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Recent studies have shown that probing the heating and ionization dynamics of solid-density plasmas with x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) beams is inherently challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate sub-picosecond time resolution of solid-density Cu plasmas driven by an optical laser pulse, by combining resonant x-ray emission spectroscopy and absorption imaging from an XFEL probe beam.

Han et al. report a highly conductive composite electrode with low equivalent sheet resistance of 1.5 Ω sq-1. A self-masking method is developed to prevent shunting caused by uneven grid surfaces, enabling flexible organic solar cells with efficiencies of 15.20% (4 cm² devices) and 14.24% (16 cm² devices).

Here authors present an embryonic zeolite-mediated suture synthesis, which enables the scalable fabrication of high-flux SSZ-13 zeolite membrane bundles, showing >4 MPa pressure resistance and >220 days stability for humid CO₂/CH₄ separation, highlighting high industrial potential for biogas upgrading.

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.

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.

Native crystallographic defects are often introduced during synthesis of battery materials, but has been overlooked. Here, using in situ synchrotron X-ray probes and electron microscopy, the authors have revealed their adverse effect during battery operation.

Zhou, Ho and colleagues show that, in mice, a schizophrenia-associated mutation impairs belief updating by weakening mediodorsal (MD) thalamus activity. Boosting this activity restored flexible decision-making, suggesting MD thalamus as a potential therapeutic target.

Understanding interfaces at sub-nanometer scales is vital for complex chemical reactions. Here, the authors advance Pattern-enhanced Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering, enabling efficient operando probing of chemical and structural dynamics at solid-liquid interfaces.

How the multiple manifestations of vascular aging cluster and predict overt cardiovascular disease (CVD) is unknown. Here, the authors identify three patterns of vascular aging, showing their independent association with incident CVD, and their added value for stroke risk stratification.

The authors from the ALICE collaboration identify multiple species of mesons and baryons and measure the anisotropic flow with non-flow removal techniques in pp and p-Pb collisions at the LHC, identifying the hallmark of quark flow associated with an expanding quark-gluon plasma.

Global cropland subsoil hides a “biogeochemical engine” where crop roots, soil texture, nitrifier communities, and hydrological conditions interact to fuel nitrification, silently driving soil acidification and groundwater nitrate pollution.

Wang et al. show that promyelocytic leukaemia protein (PML) reduces polyG inclusions via chaperone-mediated disaggregation and proteasome-dependent degradation. This suggests a possible role for PML in various neurodegenerative diseases.

Autonomous vehicles face the seesaw effect, where improving safety in some situations worsens it in others. This study introduces dense learning to focus on informative driving data and achieve more consistent and safer performance.

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

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.

Fracto-mechanoluminescence is the emission of light from fracturing solids. Here, the authors show that this emission in Mn halides arises from elastic stiffness, electromechanical coupling, and trap states that activate Mn²⁺ d−d transitions.

Locking of an optical parametric oscillator’s degeneracy over a broad bandwidth enables robust operation against both pump detuning and temperature fluctuations.

Researchers report a solid that is amorphous in two dimensions but crystalline in the third, made of stacked disordered atomic layers. This shows that crystalline and amorphous order can coexist within a single material depending on direction.

Global cancer estimates across 185 countries show that 7.1 million new cancer cases were attributable to modifiable risk factors in 2022, with smoking, infections and alcohol consumption being the leading contributors to cancer burden.

Evo 2 is an artificial intelligence-based biological foundation model trained on 9 trillion DNA base pairs spanning all domains of life that predicts functional properties from genomic sequences and provides a rich generative model for researchers in biology.

Turley, Buechler and colleagues show that dermatopontin-expressing fibroblasts provide CSF1 to form a supportive niche for skin-resident macrophages. This interaction is important for skin tissue architecture and wound healing.

Urban-adapted mammals host a wide spectrum of zoonotic viruses, some posing high risks of human infection. These species may act as unmonitored reservoirs for viruses of public health concern.

The microwave-to-optical transduction between two superconducting circuits over a 1-km telecom link is implemented. The transduced signal preserves classical coherence with the original microwave signal, showing the feasibility of microwave distribution via optical carriers.

The lowest-frequency gravitational wave background may be shaped by supermassive black hole binaries that scatter nearby stars or dark matter. In this case, the NANOGrav 15-year dataset favours dense galactic centres with 10⁶ solar masses per cubic parsec.

A universal approach to construct low-resistance oxide layer by multiple tunnelling paths is proposed for efficient and durable Si-based photocathode. This approach can speed up the pace of development of practical photoelectrochemical devices.

The STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory demonstrates evidence of spin correlations in \(\Lambda \bar{\Lambda }\) hyperon pairs inherited from virtual spin-correlated strange quark–antiquark pairs during QCD confinement.

Machine learning is used to understand emissions of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide from the Southern Ocean. Low-pressure storms are found to drive emissions, leading to a revised picture of marine greenhouse gas cycling

Mitochondrial superoxide production is shown to preserve nuclear envelope integrity by controlling lipid peroxidation, with impact on nuclear and organismal ageing in C. elegans.

This study shows that strain-stabilized interfacial polarization in metallic RuO₂/TiO₂ heterostructures modulates the work function by over 1 eV and the metallicity, establishing a new route to control the electronic properties of functional metals.

Nav1.7 is a threshold current generator. Here, authors show that Thr1398 underlies the low voltage dependence of hNav1.7, determines its function as a threshold channel. This low-voltage dependence may be exploited to develop Nav1.7 selective inhibitors for pain therapy.

The authors study a topological insulator (TI) sandwiched between two magnetic TIs. By keeping one of the magnetic TIs insulating, while tuning the other one into a metallic regime, they find half quantized anomalous Hall conductance, a boundary signature consistent with a quantized axion field.

The authors identify reusable ‘dynamical motifs’ in artificial neural networks. These motifs enable flexible recombination of previously learned capabilities, promoting modular, compositional computation and rapid transfer learning. This discovery sheds light on the fundamental building blocks of intelligent behavior.

The Einstein Probe has discovered a fast X-ray transient, EP240414a, associated with a broad-lined type Ic supernova. Its unusually soft spectrum and weak jet add to the diversity of stellar deaths and suggest a previously unknown Wolf–Rayet star explosion mechanism.

The coexistence of ferroelectricity and nonreciprocal transport in metallic material has been a challenge. The authors demonstrate that the polarity-induced nonreciprocal transport can be nonvolatile and electrically reversed in ferroelectric polar metal WTe₂.

The authors present SVclone, a computational method for inferring the cancer cell fraction of structural variants from whole-genome sequencing data.

Humanity’s Last Exam, a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, is designed to be an expert-level closed-ended academic benchmark with broad subject coverage.

A transverse Peierls transition can occur when transverse acoustic phonons couple with conducting p-orbital electrons. Here, the authors observe an incommensurate transverse Peierls transition and signatures of a chiral charge density wave in EuAl₄.

A mechano-intelligent transmission mechanism based on the slipknot delivers precise force signals for clinical practice and robotic operations such as minimally invasive surgery and tendon-driven robotics.

The quark structure of the f₀(980) hadron is still unknown after 50 years of its discovery. Here, the CMS Collaboration reports a measurement of the elliptic flow of the f₀(980) state in proton-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 8.16 TeV, providing strong evidence that the state is an ordinary meson.

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.

This study demonstrates how CO₂ directs defect control during the synthesis of Mn-rich sodium layered oxides, improving the stability and performance of earth-abundant positive electrode materials in non-aqueous sodium-based rechargeable batteries.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have shown promise in tumour immunotherapy but resistance has been seen. Here using pre-treatment hepatocellular carcinoma patient biopsies from patients scheduled for immunotherapy, the authors implicate BCL9 and show that a BCL9-targeting peptide promotes anti-tumour immunity in mouse models through targeting macrophages and promoting anti-tumour T cell responses.

A combination of adenovirus-vectored and subunit protein intranasal vaccine enhances immune response against SARS-CoV-2 variants in animal models and humans.

The ALICE Collaboration provides details on the microscopic mechanism that ends up creating antideuteron in high-energy proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

The death of massive stars has traditionally been discovered by explosive events in the gamma-ray band. Liu et al. show that the sensitive wide-field monitor on board Einstein Probe can reveal a weak soft-X-ray signal much earlier than gamma rays.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

Safe lithium-ion batteries require stable electrolytes with high chemical resistance and high thermal tolerance. Chen et al. find a solid lithium-salt electrolyte that is able to give rise to a prolonged battery life and a delayed decomposition of battery cathodes.

Topological states are exploited based on crystalline symmetry, but under artificial gauge fields, symmetries may satisfy projective algebras, which remains less studied. Here, the authors reveal that projective symmetry algebra leads to momentum-space nonsymmorphic symmetry, resulting in new topological states over a momentum-space Klein bottle.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analyses of polycystic ovary syndrome in women of East Asian and European ancestries identify 94 independent susceptibility regions, including 73 novel loci.

Short-circuiting during fast charging through lithium dendrite intrusion into electrolytes is a major challenge in solid-state batteries. Here, using thermally annealed 3-nm-thick Ag coatings, lithium penetration into brittle electrolyte Li_6.6La₃Zr_1.6Ta_0.4O₁₂ is inhibited at local current densities of 250 mA cm⁻² due to an increase in surface fracture toughness.