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As electric vehicle adoption rises, governments face shrinking fuel tax revenues without clear replacement policies. This study estimates this revenue loss across 168 countries and finds that lower-income nations are the most exposed and may need international support to manage the fiscal risks.

Decarbonizing road transport is critical, but the costs and emissions of low-carbon vehicles in Africa remain uncertain. The authors show that battery electric vehicles with solar off-grid systems can cost effectively reduce life-cycle emissions well before 2040.

Krisai et al. compare brain structure and cognitive function in elderly patients with and without atrial fibrillation using brain MRI and cognitive testing. They find that atrial fibrillation is associated with more brain lesions and lower cognitive function, but the cognitive impairment occurs primarily through direct effects of the arrhythmia rather than through brain damage.

Governments worldwide collected US$923 billion in fuel taxes in 2023, revenues at risk with the transition to electric vehicles, especially in lower-income countries. Policymakers should anticipate and assess their own domestic exposure and develop policies to recover enough revenues from electric vehicles as the transition progresses.

Koina is an open-source, online platform that simplifies access to machine learning models in proteomics, enabling easier integration into analysis tools and helping researchers adopt and reuse ML models more efficiently.

Examining human brain organoids and ex vivo neonatal murine cortical slices demonstrates that structured neuronal sequences emerge independently of sensory input, highlighting the potential of brain organoids as a model for neuronal circuit assembly.

Understanding the energy cost of entanglement extraction has fundamental implications, in particular for quantum field theory and condensed matter. Here, the authors analyse how the optimal energy cost scales with the number of extracted EPR pairs, when local operations and classical communication are allowed.

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.

A light-sheet microscope built from off-the-shelf components enables high-resolution clear tissue imaging.

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.

Exome sequencing within a structured diagnostic process for rare diseases in Germany shows how facial image analysis and machine learning can guide variant prioritization and uncover many ultrarare diseases.

Materials which simultaneously exhibit superconductivity and topologically non-trivial electronic band structure possess potential applications in quantum computing but have yet to be found. Here, the authors find superconductivity in MoTe₂, a material predicted to be topologically non-trivial.

Early childhood educational intervention has positive outcomes in adulthood, including higher education attainment, economic status, and overall health. This study shows that adults who underwent such intervention have greater enforcement of equality norm during social decision-making, potentially motivated by future planning.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

Here the authors demonstrate ultraviolet astronomical frequency combs, derived from the near-infrared domain via efficient harmonic generation in nanophotonic waveguides, to provide precision calibration to astronomical spectrographs for exoplanet science and precision cosmology.

Porous materials have long been a focus of research for gas separations. Now, flexible, highly fluorinated coordination polymers lacking permanently built-in cavities have been shown to adsorb CO₂ through a dissolution-like uptake process. The presence of dynamic perfluoroalkyl regions within the crystals is key to enabling transient porosity and establishing strong interactions with CO₂.

The identification of HLA peptides by mass spectrometry is non-trivial. Here, the authors extended and used the wealth of data from the ProteomeTools project to improve the prediction of non-tryptic peptides using deep learning, and show their approach enables a variety of immunological discoveries.

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.

Federated learning (FL) algorithms have emerged as a promising solution to train models for healthcare imaging across institutions while preserving privacy. Here, the authors describe the Federated Tumor Segmentation (FeTS) challenge for the decentralised benchmarking of FL algorithms and evaluation of Healthcare AI algorithm generalizability in real-world cancer imaging datasets.

The 2010 Cancún Agreement established a financial mechanism, through the Green Climate Fund, to support developing countries in greenhouse-gas emissions abatement. However, the different countries’ financial needs are often assessed on the basis of top-down cost estimates of energy technologies. Now a study provides a more fine-grained bottom-up approach that highlights the need for a ‘fair’ baseline calculation methodology and calls for a phase-out of fuel subsidies.

Analysis of soundscape data from 139 globally distributed sites reveals that sounds of biological origin exhibit predictable rhythms depending on location and season, whereas sounds of anthropogenic origin are less predictable. Comparisons between paired urban–rural sites show that urban green spaces are noisier and dominated by sounds of technological origin.

An optical parametric amplifier based on integrated photonic circuits fabricated using low-loss gallium phosphide-on-silicon dioxide demonstrates improved bandwidth and gain performance over state-of-the-art erbium-doped fibre amplifiers while maintaining a low noise figure.

The authors investigate spin-valley polarization in hybrid systems of Au nanoparticles and monolayer MoS₂ and observe a nearly complete quenching of the far-field circular polarization state of emission from MoS₂ at the position of the nanoparticle. This highlights the need to consider an ensemble, rather than just a single rotating dipole emitter, for precise predictions of polarization responses in these hybrid systems.

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.

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.

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.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

The flow of ice streams leaves traces in the stratigraphy of the ice sheets. Made visible by radar, they reveal the history of the upper North East Greenland Ice Stream. The ice stream is found to have existed in its current form for only about the last 2000 years.

Confident molecular identification is key for studying complex biochemistry. Here, the authors employ Quantum-Cascade Laser-based Mid-infrared imaging for rapid identification of ROIs, followed by MALDI imaging prm-PASEF for in-depth lipid identifications directly on complex tissues.

Here, the authors developed a method to precisely measure bulk, chromosome arm- and allele-specific human telomere length using nanopore sequencing. They resolve telomere shortening and differences between telomerase- and ALT-positive cancer cells

Torsional waves extend into the deep interior of Jupiter where they can modulate the outgoing heat flux and couple with Jupiter’s weather layer to generate the observed quasi-periodic oscillations in the cloud deck. Such waves can be used to explore the interior structure of gas giants.

A cost-based method to assess lithium-ion battery carbon footprints was developed, finding that sourcing nickel and lithium influences emissions more than production location. This aids in designing green industrial policy.

The selective hydrogenation of trace acetylene to ethylene is a well-established process for purifying fossil-derived ethylene streams. Here, the authors present a self-repairing Pd-C laterally condensed catalyst that improves selectivity, prevents sub-surface hydride formation, and achieves high ethylene productivity, effectively bridging the gap between powder catalysts and single-crystal model catalysts.

Klein and colleagues show that the lysosomal cysteine protease cathepsin L shapes the diversity and optimizes the fitness of clones that enter the CD4⁺ T cell repertoire.

Gender-related differences in resource distribution depend on both the gender of the Allocator and of the Recipient. Girls tried to reduce advantageous inequality more than boys but tolerated disadvantageous inequity more if it favoured another girl whereas boys were more competitive with other boys.

Genomic evolutionary rates are decomposed to identify the dominant lineages and genes driving rate variation across the phylogeny of birds.

Researchers present a fiber-based device achieving angular demultiplexing via nanostructures, enabling efficient light collection and analysis for applications in telecommunications, environmental monitoring, and bioanalytics.

The immune system is tolerized against the neuromyelitis optica autoantigen AQP4 by thymic B cells, which present their endogenous AQP4 to AQP4-reactive thymocytes.

High-precision laboratory experiments with neutrons and atoms are converging to a verdict on 'chameleon fields' as a possible explanation of dark energy, explains Tobias Jenke.

A geospatial levelized cost model shows that green hydrogen imports from Africa to Europe remain uncompetitive without major policy support. De-risking policies and strategic site selection are key, but major risks remain.

There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

In somatic cells the mechanisms maintaining the chromosome ends are normally inactivated; however, cancer cells can re-activate these pathways to support continuous growth. Here, the authors characterize the telomeric landscapes across tumour types and identify genomic alterations associated with different telomere maintenance mechanisms.