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The oxyhalogenation of methane to mono-halogenated products CH₃X (X = Cl, Br, or I) is among the most promising routes for methane utilization, yet current catalysts still suffer from limited product yields. Here, the authors report a CeO₂ nanorod catalyst with atomically dispersed Pd and Mn surface sites, which achieves highly efficient and selective methane oxychlorination.

Earth-abundant cobalt-based catalysts have shown promise to replace iridium as anode catalysts in proton-exchange-membrane water electrolysers, but unfortunately they exhibit high degradation rates. Now, a lanthanum and calcium co-modification of Co₃O₄ is presented, in which lanthanum tunes the water–surface interactions to suppress cobalt dissolution and improve stability, while calcium leaching creates coordinatively unsaturated cobalt sites, leading to enhanced activity.

This work demonstrates superadiabatic topological pumping on photonic chips, achieving a 20-fold device miniaturization and high-efficiency operation across a 650–920 nm bandwidth, paving the way for ultracompact integrated photonic transports.

The Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative (TPMI) has built a cohort of more than half a million individuals with Han Chinese ancestry, providing a rich resource of genetic and medical data for this group.

Reactive capture bypasses CO₂ regeneration, enabling efficient CO production but with low Faradaic efficiency. The authors report a Ni–N₃ molecular catalyst that resists amino acid adsorption and promotes efficient CO production in amino-acid systems.

The biological clock model LifeClock predicts biological age across all life stages from routine clinical data, revealing distinct pediatric and adult disease risk patterns.

The Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative recruited and genotyped more than half a million Taiwanese participants, almost all of Han Chinese ancestry, and performed comprehensive genomic analyses and developed polygenic risk score prediction models for numerous health conditions.

Activation of Wnt/β-Catenin signaling in colorectal cancer requires further mechanistic understanding. Here the authors show that the RNA N6-methyladenoine (m⁶A) eraser ALKBH5 destabilizes FAM84A mRNA to prevent β-catenin ubiquitination and degradation, contributing to colorectal cancer stemness and chemoresistance.

It is unclear how early-life urbanicity influences adult neurobehavioral traits. This study reveals that earlier menarche mediates the relationship between early-life urbanicity and adult neurobehavioral traits associated with mental disorders.

A cross-ancestry GWAS meta-analyses of brainstem structures identify 713 associations. It reveals shared/distinct genetic architectures across ancestries/substructures and overlaps with neuropsychiatric disorders and physiological functions.

A new artificial intelligence model, DeepSeek-R1, is introduced, demonstrating that the reasoning abilities of large language models can be incentivized through pure reinforcement learning, removing the need for human-annotated demonstrations.

Hydrogen production coupled with electrochemical oxidation of organic nucleophiles is often limited by catalyst’s reconstruction at the anode. Here, the authors developed the stable Ni(II) active sites in Prussian Blue analogue for fast, selective ethylene glycol electrooxidation and constructed an effective coupled electrochemical hydrogen production flow cell.

Risk stratification in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains challenging. By combining multiplex immunofluorescence, H&E histology, and AI, the study identifies spatial “cell-niche” patterns that enhance survival prediction beyond UICC8 staging. These patterns reclassify many stage I patients as high risk, revealing potentially undertreated cases and establishing spatial tumor microenvironment features as clinically actionable biomarkers.

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.

General and stereoselective synthesis of tetracyclic isochroman-containing polyketide oligomers is challenging. Here, the authors report on an Au(I)/chiral Sc(III) bimetallic catalyst for a biomimetic asymmetric hetero-Diels–Alder reaction for in-situ generation of isochromene and ortho-quinonemethide.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

Heterojunctions of two-dimensional materials are used to design electronic and optoelectronic devices. Here, the authors show that zigzag terraces between monolayers and bilayers form atomically sharp type-I heterojunctions, resulting in a wire-like interface both in WSe₂ and in MoSe₂.

The Colorado potato beetle, a major pest of potato crops, displays conspicuous coloration to advertise their toxicity to predators, but the identity of the toxic compounds is unclear. Here, Kang et al. show that the insect releases toxic hydrogen cyanide, which results from the degradation of cyano-compounds produced by commensal bacteria.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

Coarsening of precipitates in medium and high temperatures causes reduction in strength of Al alloys. Here, the authors design an Al-Cu-Mg-Ag-Si-Sc alloy with multiple interface structures, showing an excellent combination of strength and heat resistance compared to conventional Al alloys.

In this clinical trial, the authors demonstrate that recombinant gE-Fc Fusion Protein Vaccine LZ901 for herpes zoster induces superior cellular immunogenicity and exhibits a better safety profile than HZ/su in adults ≥50 years, supporting its potential as vaccine candidate.

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of MoS₂ doped with Rb atoms unveiled the existence of polarons, whose presence seems to coincide with the onset of superconductivity.

A dual interfacial hydrogen-bond passivation strategy and a hybrid copper–iodide are used to fabricate deep-blue light-emitting diodes with excellent external quantum efficiency and lifetime.

Here, the authors fabricate hybrid van der Waals heterostructures based on 2D tessellations of DNA origami thin films, graphene and boron nitride, showing that the DNA films can induce periodic superlattices at the interface and modulate the electronic properties of the samples.

A new AI generative model leverages the use of synthetic images to effectively augment existing datasets, boosting performance across multiple medical applications

Alpha-fetoprotein is a known biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma. Here, the authors analyse differences between AFP positive and negative patients to identify alterations in androgen receptor signalling.

Treating rheumatoid arthritis remains challenging as the pathological development involves multiple cells. Here, the authors develop an engineered microalgae to combat rheumatoid arthritis by suppressing osteoclasts for bone remodeling, and inhibiting macrophages for restoring immune homeostasis.

Autoimmunity is triggered by trafficking of self-reactive T cells into tissues. Joonsoo Kang and colleagues show that the kinase ITK regulates T cell trafficking. ITK inhibition or genetic ablation prevents homing of autoreactive T cells into tissues and reduces islet destruction in models of type 1 diabetes without affecting T cell activation or antiviral T cell responses, suggesting that this kinase may be targeted in autoimmune disease.

This work demonstrates that epitaxial match at the oxide-support interfaces plays a critical role in determining whether supported metal nanoparticles oxidize from the interface or the free surface in oxygen, thereby enabling controlled oxidation.

Understanding interfacial proton transport in an excited state is crucial for catalytic and diagnostic applications of nanomaterials. Here, the authors combine ultra-low-field NMR relaxometry with a light source to study the light-induced proton dissociation of graphene quantum dots.

An analysis of 140 floras from China reveals that high species diversity exists in granite and mixed landforms, while low species diversity is found in karst, Danxia, and desert landforms. Based on these findings, the authors provide new clues for understanding the assembly and differentiation of mountain floras, highlighting the role of bedrock and landform processes.

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) onsets in COVID-19 patients with manifestations similar to Kawasaki disease (KD). Here the author probe the peripheral blood transcriptome of MIS-C patients to find signatures related to natural killer (NK) cell activation and CD8+ T cell exhaustion that are shared with KD patients.

With the generation of large pan-cancer whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing projects, a question remains about how comparable these datasets are. Here, using The Cancer Genome Atlas samples analysed as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the authors explore the concordance of mutations called by whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing techniques.

Difluorocarbene, an important reactive intermediate in organic synthesis, exhibits intriguing properties and synthetic versatility. Herein, the authors report a copper catalyzed multicomponent reaction of amine, aldehyde and BrCF₂CO₂K via copper-difluorocarbene intermediate for the synthesis of multifunctional α-aminoamide derivatives.

Non-volatile content addressable memories are widely applied to accelerate memory-augmented neural networks, yet the existing current-domain data search operation faces challenges. Zhou et al. show charge-domain operation utilizing ferroelectric capacitive memory to lower peripheral sensing overhead.

This study presents an oral CRISPR–Cas9 delivery system that precisely disrupts the TRAP1 gene in colorectal cancer, enhancing chemo-immunotherapy with robust antitumour effects.

An Ising machine that uses a coarse-grained compressed sparse row method to store sparse Ising graph adjacency matrices can be implemented with compute-in-memory hardware based on a resistive random-access memory array to efficiently solve combinatorial optimization problems.

The synthesis of phosphorous compounds in the 5+ oxidation state typically relies on energy-consuming processes using white phosphorus (P₄). Now, a simple approach that cleaves P–O bonds in ubiquitous P^V sources to form a PO₂⁺ phosphorylation agent enables the redox-neutral synthesis of various P^V chemicals.

Hybrid metal halides are important for luminescence applications. Here, the authors design and synthesize a family of environment-friendly Eu(II) hybrid halides with narrow-band emission in the blue-green wavelength range via alkyl thermal cleavage.

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.

Respiratory complications after a COVID infection are a growing concern, but follow-up chest CT scans of COVID-19 survivors hardly present any recognizable lesions. A deep learning-based method was developed that calculates a scan-specific optimal window and removes irrelevant tissues such as airways and blood vessels from images with segmentation models, so that subvisual abnormalities in lung scans become visible.

Dipterocarp trees are iconic but severely threatened species in Asian rainforests. This study assembles high-quality genomes of seven dipterocarp species to reveal the molecular basis of key adaptations and identifies a recent sharp population decline coinciding with local human activity.

SARS-CoV-2 variants with immune escape capability highlight the need for the development of cross-neutralising vaccines and regimens. Here, the authors assess the immunogenicity and safety of NVSI-06-08, that integrates antigens from multiple SARS-CoV-2 strains into a single immunogen, as a heterologous booster in adults previously vaccinated with the inactivated vaccine.

Magic state distillation is achieved with logical qubits on a neutral-atom quantum computer using a dynamically reconfigurable architecture for parallel quantum operations.