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Nanotwinned materials are promising for structural applications. Here, a triple-interlocked-nanotwinned strategy via martensitic transformation is used to overcome intrinsic twin engineering deficiencies and achieve excellent mechanical properties.

Oxygen redox kinetics play a key role in determining the performance of redox catalysts in the chemical looping anaerobic oxidation of methane (CLAOM), however, the intertwined effects of oxygen surface exchange and bulk diffusion make optimizing these catalysts challenging. Here the authors identify a characteristic length linking oxygen transport and product selectivity in CLAOM.

The authors report an artificial plateau neuron with bistable, spike-malleable dynamics that generates programmable rhythmic bursts, enabling a quadruped robot to walk adaptively and energy-efficiently via distributed hardware control without centralized computation.

Radiotherapy (RT) is standard-of-care in cancer management; however, RT efficacy remains limited. Here, the authors test whether membrane camouflaged BCG bacteria (MBCG) enhance response to RT in preclinical models of glioblastoma. MBCG efficiently targets tumor tissues, induces trained immunity in tumor-associated macrophages, and enhances the RT-induced anti-tumor responses.

The applicability of hybrid molecular dynamics-Monte Carlo (MDMC) methods to study nanoconfined fluids is limited by their lack of generality beyond the training conditions. Here, the authors present an AI-assisted MDMC framework that overcomes this limitation by learning local, conditional transition statistics directly from MD trajectories, demonstrating its accuracy and transferability across different thermodynamic conditions, spatial scales, and complex nano-scale geometries.

Removing trace acetylene from ethylene is vital for plastic production, yet catalysts often overreact and waste the product. This work reveals that palladium dual-atom catalyst on carbon greatly speeds the reaction while keeping ethylene intact.

A matrix-confined molecular layer of compact surface coverage and good conductivity is developed as charge transport substrate to fabricate perovskite solar-cell devices with high efficiencies, which shows application potential for scalable production.

Printable mesoscopic perovskite solar cells are a promising device design, yet their efficiency is limited by charge collection. Ma et al. use hexamethylene diisocyanate to eliminate unreacted organic cations at grain boundaries, enhancing hole collection.

Incorporating CO₂ into propane dehydrogenation (PDH) offers great potential for propylene production while simultaneously utilizing greenhouse gases; however, a key challenge is suppressing the undesired dry reforming of propane. Here, the authors present a coupled strategy that combines PDH with the reverse water–gas shift reaction through a tandem catalytic system.

Topological interfacial coupling enhances PMA in 2D Fe₄GeTe₂, yielding coexisting IMA/PMA components enabling field-free SOT switching at low current density with polarity control, demonstrating reconfigurable logic for low-power spintronics.

Cyanobacteria mutants with improved tolerance to combined high light and high temperature (HLHT) are rarely reported. Here, the authors use a hypermutation system for adaptive laboratory evolution and identify a mutant with improved HLHT tolerance by enhancing expression of shikimate kinase.

An untethered phototactic soft machine composed of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) hydrogel blended with graphene oxide and gold nanoparticles demonstrates underwater full-space artificial phototaxis and manoeuvres around obstacles in natural sunlight.

Through multimodal analyses of human cardiac tissues across different ages, Fan, Zheng, Zhan, Xu, Liu and colleagues reveal that RNA-binding protein ARID5A drives inflammaging by stabilizing the MAVS mRNA and activating the NF-κB–TBK1 pathway, and show that inactivating myocardial ARID5A attenuates cardiac senescence and functional decline.

Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) is a prevalent and complex disorder in older adults. Guo et al. identify human antigen R as a regulator of ARHL in aged mice and demonstrate that cochlear human antigen R overexpression alleviates ARHL, highlighting it as a therapeutic target for the condition.

Viral diversity and abundance in bats are incompletely understood. Here, analyzing individual bat viromes, the authors observe a high frequency of co-infection and spillover among the animals and identify viruses with the potential to infect humans or livestock.

Adenosine deaminase acting on RNA-based RNA editing is improved when single guide RNAs imitate natural targets.

Nanotwinning strategies are widely recognized for their ability to substantially enhance the mechanical properties of materials. Here diamond with both penetrating and interlocked twins was synthesized, yielding a hardness of 276 GPa, which can be explained by diamond models that feature diverse twin configurations and dimensions.

Photosynthetic glucose production is well controlled due to its complex interactions with other cellular processes. Here, the authors identify that the native glucokinase activity is the bottleneck restricting the metabolism potential for glucose synthesis and engineer a cyanobacterium strain that can produce 5 g/L of glucose.

Targeted multielement substitution of a lead-free relaxor ferroelectric perovskite distorts the lattice structure and induces strong polar disorder, leading to high-polar-entropy ferroelectric oxides with a high electrocaloric effect and long lifetime.

Recently, superconductivity near 80 K was observed in La3Ni2O7 under high pressure, but the mechanism is debated. Here the authors report angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements under ambient pressure, revealing flat bands with strong electronic correlations that could be linked to superconductivity.

A meta-transcriptomic analysis of the viromes of 2,438 mosquitoes of 81 species from across China identifies geographic hotspots of mosquito virus diversity, links between mosquito virome composition and host phylogeny, and a suggestion of long-distance mosquito dispersal.

Sun, Fu, Zheng, Hong, Liu et al. generate a single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the primate cochlear aging, identifying an age-related decline in Slc35f1 and showing that silencing Slc35f1 in mice induces hair cell degeneration and auditory deficits.

Virus-mediated somatic genetics experiments in adult mouse brain identify key roles of LKB1 and SIK3 upstream of HDAC4/5 and CREB in the transcriptional regulation of non-rapid eye movement sleep.

The reliability of memristors has always been a major obstacle in neuromorphic computing. This work reports a negative differential resistance memristor based on quantum well structure for neuron circuit implementation, which shows low performance variation (0.264%), high temperature resistance at 400 °C.

The Mexican axolotl is a well-established tetrapod model for regeneration and development. Here the authors report a scRNA-seq method to profile neotenic, metamorphic and limb development stages, highlighting unique perturbation patterns of cell type-related gene expression throughout metamorphosis.

Enhancing the catalytic activity of noble-metal alloys is frequently accompanied by side reactions. Here, the authors describe an approach to break the scaling relationship for propane dehydrogenation, by assembling single atom alloys, to achieve simultaneous enhancement of propylene selectivity and propane conversion.

The heterogeneous catalytic dehydrogenation of hydrocarbons usually suffers from a negative pressure dependence on H₂. Now it has been shown that for propane dehydrogenation on gallium oxide-based catalysts, a positive activity dependence on H₂ partial pressure arises from a metastable hydride-mediated catalysis in which gallium hydrides promote C–H activation.

Intermetallic alloys (IMAs) hold significant potential for catalysis. Here, the authors present a robust gas-migration method for synthesizing stable and uniform IMAs, which exhibit exceptional stability over 1300 h in propane dehydrogenation.

The authors propose a matrix plainification strategy to eliminate lattice vacancies in the Cu2Se matrix of the Cu2Se/SnSe composites, resulting in obvious improvement in carrier mobility and power factor, obtaining a high figure of merit of 3.3.

SERS spectroscopy critically relies on the accumulation of analyte molecules in electromagnetic ‘hotspots’. Here, the authors demonstrate plasmonic trimers with central particles that act as chemical traps, enabling the subtyping of lung tumors using fresh tissue samples.

During prolonged ABA signalling, N-glycosylation-mediated nucleus-peroxisome subcellular dynamics of SnRK2s orchestrate a transition state from short-term sensitive response to long-term acclimation to environmental stress.

The anomalous photovoltaic effect in polar materials offers a promising alternative to overcome the limits of conventional photovoltaics. Here, the authors report spontaneous photocurrent generation in Janus MoSSe monolayers, showing responsivities up to 3 mA/W and response times down to 50 ps.

Electrochemical epoxidation by water is mainly hindered by the sluggish activation of C₂H₄ and the stiff formation of *OH intermediate. Here, the authors report an Ag/SnO₂ interface to promote C₂H₄ adsorption and electrophilic *OH generation, leading to promoted production of ethylene oxide.

The authors report a wet-chemistry-based method to fabricate amorphous, transferable high-k copper calcium titanate thin films as dielectrics for two-dimensional electronic devices.

Rechargeable magnesium batteries offer safety, abundance, and high energy density but are limited by sluggish kinetics. Here, the authors proposed an in-situ electrochemical activation strategy to improve the interface composition and expand the lattice spacing of the (100) planes of CuSe, enhancing the kinetics of the rechargeable magnesium batteries.

Sodium metal batteries hold promise for next-generation energy storage but struggle with uneven sodium deposition and dendrite growth. Here, authors introduce a nanotwinned- alloy strategy to enable spherical sodium deposition and dendrite-free growth, which enhance battery performance.

A MoO₃-Fe₂O₃ redox catalyst with dispersed Mo species on γ-Fe₂O₃ is synthesized for the oxidative dehydrogenation of propane via chemical looping. Acid sites and lattice oxygen regulation promote the production of and selectivity for propylene.

He et al. report a two-transistor-two-resistor core unit based synaptic kernel with monolithic 3D heterogeneous integration compatibility, showing compelling performance, yield (91.2%), and component uniformity. Synaptic kernel supporting differential weight achieves beyond 85% CIFAR-10 recognition.

N-type polycrystalline SnSe shows inferior ZT to p-type polycrystalline due to its high thermal conductivity and lower power factor. The authors overcome the problem via the synergy of divacancy defect and introducing resonance level into the conduction band.

The researchers improve the properties of halide perovskite for high-performance X-ray detection by edge-defined film-fed crystal growth. In particular, high resistivity, low trap density, suppressed ion migration and reduced leakage current are demonstrated. They enable detectors with an extremely low detection limit and high sensitivity.

Water electrolysis typically requires a large voltage input and produces H₂ only at the cathode. Here the authors present a strategy of coupling formaldehyde oxidation with water reduction and report H₂ production at both anode and cathode with small voltage inputs.

Using a global coupled biogeochemistry–climate model and a chemistry and transport model reveals that China’s present-day global radiative forcing is about ten per cent of the current global total, made up of both warming and cooling contributions; if in the future China reduces the cooling forcings, global warming could accelerate.

Large-scale deployment of electrocatalytic hydrogenations using water as a hydrogen source is hampered by poor solubility and difficult product separation. Here the authors propose a dual hydrogenation approach, with palladium membranes used as both anode and cathode, to produce hydrogen—enabled at the anode by the low-potential oxidation of formaldehyde—that permeates to adjacent chemical compartments, where the hydrogenation of organic substrates occur.