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How the vascular endothelial cells support the functional adaptation of pancreatic islets under obesity-associated metabolic stress is poorly understood. Here, the authors show that the ER stress sensor IRE1α employs its RNase activity to play an important regulatory role in this process.

Atomically thin nitrogen crystals, termed nitrogene, have been theoretically predicted, but their synthesis has remained elusive so far. Here, the authors report experimental evidence of the formation of nitrogen-based crystalline structures compatible with nitrogene on Ag(100) surfaces via ion-beam-assisted epitaxy.

Thymine DNA glycosylase (TDG) was identified as a synthetic-lethal target in p53-deficient cancers through alterations in double-stranded RNA accumulation. A covalent small-molecule inhibitor of TDG exhibited potent efficacy against p53-deficient tumors.

Three new euharamiyidan species from the Jurassic period of China are described, cementing the alliance with multituberculates and showing that the initial divergence between groups of extant mammals—monotremes on the one side, marsupials and placentals on the other—goes back to the Triassic period.

Ion-selective membranes are essential for tackling water scarcity, environmental security, and energy challenges, yet conventional designs face a trade-off between permeability and selectivity. In this Review, the authors explore covalent organic frameworks as promising membrane materials, highlighting their structural advantages and proposing future research directions for enhanced ion separation and scalability.

Intramolecular coupling of extended biphen[n]arenes is developed to yield cycloparaphenylenes (CPPs). The modular nature of biphen[n]arenes makes it possible to customize CPP structures, which permits tuning of their photophysical properties. The syntheses are short and excellent yields are achieved. Moreover, postsynthetic functionalization is possible.

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.

Diarrhoea is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in China. Here, the authors present results from a large sentinel surveillance scheme from 217 hospitals in all 31 provinces in mainland China, including ~150,000 patients with acute diarrhoea and covering years 2009-2018.

Liu et al. show that tumor-secreted dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase-1 protein induces citrulline accumulation and promotes lung fibrosis and aging, shedding light on the cancer treatment and diagnosis by inhibiting senescent lung fibroblasts.

The ecological role of viruses for CPR bacteria and DPANN archaea remains understudied. Here, the authors apply metagenomic approaches to study the biogeographic distribution of CPR and DPANN viruses in acid mine drainage sediments and elucidate their complex interplays.

Conventional silicon-based transistors, which sit at the heart of every computer, are fast approaching the limit of miniaturisation. Here, Meng et al demonstrate a field-effect transistor composed of a single rutheniumdiarylethene molecule with large on/off ratio.

China operates a national surveillance program for acute respiratory infections and sampled over 200,000 patients between 2009–2019. Here, the authors present results from this program and describe patterns by age, pathogen type, presence of pneumonia, and season.

Here authors develop a focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy tomography strategy that enables accurate 3D reconstruction of organic foulant accumulation within ceramic ultrafiltration membrane pores.

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.

Detecting proton arrangements and quantum behavior at the atomic level is a challenge. Here, the authors use atomic force spectroscopy to reveal symmetry breaking in the proton arrangement in cyclic hydrogen bonds caused by nuclear quantum effects.

Composite solid electrolytes face sluggish inter-phase Li⁺ migration. Here, authors construct a FeF₃-based anion-capturing layer onto Li_6.5La₃Zr_1.5Ta_0.5O₁₂ nanofillers within PVdF solid electrolyte, where the charge gradient layer on the interface promotes Li⁺ cross-phase conductivity.

Gut microbiota influence bone health, but the genetic and metabolic mechanisms are unclear. Here, the authors show that specific bifidobacterial taxa causally reduce bone mineral density, partly via n-3 fatty acid metabolism, highlighting host-microbe interactions with potential therapeutic implications.

The authors use nonadiabatic molecular dynamics to simulate the ultrafast laser-induced phase transition from graphite to diamond, elucidating the impact of the laser parameters and the significance of different phonon modes and their couplings.

This study shows how a dirigent protein and an aldo-keto reductase derail the gossypol pathway in cotton, producing hemigossypolone and heliocides in green organs and enhancing plant defense, revealing insights into plant specialized metabolism.

Absorption in one-port passive systems is known to be bound by causality constraints. Here, authors study reflection and transmission of a two-port system to introduce a generalized causality constraint based on duality symmetry. Experimentally, the broadened bandwidth of their meta-absorbers shows the untapped absorption potential of broadband acoustic metamaterials.

Organic crystal-based materials have potential in optoelectronic materials, but construction of lossless interfaces is challenging. Here, the authors report the growth of organic parallel grouping crystals without grain boundaries, by a solution viscosity-induced binuclear co-growth strategy.

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.

This study reports that the gene SMPED1, located in a previously identified dichogamy-determining region in Alpinia species, controls the timing of sex-organ synchrony, improving our understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms of plant sexual diversity.

Isotropic tissue magnification is integrated with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging to enable untargeted spatial proteomics at micrometre resolution and with high protein identification rates in multiple tissue types.

The authors engineer porous MXene nanosheet membranes by balancing in-plane pore and interlayer spacing with dual-channel sieving mechanism, achieving scalable H₂/CO₂ separation.

Desmocollin 2 (DSC2) binds to the EBV glycoprotein H/glycoprotein L complex and allows for virus entry to epithelial cells, which could be blocked by DSC2-specific antibodies. DSC2 allowed for virus entry independent of Ephrin receptor A2.

Viruses such as EBV use various mechanisms to avoid antiviral responses. Here the authors propose that the EBV protein BRRF2 is secreted via extracellular vesicles from NPC cells, disrupts the cGAS-STING pathway, reduces cGAS-DNA phase separation and the subsequent antiviral response.

Trained and validated on multimodal data from 14.5 million images from multicountry datasets, a foundation model is shown to increase diagnostic and referral accuracy of clinicians when used as an assistant in a trial involving 16 ophthalmologists and 668 patients.

Resolving the internal structure of water molecules adsorbed on solid surfaces is challenging. Submolecular-resolution imaging of individual water monomers and tetramers on NaCl(001) films supported by a Au(111) substrate is now reported. The molecular orbitals of adsorbed water were directly visualized, which lead to the discrimination between the orientation of the monomers and the tetramers H-bond directionality.

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 complication of water adsorption on surfaces goes well beyond a simple hexagonal bilayer model predicted by the ice rule. Chen et al.observe an extended cyclical pattern of water tetramers on an insulator surface, which is attributable to the formation of periodic Bjerrum defects at high density.

Silicon dioxide is one of the most abundant natural compounds and its various crystalline phases are widely studied. Here, using synchrotron X-ray diffraction and theoretical modelling, the authors discover a polymorphic phase transition involving previously unknown triclinic phases of silicon dioxide.

The Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model is a prototypical model of topological states, initially proposed to describe spinless electrons on a one-dimensional (1D) dimerized lattice. Here, the authors realize a 2D SSH model in a rectangular lattice of silicon atoms on a silver substrate, observing gapped Dirac cones by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.

Metal halide perovskites have been studied as promising materials for blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) but the stability is still a bottleneck. Here Wang et al. develop a chelating additive strategy to increase efficiency, operational stability and color stability of blue perovskite LEDs.

The authors identify two coexisting incommensurate charge density waves whose interplay leads to joint commensuration and a long-period moiré structure.

A variety of two-dimensional materials have been reported in the past few years, yet single-element systems—such as graphene and black phosphorus—have remained rare. 2D allotropes of boron have long been predicted and recently investigated. Two boron sheets have now been grown on a Ag(111) surface by molecule beam epitaxy that exhibit significant chemical stability against oxidation.

How aging induces aortic aneurysm and dissection (AAD) remains unclear. Here, the authors show that aging induces miR-1204 to inhibit MYLK, promoting vascular smooth muscle cells to acquire senescence-associated secretory phenotype, resulting in vascular inflammation, and the aggravation of AAD formation.

Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT) is the main cause of hypothyroidism. Here the authors develop a deep learning model for diagnosis of HT on a large multi-site dataset including image and video data.

Zheng et al. identify a role for CD160 in regulating CD8⁺ T cell exhaustion and cytotoxicity through the AKT–NF-κB pathway. The transfer of CD160⁺CD8⁺ T cells overcomes resistance to anti-PD-1 treatment in colorectal cancer models.

It remains a challenge to fully control molecular electronics. Here, Meng et al. show a reversible two-mode single-molecule switch, where the conductance through the molecular backbone is controlled by an in situ chemical gating via bias-dependent trans–cis isomerisation on an azobenzene sidegroup.