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As neuroscience increasingly recognizes that understanding the brain requires studying natural behavior, it has begun to adopt more naturalistic experimental environments as a means to that end — an important and welcome shift. Yet environmental realism alone does not guarantee that natural behavior is being studied and, in some cases, can create the illusion of ecological relevance or even promote unnatural behavior if the behavioral context is poorly aligned with a species’ ecology. Keeping sight of our central goal — understanding how brains support the actions animals evolved to perform — requires an ethological focus not only on where experiments occur, but on what animals are actually doing and whether the environment affords those behaviors.

Global Burden of Disease analysis found that in 2023, suboptimal diet was estimated to be responsible for 4 million deaths and 97 million morbidity burdens from ischemic heart disease.

The authors report that Ta-doped PbTiO₃ films with a p-i-n structure can generate a high photovoltaic current, offering the opportunity to advanced optoelectronic and imaging devices.

While magnetic fields present a compelling avenue for the remote control of molecular recognition, few direct strategies currently exist. Here, authors generate DNA aptamers whose affinity for Co²⁺ can be switched on or enhanced by magnetic field, thereby potentially enabling remote control of biorecognition.

Maize production in South Africa is dominated by cultivars containing the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) trait. This study shows an early yield advantage of Bt cultivars, a subsequent decline due to resistance, and a recent yield increase associated with new Bt trait stacks.

Nature staff take on the big topics that matter in science.

Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T cells with high affinity for their targeted epitopes efficiently kill malignant cells at the expense of excessive and potentially harmful immune activation, while lower-affinity targeting shows a safer profile but compromises tumour cell killing. Here the authors show that the combination of high- and low-affinity CARs results in a T-cell product with maintained functionality while reducing cytokine release and CAR-T-cell exhaustion in mouse models.

When 100 social and behavioural science claims were examined, 34% of reanalyses closely matched the original results, with 74% reaching the same conclusion, revealing limited robustness of single-path analyses and the need to address analytical uncertainty.

N-desethyl-fluornitrazene is a µ-opioid receptor agonist derived from nitazenes that has supramaximal intrinsic efficacy that produces analgesia with minimal adverse effects in rodent models.

A range of humoral related adverse events can occur after treatment of haematological malignancy with chimeric antigen receptor cell therapies. Here the authors characterise the persistence of humoral immunity and response to vaccination after patients receive B cell targeted chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy.

The immunological events that correlate with latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection (LTBI) containment in immune suppressed hosts remain to be explored. The authors here show that CD8⁺ T cells are critical for BCG vaccination-induced prevention of Mtb dissemination in the absence of CD4⁺ T cells in a mouse model of contained tuberculosis.

A large-scale study on the replicability of claims from social and behavioural science journals reports that about half of the results replicate in the same patterns as the original study.

Recently, the dose escalation stage of the GLORIA trial investigating NOX-A12 (L-RNA aptamer-based CXCL12 inhibitor) in combination with radiotherapy in patients with glioblastoma was reported. Here, the authors report the preclinical rationale and an expansion arm of the GLORIA trial combining NOX-A12, radiotherapy and bevacizumab (anti-VEGF) in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma.

Robustness checks and reproduction of analyses with existing and updated data based on 110 articles in economics and political science journals with data and code-sharing requirements found high levels of robustness and reproducibility and determined that robustness was not dependent on author characteristics or data availability.

A study of reproducibility in a stratified random sample of 600 papers published from 2009 to 2018 in 62 journals spanning the social and behavioural sciences finds higher reproducibility among more recent papers and papers from journals that require data sharing.

Cation identity and concentration influence electrocatalytic reactions, yet the origin remains debated. Here, the authors report a theoretical framework showing how cations modulate interfacial electrostatics and water dissociation kinetics, explaining multiple inversions of cation-dependent activity trends in alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction.

Methane emission occurs in natural wetlands on a large scale, but the corresponding trace element emissions have not been studied. Here, the authors study selenium and arsenic emission in a pristine peatland and show that this causes large amounts of those trace elements to enter the biogeochemical cycle.

A new optical imaging study demonstrates that norepinephrine and the state of arousal influence hemodynamic correlations across cerebral cortex, calling for a conceptual shift in interpreting functional magnetic resonance imaging data.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

JWST phase-curve observations reveal that the two innermost TRAPPIST-1 planets emit thermal radiation consistent with bare rocky surfaces, indicating that both lack thick atmospheres.

Femtosecond pumping of an isotropic low-index subwavelength film enables ultrafast polarization control, with induced birefringence up to 0.1π μm⁻¹, a dichroic ratio of ~23% and a non-reciprocal optical activity of ±1.1° μm⁻¹.

A dispersive sensing technique, termed the radiofrequency electron cascade, can perform singlet-triplet readout of two exchange-coupled electron spins in a natural silicon planar metal–oxide–semiconductor quantum-dot array.

Assessment of how 16 taxonomic groups in a lowland tropical forest resist and recover from anthropogenic disturbance shows the potential of protecting naturally regenerating secondary forests to reverse biodiversity losses.

As a key AI hardware foundation, state-of-the-art electronics still face core scalability and compatibility limitations. Pradhan et al. present a LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ heterostructure device integrating transistor, memristor, and memcapacitor, enabling complex circuits for reservoir computing and reconfigurable synaptic logic.

Song et al. find that biomolecular condensates can catalyze reductive amination of metabolites through a nonenzymatic mechanism, mediating C–N bond formation in vitro and impacting cellular metabolism in Escherichia coli.

Genetic analyses in more than 15,000 individuals from across the Americas, including individuals with autism and family members, define the genetic landscape of autism in Latin American populations and identify significant overlap with other ancestries.

Breeding crops with delayed senescence could plausibly increase grain yield. Here the authors show that variation at the rice SGR locus contributes to differences in senescence between indica and japonica subspecies and show that introgression can increase yield in an elite indica rice variety.

Precision oncology requires access to high quality data, as well as the application of current technologies. Here, the authors use federated learning to predict clinical outcomes in anal cancer patients across 16 centres as part of the atomCAT consortium.

In-flight observations show that the use of lean-burn combustion succeeds in reducing soot emissions from aircraft—yet contrail ice crystals still form and nucleate on volatile particles.

For the celebration of our tenth anniversary, Nature Microbiology asks the former editors to reflect on their time at the journal.

This study from Wei-Guang Li, Tian-Le Xu and colleagues shows that neuropeptide Y released by specific hippocampal inhibitory neurons can switch fear memories into extinction memories by acting on two distinct receptor-defined neuron populations.

The HIV-1 RNA-binding protein rev facilitates nuclear export of viral RNA. Here, the authors use native mass spectrometry to study the interactions between rev-derived peptides and rev response elements of HIV-1 RNA, providing mechanistic insights into rev recognition and recruitment.

Operando birefringence microscopy measurements of the stresses around growing dendrites in solid electrolytes show that stresses decrease as current densities increase, revealing a linkage between electrochemical and mechanical stability that informs the design of solid-state batteries.

A brain–machine interface is used in monkeys to investigate the biophysical underpinnings of cortical high gamma-band activity, a signal that is often studied in the context of many brain functions.

Iron input in Arctic waterways is strongly driven by sulfide-rich bedrock, anoxic wetlands, and near-surface permafrost thaw. Analyses of climatic, hydrogeochemical, and borehole data in Arctic Alaska reveal a one-year lag between active layer deepening and downstream iron flux.

A single-cell multiomic atlas of the human maternal–fetal interface across pregnancy reveals cell types, states and spatial niches, developmental tissue architectures and transcriptional programmes, and identifies cell types with roles in pre-eclampsia, spontaneous preterm birth and miscarriage.

Desmoplastic small round cell tumor (DSRCT), a very rare and understudied sarcoma, presents serious challenges for both diagnosis and treatment. Here, the authors employ multi-omics profiling on 30 refractory DSRCT patients to improve the diagnosis and identify potentially actionable targets for individualized DSRCT treatment.

The Human Development Multiomic Atlas catalogues single-cell accessibility and gene expression data from human fetal cells across 12 organs, enabling the inference of syntactic rules for motifs that govern cell-type-specific transcription factor binding and chromatin accessibility during human development.

The International Society of Neuroimmunology (ISNI) Mid-Career Awards promote the next generation of neuroimmunologists by recognizing the contributions of emerging leaders in the field. Veronique Miron was a 2025 awardee in Fundamental Neuroimmunology. We spoke to her about her research and developments in neuroimmunology.

Marwitz et al. demonstrate the use of large language models to build semantic concept graphs from materials science abstracts and train a machine learning model to predict emerging topic combinations from historical data. They show that the model enables experts to find suggestions that can inspire new research.

Researchers reveal that TNF alpha unmasks a metabolic impairment in the enteric malate-aspartate shuttle. This dysfunction acts as a key pathological bridge linking intestinal inflammation to the neurodegeneration seen in Parkinson’s disease.

The authors estimate genomic vulnerability for closely related species of rainbowfish. They find that narrow endemic species that have hybridized with a warm-adapted generalist show reduced vulnerability to climate change and that hybridization may facilitate evolutionary rescue for such species.

The authors simulate phytoplankton macromolecular composition—proteins, carbohydrates and lipids—under present and future scenarios. They show increased protein allocation in subtropical phytoplankton but declines in high-latitude populations under warming, with implications for marine food webs.

Synchrotron experiments show that the anomalous hyper-diffusive atomic motion in metallic glasses corresponds to a regime of medium-length-scale order, resulting from internal stresses developed throughout the glass transition.

A pangenome reference for the phenotypically diverse crop sorghum aims to help accelerate future efforts to breed crops that are better adapted to changing environments.

Biallelic variants in RNU4-2 cause a recessive neurodevelopmental disorder that is phenotypically and molecularly distinct from dominant ReNU syndrome and associated with reduced RNU4-2 transcript levels, consistent with a loss-of-function mechanism.

From 2014–2017, marine heatwaves caused global mass coral bleaching, where the corals lose their symbiotic algae. The authors find, this event exceeded the severity of all prior global bleaching events in recorded history, with approximately half the world’s reefs bleaching and 15% experiencing substantial mortality.