sub-ice sediments and ice cores.

This study applies a global food and land system modelling framework to quantify the impact of 23 food system measures on 15 outcome indicators related to public health, the environment, social inclusion and the economy—from today until 2050.

Electrochemical acid-base production has attractive applications in mineral recovery and CO₂ removal, but current membrane-based designs are plagued by resistive losses. The authors report a membrane-less system generating useful acid and base solutions at high rates with less energy.

Early high-resolution images of two 2021 novae reveal eruptions unfolding in multiple stages with colliding outflows that produce shocks and gamma rays, reshaping our understanding of stellar explosions.

A scanning single-electron transistor is used to probe the strain dependence of moiré and supermoiré domains. It is observed that these can be considered nearly independent of each other.

An effective CRISPR RNA occlusion strategy enhances mismatch detection when using Cas13.

Over 30 years, the scholarship programme Hrabowski founded has supported more than 1,500 Black students. He spoke to Nature for our new Changemakers series.

Chen et al. examined how genetic risk interacts with neighborhood environmental exposures to influence psychotic-like experiences in children from the ABCD cohort study.

Neuropathic pain is common in HIV patients, but its mechanism is unclear. Here, the authors show that a subpopulation of reactive astrocytes in the spinal cord promotes neuronal loss and drives HIV-associated pain.

Human–artificial intelligence (AI) dialogues can meaningfully impact voters’ attitudes towards presidential candidates and policy, demonstrating the potential of conversational AI to influence political decision-making.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet responded to different natural forcing mechanisms than the East Antarctic Ice Sheet through the mid-Pliocene due to a greater sensitivity to oceanic feedbacks, according to iceberg-rafted debris records and ice-sheet modelling experiments.

Photonic processors are limited by the bulkiness of discrete components and wiring complexity. An experiment now demonstrates a reprogrammable two-dimensional waveguide that performs neural network inference through multimode wave propagation.

Biopolymers can couple to membrane lipids and condense to prewet membranes. Here a range of membrane perturbations in reconstituted systems and cells show that the prewetting is sensitive to membrane composition and phase transitions and can drive interorganelle contact.

In experimental situations, random and sparse observations hinder understanding of the underlying complex dynamical system. The authors introduce a hybrid, transformer-based machine-learning framework to reconstruct the dynamics of new, unseen systems from sparse observations by training on a diverse set of synthetic systems.

The zebra finch robust nucleus of the arcopallium (RA) directs singing by providing descending projections to brainstem motor neurons. The authors show that electrophysiological characteristics of RA neurons rely on resurgent Na+ currents that emerge early during song development only in males.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

The SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid (N) protein serves multiple roles in the viral lifecycle. Phosphorylation toggles N between these roles by altering N’s conformation, its material properties when phase separated with RNA, and its membrane interactions.

Schuermans et al. discovered that genetic predisposition to thromboembolism is associated with a greater risk of post-acute sequelae after SARS-CoV-2 infection, including long COVID, and downstream analyses implicated PAR-1 as a potential contributor to long COVID.

Optical spin defects in semiconductors are crucial for applications, but it is often difficult to establish their microscopic origin. A mechanism for the spin behaviour of a family of bright emitters in hexagonal boron nitride has now been identified.

The ratio of predator-to-prey biomass is a key element in food webs. Here, the authors report a unified analysis of predator-prey biomass scaling in complex food webs, finding general patterns of sub-linear scaling across ecosystems and levels of organization.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

A model of intrahost poliovirus replication shows that, after several rounds of replication, pocapavir, a poliovirus capsid inhibitor, collapses viral density, preventing intracellular interactions that allow drug-susceptible viruses to sensitize resistant ones. These results suggest that a low dosage of pocapavir may be beneficial in poliovirus treatment.

Experimental measurements of high-order out-of-time-order correlators on a superconducting quantum processor show that these correlators remain highly sensitive to the quantum many-body dynamics in quantum computers at long timescales.

Observations of a fast X-ray transient reveal that it is a gamma-ray-burst explosion from a very distant galaxy that emits light with the wavelength necessary to drive cosmic reionization, the last major phase change in the history of the Universe.