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Multipole datasets and targeted sensitivity simulations reveal interannual variability in Middle Eastern dust accounts for ~36 % of the Indian Ocean Dipole variance during boreal autumn, surpassing the influence of El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

JWST’s COSMOS-Web survey is used to create an ultra-high-detail dark matter map, revealing hidden filaments, clusters and distant structures. By tracing features out to z = 2, this map shows how dark and luminous matter build the cosmic web across cosmic time.

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study reveal declines in chronic respiratory disease mortality between 1990 and 2023—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the burdens on people affected remain substantial.

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

Liquid crystal elastomers have potential as 4D-printing actuators, but it is difficult to achieve complex shape changes in structures. Here, the authors report a 4D-printing strategy that combines vat polymerization-based 3D printing with a two-stage UV-curable resin.

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.

Liu et al. report Chinese normative lifespan brain charts showing later neurodevelopmental milestones than those detected in Western cohorts. Individual deviations from these norms are valuable in assessing clinical risk and outcomes.

Fanjiang Kong, Zhixi Tian, Xingliang Hou, Baohui Liu and colleagues report the cloning and functional characterization of J, the locus underlying the long-juvenile (LJ) trait that has enabled tropical cultivation of soybean. They show that J, an ortholog of Arabidopsis ELF3, downregulates the expression of E1, thereby promoting flowering under short-day conditions.

A microwave-assisted process is developed for the rapid and scalable manufacture of pure-phase metallic MoS₂ nanosheets, enabling practical electrochemical devices for energy applications.

Ferroelectric ordering of moiré excitons and collective photon emission emerge in WSe₂/WS₂ heterobilayers near the Mott state driven by strong dipolar interactions and a transition to symmetry-broken ferroelectric phases.

Noradrenergic circuits support and balance aggressive behavioural states in predatory nematodes, distinguish predatory from non-predatory nematode species and are associated with the evolution of complex behavioural traits.

Exemplified by Bi_0.4Sb_1.6Te₃, the authors reveal the reason for low thermal conductivity induced by compositional inhomogeneity lies in randomly aligned edge dislocations induced by random composition distribution.

A global synthesis of >600 studies finds that across agro-ecosystems, grasslands and forests in temperate and tropical zones, increasing plant diversity has a consistently positive effect on plant performance and the suppression of antagonists.

Researchers studied the blood-based metabolome of over 23,000 people from ten ethnically diverse cohorts. They identified 235 metabolites associated with future risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). By integrating genetic and modifiable lifestyle factors, their findings provide insights into T2D mechanisms and could improve risk prediction and inform precision prevention.

The perceived toxicity of organometallic reagents has limited their use in living systems. Now it has been shown that balancing flexible chelation with biocompatible ligands without precluding chemical reactivity enables organonickel-mediated S-arylation inside cells. This reaction enables deep chemical surveys of reactive proteins and covalent tracking of intracellular viral and bacterial pathogens.

Germano-silicate used as a building material for integrated photonics circuits substantially reduces optical losses, approaching levels comparable to those in optical fibres.

National parochialism is the tendency to cooperate more with people of the same nation. In a 42-nations study, the authors show that national parochialism is a pervasive phenomenon, present to a similar degree across all the studied nations, and occurs both when decisions are private or public.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

The CMS Collaboration reports the measurement of the spin, parity, and charge conjugation properties of all-charm tetraquarks, exotic fleeting particles formed in proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

Liang et al. estimate the prevalence of text modified by large language models in recent scientific papers and preprints, finding widespread use (up to 17.5% of papers in computer science).

This research developed and compared firearm-specific and method-agnostic machine-learning models using data from 800,579 Army veterans, revealing that model choice and intervention thresholds impact predictive accuracy and fairness, guiding tailored suicide prevention efforts.

High-depth sequencing of non-cancerous tissue from patients with metastatic cancer reveals single-base mutational signatures of alcohol, smoking and cancer treatments, and reveals how exogenous factors, including cancer therapies, affect somatic cell evolution.

Coordinated X-ray and radio observations reveal that disk winds and jets occur mutually exclusively in 4U 1630–472, providing new observational constraints on the interplay between different modes of outflow in X-ray binaries.

He et al. present a parameter-efficient fine-tuning method for single-cell language models that improves performance on unseen diseases, treatments and cell types.

Analyses of 2,658 whole genomes across 38 types of cancer identify the contribution of non-coding point mutations and structural variants to driving cancer.

MultiSTAAR provides a general and flexible statistical framework for functionally informed multi-trait rare variant analysis of biobank-scale sequencing studies by jointly analyzing multiple traits and incorporating annotation information.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza A H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b virus has caused outbreaks in dairy cattle and cases in humans in the United States. Here, the authors assess levels of pre-existing cross-reactive antibodies to the epidemic virus strain in human serum samples collected in the United States.

Effective response to immune checkpoint inhibitors depends on the proliferation and expansion of tumor-reactive CD8⁺ T cells. By combining analysis of CD8⁺ T cell clones in a preclinical multi-site tumor model with clinical datasets, the authors track the expansion dynamics of hundreds of T cell clones over time and define a signature to predict intratumoral CD8⁺ T cell expansion in response to immunotherapies.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of type 2 diabetes (T2D) identifies more than 600 T2D-associated loci; integrating physiological trait and single-cell chromatin accessibility data at these loci sheds light on heterogeneity within the T2D phenotype.

The microbial metabolite trimethylamine (TMA), the precursor of TMAO, which is associated with adverse cardiometabolic outcomes, is shown to have beneficial metabolic and anti-inflammatory effects in the host in the context of obesity.

Up-recycling waste wood as a source for producing materials is crucial for sustainability. Here, the authors discover that in situ thermal curing of melamine formaldehyde resin with natural wood enhanced its room temperature phosphorescence performance.

Cellular state cooccurrence signatures, such as carcinoma ecotypes may serve as potential biomarkers of response to cancer immunotherapy, however, their clinical utility remains unexplored. Here, the authors analyse large real world immunotherapy cohorts and gene expression data and develop a predictive model for response.

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.

SMC complexes are ring-shaped motors that fold DNA by extruding loops, but how they navigate large DNA obstacles is unclear. Here, Liu et al., show that SMC complexes bypass obstacles by threading obstacle linkers through a selective hinge channel, enabling translocation on crowded chromatin.

Quantifying genomic aberrations resulting from designer nucleases activity is essential for gene therapy clinical translation. Here, the authors present a modular digital PCR technique that profiles DNA repair precision and cut-repair cycles at the edited loci, exposing current evaluation biases.

Researchers demonstrate all-collinear antiferromagnetic tunnel junctions achieving up to 75% magnetoresistance through van der Waals interface effects, enabling spintronics with layer-tunable volatile or non-volatile behavior.

A growing number of compounds are reported to extend lifespan, but it remains unclear whether they reduce mortality across the entire life course or only at specific ages. Here the authors introduce an analytic tool that pinpoints when, for how long, and to what extent presumptive anti-aging treatments alter mortality risk.

Patients with kidney failure undergoing maintenance hemodialysis have poor long-term survival. Here the authors use affinity-based proteomics to identify circulating risk factors for mortality in patients with kidney failure on hemodialysis.

Electrochromic materials are widely explored in energy-saving smart windows, yet combining fast switching, neutral black coloration, and robust long-term durability remains challenging. Here the authors report a solution processed n-doped poly(benzodifurandione) affording an electrochromic black window that overcomes these limitations.

It is uncertain how much life expectancy of the Chinese population would improve under current and greater policy targets on lifestyle-based risk factors for chronic diseases and mortality behaviours. Here we report a simulation of how improvements in four risk factors, namely smoking, alcohol use, physical activity and diet, could affect mortality. We show that in the ideal scenario, that is, all people who currently smokers quit smoking, excessive alcohol userswas reduced to moderate intake, people under 65 increased moderate physical activity by one hour and those aged 65 and older increased by half an hour per day, and all participants ate 200 g more fresh fruits and 50 g more fish/seafood per day, life expectancy at age 30 would increase by 4.83 and 5.39 years for men and women, respectively. In a more moderate risk reduction scenario referred to as the practical scenario, where improvements in each lifestyle factor were approximately halved, the gains in life expectancy at age 30 could be half those of the ideal scenario. However, the validity of these estimates in practise may be influenced by population-wide adherence to lifestyle recommendations. Our findings suggest that the current policy targets set by the Healthy China Initiative could be adjusted dynamically, and a greater increase in life expectancy would be achieved.

Electron distributions exhibit velocity-space signatures indicative of the rapid energy released by magnetic reconnection explosions occurring in Earth’s magnetosphere and in plasmas throughout the universe. Here, the authors discover a smile-shaped signature in the electron gradient distribution associated with reconnection occurring at Earth’s dayside magnetopause boundary.

Antimicrobial resistance poses a significant global health threat, necessitating swift and precise diagnostic solutions. Here, the authors introduce a culture-free diagnostic platform integrating microfluidic cell enrichment, single-cell Raman spectroscopy, and deep learning, that identifies bacterial and fungal infections directly from clinical samples within 20 minutes.

Genome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in ancestrally diverse populations implicate candidate causal genes and mechanisms underlying type 2 diabetes. Trans-ancestry genetic risk scores enhance transferability across populations.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

Oriented growth is an important pathway for crystal growth. Here, the authors show that gibbsite nanoplates form mesocrystals through directed sliding and staggered stacking, as demonstrated by in situ microscopy and molecular simulations.

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.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.