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Mineralization is common in biological materials for selective strengthening, but similar toughening in polymer composites is challenging. Here, the authors report a mechanically-mediated reaction for formation of mineralized microrods within a synthetic material.

A jamming mechanism for the observed phenomenon of the sudden hardening of suspensions of micrometre-sized particles on impact (enough to enable a person to run over them) is described and quantified.

Configuration control of non-conservative multi-body systems is challenging. Here, the authors develop a general method using parametric pumping to selectively excite and destroy undesired structures to populate a targeted one, and demonstrate it with acoustically levitated particle systems.

Alcanivorax borkumensis is a marine, oil-degrading bacterium. Here, the authors describe the synthesis of a cellular biosurfactant. Loss of the biosurfactant affects attachment of mutant cells to the oil–water interface, highlighting its importance for biofilm formation on oil droplets.

Entanglement was observed in top–antitop quark events by the ATLAS experiment produced at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN using a proton–proton collision dataset with a centre-of-mass energy of √s  = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 fb⁻¹.

Which combination of current genome sequencing and assembly approaches results in high-quality, complete diploid genome assemblies is determined.

Suspensions of particles at high volume fractions are subject to discontinuous shear thickening or even turn into solid upon impact, yet the underlying mechanism remains elusive. Here, Han et al. follow the propagation of shear bands at jamming fronts in three dimensions and show no sign of densification.

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.

By eliminating the effects of gravity with a free-falling camera, high-resolution imaging of charged grains reveals Keplerian orbits and electrostatically stable clusters—with implications for astrophysical and industrial cluster formation.

In most suspensions viscosity decreases with increasing shear rate. The opposite effect, shear thickening, is a problem for industrial applications. An understanding of how particle interactions in suspensions influence shear thickening may lead to a solution of this problem through the design of smart suspensions.

Freely falling granular streams break up into characteristic droplet patterns similar to liquid flows, but the clustering mechanism remains unresolved. Here, imaging and microscopy data reveal that tiny cohesive forces are responsible, corresponding to a granular surface tension some 100,000 times weaker than in ordinary liquids.

Smut fungi secrete effector proteins that suppress host plant immunity. Here the authors show that the corn smut effector Erc1 has 1,3-β-glucanase activity and promotes virulence in maize leaves by attenuating β-glucan-induced defense responses.

The ATLAS Collaboration reports the observation of the electroweak production of two jets and a Z-boson pair. This process is related to vector-boson scattering and allows the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking to be probed.

Analyses of genomes from 914 children, adolescents, and young adults provide a comprehensive resource of genomic alterations across a spectrum of common childhood cancers.

The ATLAS Collaboration reports a measurement of the ratio of the decay rates of W bosons to τ leptons and muons, in agreement with universal lepton couplings as postulated in the standard model of particle physics.

The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider reports a search for charged-lepton-flavour violation in decays of Z bosons into a τ lepton and an electron or muon of opposite charge.

Dense suspensions are granular materials suspended in a liquid at high packing fractions, exhibiting high viscosity. The latter is now shown to be related to the formation of a network of rigid clusters at large shear stress.

The regulated passage of ions through a porous membrane is a process applicable to various research disciplines. Here, the authors present a method for the control of porous membrane ion transport, using a deposited layer of ligand-functionalized nanoparticles.

Investigating the inner structure of baryons is important to further our understanding of the strong interaction. Here, the BESIII Collaboration extracts the absolute value of the ratio of the electric to magnetic form factors and its relative phase for e + e − → J/ψ → ΛΣ decays, enhancing the signal thanks to the vacuum polarisation effect at the J/ψ peak.

How the shape of jammed particle packings influences their mechanical response is unknown except for specific cases. An algorithm that mutates the shapes of packings of bonded identical spheres to optimize the packing’s mechanical performance, and the experimental testing of the optimized shapes through three-dimensional printing, are now reported.

Ten years after the discovery of the Higgs boson, the ATLAS  experiment at CERN probes its kinematic properties with a significantly larger dataset from 2015–2018 and provides further insights on its interaction with other known particles.

Primary lymphomas of the central nervous system (PCNSL) are defined as diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCL) confined to the CNS. Here, the authors complete whole genome sequencing and RNA-seq to characterize 51 PCNSLs, and find common mutations in immune pathways and upregulated TERT expression and find distinct pathway differences between DLBCL and other primary CNS lymphomas.

This analysis of a large, clinically annotated cohort of individuals with predisposition to myelodysplastic syndromes reveals insights into the genetic determinants of disease progression and their relationship with clinical manifestations and therapy outcome.

Dense suspensions of hard particles readily display discontinuous shear thickening under shear but not reversible shear jamming. Here it is shown that the formation of interparticle hydrogen bonds is crucial for the shear jamming of these suspensions.

Current optoacoustic probes for cancer imaging have limitations including background noise, long-term toxicity and scarce imaging depth in living tissue. Here the authors use Rhodobacter, purple bacteria rich in bacteriochlorophyll a, as an optoacoustic reporter to image tumor-associated macrophages in mice in vivo.

The structure of Igni18, ancient enzyme from the Crenarchaean species Ignicoccus hospitalis, is solved and characterized by Pérez-García, Chow and colleagues. This structure provides insight as to the evolution of metallo-beta-lactamases and their functions.

Burkitt lymphoma (BL) is the most common pediatric B-cell lymphoma. Here, within the International Cancer Genome Consortium, the authors performed whole genome and transcriptome sequencing of 39 sporadic BL, describing the landscape of mutations, structural variants, and mutational processes that underpin this disease how alterations on different cellular levels cooperate in deregulating key pathways and complexes.

Acoustically levitated granular particles offer a platform on which to study self-assembly in a macroscopic system. Precise acoustic tuning reveals how cluster statistics and assembly pathways change as the system moves out of equilibrium.

Microbial enzymes are capable of degrading certain synthetic polymers, with most polyethylene terephthalate (PET) degrading enzymes known to derive from bacteria or fungi. Here, the authors describe an archaeal originating feruloyl-esterase PET46 enzyme with a flexible lid domain and PET degradation capability.

Dense suspensions of hard granular particles can transform from liquid-like to solid-like when perturbed; a state diagram is mapped out that reveals how this transformation can occur via dynamic jamming at sufficiently large shear stress while leaving the particle density unchanged.

X-ray scattering and molecular dynamics simulations show that asymmetries in the ligand-shell thickness of self-assembled nanoparticle membranes at air/water interfaces affect the macroscopic properties of the membranes.