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Preparation and characterization of poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene)oxide (PPO) films exhibiting the cocrystalline phase with carvacrol, a relevant natural antimicrobial, are reported. The relative intensity and linear dichroism of two O–H out-of-plane deformation peaks (at 698 and 717 cm⁻¹) of carvacrol can be rationalized by assuming that these peaks are due to isolated and hydrogen-bonded guest molecules, respectively, and by slower desorption of carvacrol when included as isolated molecules in the cavities of the polymer host crystalline phase.

A galvanic strategy enables the intercalation of diverse molecular cations into bulk and few-layer van der Waals crystals under mild conditions, yielding 50 organic–inorganic superlattices. This method enables the definition of vertical and lateral intercalation heterostructures, opening avenues for the device integration of hybrid quantum materials.

A porous organic-cage molecule is shown to exhibit unprecedented performance for the separation of rare gases, with selectivity arising from a precise size match between the rare gas and the organic-cage cavity.

Current strategies for protein encapsulation in DNA vessels for controlled enzymatic catalysis or therapeutic delivery rely on formation of covalent complexes. Here, the authors design a system that mimics natural reversible non-covalent host–guest interactions between a DNA host and the protein DegP.

Perylene diimide-bithiophene macrocycles are electroactive and shape-persistent hosts. Here, the authors describe their self-assembly into a cellular organic semiconducting film whose voids are electrically sensitive to different guests, and which can function as the active layer in a field-effect transistor device.

The making of mirror-image versions of naturally occurring cyclodextrins (CDs) is challenging and constitutes an untouched goal of the CD community. Now a concise approach is developed for the diastereoselective synthesis of three mirror-image CDs in an efficient and scalable manner.

Glass-like supramolecular polymer networks with high compressibility and fast self-recovery are fabricated using host–guest crosslinkers with slow dissociation kinetics.

Mixtures of various size fullerenes are available as a component of fullerene soot, but isolating pure fullerenes is a challenging task. Here, the authors use a porphyrin-based supramolecular cage that encapsulates fullerenes with high selectivity and releases C₆₀by a simple washing technique.

Benzene is a genotoxic carcinogen with no safe level of exposure. Here, by creating and decorating a structural defect in a metal–organic framework to form MIL-125-Zn, a benzene uptake of 7.63 mmol g^–1 at 1.2 mbar is observed due to binding to Zn(II) sites.

A supramolecular three-shell matryoshka-like complex di rects the functionalization of the C₆₀ inner shell to the selective formation of a single trans-3 fullerene bis-adduct. The selectivity with this matryoshka-like approach could be useful for applications where regioisomerically pure C₆₀ bis-adducts have been shown to have superior properties compared with isomer mixtures.

Intercalation — a cornerstone of materials science with wide-ranging applications — has now been demonstrated in a superatomic crystal. A redox-active tetracyanoethylene guest was inserted into the lattice of a material consisting of alternate layers of {Co₆Te₈} clusters and C₆₀ fullerenes, leading to a single-crystal-to-single-crystal transformation that significantly modulates the material's optical and electrical transport properties.

The application of photoswitches as light-responsive triggers for phase transitions of porous materials remains poorly explored. Here, the authors report a light-responsive flexible metal-organic framework which undergoes pore contraction upon combined application of light irradiation and adsorption stress via a buckling process of the framework-embedded azobenzene photoswitch.

How the pulvinar represents complex visual information, its functional topography, and its relationship to cortical processing of visually presented objects remains unclear. Here authors show that responses to natural scenes in the human pulvinar reveal organized spatial maps for both low-level visual features, such as local contrast, as well as high-level visual features, such as bodies and faces.

Post-translational site-selective formation of boronoalanine in proteins enables applications of boron for binding partner capture, footprinting of interactions with reactive oxygen species, proteolytic control and mapping of transient structures.

Pressure amplification phenomena have recently been observed in ordered mesoporous solids, but little is understood about this counter-intuitive behaviour. Here, Kaskel and colleagues demonstrate that crystal size can play an important role in modulating pressure amplification in metal-organic frameworks.

Low-cost, efficient and stable materials are required to enable the widespread application of organic photovoltaics. In this Review, the challenges associated with designing low-cost materials, developing eco-friendly solvents and understanding intrinsic degradation mechanisms of organic photovoltaics are discussed.

For adsorption processes, gas uptake usually increases with increasing pressure; however, here the phenomenon of negative gas adsorption is demonstrated in a metal–organic framework, which undergoes a sudden hysteretic structural deformation and pore contraction, releasing guest molecules.

Effective synthetic anion receptors are challenging to design. Now, star-shaped macrocycles, with a cavity defined by multiple convergent amide NH and phenyl CH groups, have been synthesized in one pot from their monomeric building blocks. These macrocycles strongly bind a variety of anions, selectively transport chloride across cell membranes and restore the function of cystic fibrosis cells.

Challenges in mapping modern molecular and anatomical datasets into a common atlas are not fully addressed. Here authors present approaches to aligning multimodal neuroimaging data and quantifying geometric variability. Authors also make sure open-source code, dataset standards, and a web interface are available, enabling large scale integration of datasets essential to modern neuroscience.

Colloidal particles of metal–organic frameworks (ZIF-8 and UiO-66) with different polyhedral shapes can self-assemble into well-ordered, porous three-dimensional superstructures. These superstructures function as photonic crystals, with a photonic band gap that depends on the size of the MOF particles and shifts upon the sorption of guests within their pores.

Surface heterogeneity significantly influences the properties of porous materials, but remains extremely difficult to characterize. Here, the authors extend Porod’s scattering law from homogeneous to heterogeneous porous materials, allowing for surface variation to be non-invasively probed.

The authors here report tensile properties of polycrystalline methane hydrate at the micron scale by applying a contactless, thermos-induced stress to a tenuous shell of hydrate grown in a thin glass capillary. The results suggest that the cohesive strength of methane hydrate in marine settings may be an order of magnitude less than currently thought.

Porous sorbents capable of high ammonia (NH₃) uptake capacities are of great interest for ammonia storage for industry, as well as for the environmental remediation of this toxic and corrosive gas. Here, NH₃ adsorption is investigated in four robust aluminium-based metal–organic frameworks, and in situ neutron powder diffraction, synchrotron IR micro-spectroscopy and ²⁷Al solid-state NMR studies show that the pore geometries, framework rigidity, and nature of the host–guest binding sites together dictate the high NH₃ capture and storage capacity.

Single-atom alloys (SAAs) are intriguing atomic ensembles, yet their stability remains uncertain due to trial-and-error synthesis approaches. Here, the authors utilize descriptor-based density functional theory calculations to investigate the stability, activity, and regeneration of Ni-based SAA catalysts for acetic acid dehydrogenation.

Approaching the level of molecular recognition of enzymes with solid catalysts is a challenging goal. Here, the authors present a computational methodology that guides the selection of the most adequate zeolite frameworks for target reactions.

Suppressed Dexter transfer is needed to achieve efficient and stable hyperfluorescence, but complex matrices must be involved. A molecular design strategy has been proposed where Dexter transfer can be substantially reduced by an encapsulated terminal emitter, leading to ‘matrix-free’ hyperfluorescence.

Self-assembling proteins that form capsid-like structures act as molecular containers for diverse cargoes. Here, the authors solve the cryo-EM structures of lumazine synthase shells, and show that supercharged mutants form expanded assemblies, indicating that electrostatics can be exploited to engineer cage architecture.

Neural Networks are known to perform poorly outside of their training domain. Here the authors propose an inverse sampling strategy to train neural network potentials enabling to drive atomistic systems towards high-likelihood and high-uncertainty configurations without the need for molecular dynamics simulations.

Energy–structure–function maps that describe the possible structures and properties of molecular crystals are developed, and these maps are used to guide the experimental discovery of porous materials with specific functions.

Lead sulphide colloidal nanocrystals are now used to harvest non-emissive triplet excitons generated in a tetracene layer. Depending on the length of the ligands capping the nanocrystals, exciton transfer efficiency as high as 90% can be achieved.

Spatially resolved JWST spectroscopy of a massive, quiescent galaxy at a redshift of ~4 reveals that it formed its stars and quenched rapidly, despite being surrounded by an abundant gas reservoir and gravitationally bound to a star-bursting companion.

A study reports whole-genome sequences for 490,640 participants from the UK Biobank and combines these data with phenotypic data to provide new insights into the relationship between human variation and sequence variation.

Molecules that can switch between multiple stable states in response to stimuli are promising for many applications, but are challenging to construct. Here, the authors design a resorcinarene switching manifold with multiple oxidation states and coupled charge-transfer states, which can access up to five distinct switch-states with unique optical outputs.

Artificial molecular machines bound on polymer beads enable non-equilibrium sorption of species from solution onto a solid surface.

Observations of a 3-million-year-old pre-main-sequence star with a misaligned disk reveal a giant orbiting planet; the system is ideal for studying the early formation and migration of planets.

Porous solids are well suited to the capture of environmentally harmful gases, but further understanding of the solid–gas interactions involved is required. Combining dynamic and static characterization with modelling, researchers have now described how a metal–organic framework binds CO₂ and SO₂ selectively through hydroxyl groups — rather than amine ones as typically featured.

Lead sulphide colloidal nanocrystals offer a solid-state answer for infrared-to-visible upconversion.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have potential catalysis, filtration and sensing applications, but device fabrication will require controlled MOF growth. Here, α-hopeite microparticles are used to achieve spatial control of MOF nucleation, and accelerate MOF growth.

Non-standard amino acids are incorporated into proteins at large numbers of sites using evolved translation components in recoded bacteria.

Drug company used ghost-writers for papers published on Vioxx trials.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.

Mutational signature analysis of blood cells isolated from 23 chemotherapy-exposed samples and 9 nonexposed controls characterizes the effects of various drugs on mutational burden, signature exposure and cell types.