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Christine Skibola and colleagues identify variants at 6p21.32 associated with risk of follicular lymphoma, providing further support that variation in the MHC region influences risk of this disease. They also replicate previously reported risk variants for chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

The behaviour of ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials in a magnetic or electric field makes them easy to spot. But for their more recently discovered counterpart, ferrotoroidic materials, things become complex.

Hydrogen-doping driven metal to ferroelectric phase transition in a complex oxide NdNiO₃ is demonstrated. Transient negative differential capacitance and implementation of polarization decay into neural network for learning are then presented.

Here, the authors propose a strategy to create amorphous oxides by bridging fluorite HfO₂ and perovskite hafnate, which exhibit ultrahigh breakdown strength of 12 MV/cm and energy density of 155 J/cm³.

Domain walls of topological materials may be good candidates to study topological interfacial states. Here, Huang et al. discover polar domain walls which can be manipulated by electron beams and phase domain walls where possible signature of a conducting hinge state is detected in Weyl semimetal MoTe₂.

Hafnia ferroelectrics are of industrial interest owing to their compatibility with silicon-based electronics, but the ferroelectricity only exists in nanoscale films. Here, using a floating zone growth approach, ferroelectricity in bulk Y-doped hafnia is demonstrated.

Electronic many-body effects are used to control the electron effective mass, and thus the plasma energy and electrical conductivity, of thin films of the correlated metals SrVO₃ and CaVO₃, making them good candidates as transparent conductors.

Single crystalline membranes enable the tuning of materials properties via strain states that are not accessible to bulk crystals or epitaxially clamped films. Here, the authors demonstrate the synthesis and strain gradient-induced magnetism in membranes of the Heusler compound GdPtSb.

Materials that combine metallic behaviour with stable electric polarization are scarce despite being proposed in the 1960s. Here the authors engineer a perovskite heterostructure where 2D polar metallic behavior coexists with built-in electric polarization from the displacement of B-site titanium cations.

Susan Slager and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). They identify nine loci newly associated with CLL.

Previous studies are limited to modulate oxygen octahedral rotation angles within the same pattern, and engineering the pattern remains a challenge. Here, the authors demonstrate a designed nonequilibrium oxygen octahedral rotation pattern leads to room-temperature ferroelectricity in CaTiO₃.

New first-principles calculations reveal the range of atomic arrangements underlying the average crystallographic structure of a perovskite oxide, PZT. This work opens the door to understanding the exceptional physical behaviour of PZT and related systems.

Exome sequencing and copy number analysis are used to define genomic aberrations in early sporadic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma; among the findings are mutations in genes involved in chromatin modification and DNA damage repair, and frequent and diverse somatic aberrations in genes known as embryonic regulators of axon guidance.

Picoscale engineering of bonds is a powerful method to tune materials properties. Transcending nanoscience, picoscience offers the ultimate length scale to manipulate materials through subtle bond distortions between individual atoms, as this Review discusses through several examples ranging from perovskites to superconductors and to topological materials.

Habituation is a learning mechanism that enables control over forgetting and learning. Zuo, Panda et al., demonstrate adaptive synaptic plasticity in SmNiO₃ perovskites to address catastrophic forgetting in a dynamic learning environment via hydrogen-induced electron localization.

Application of an electric field changes the transport and optical properties of samarium nickelate submerged in water, making it a suitable passive sensor of weak electric fields in salt water.

Ferroelectric ferromagnets — materials that are both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic — are of significant technological interest. But they are rare, and those that do exist have weak ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties. Recently a new way of fabricating such materials was proposed, involving strain from the underlying substrate. This route has now been realized experimentally for EuTiO₃. The work shows that a single experimental parameter, strain, can simultaneously control multiple order parameters.