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Making phenols from lignocellulose without added hydrogen is attractive but typically requires high metal loadings and yields mostly saturated products. A single-atom Pt1Ni alloy converts birch sawdust to phenolic monomers with high yield and propenyl selectivity while leaving cellulose intact.

Structural complexity often hinders the efficient conversion of lignin into sustainable high-value products. This bifunctional core–shell catalyst enables a relay reaction that transforms lignin into jet-fuel range cycloalkanes with high yields.

Hydrogen spillover enhances hydrogen production but is hindered by electronic barriers at phase interfaces. Here, the authors report a Ni₁₇W₃-WO₂ with a built-in strain gradient and directional electron transfer to enable non-interfacial hydrogen spillover, delivering high activity and durability.

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.

Allylic amines are versatile building blocks in organic synthesis and exist in bioactive compounds, but efficient catalytic systems for hydroaminoalkylation of alkynes are needed. Here, the authors report a late transition metal‐catalyzed hydroaminoalkylation of alkynes with N‐sulfonyl amines, providing a series of allylic amines in up to 94% yield.

This study shows that tropical cyclone heavy rainfall has extended inland along the coasts of the Northern Hemisphere with a rate of 3.8 km per decade since 1980. Nearshore sea-surface warming drives this expansion, with coastal urbanization further amplifying the effect. These findings highlight increasing flood risk for inland populations as cities grow.

Recently, superconductivity was achieved in La3Ni2O7 and (La,Pr)3Ni2O7 thin films at ambient pressure due to in-plane compressive strain. Here, the authors report the enhancement of the superconducting onset from about 30 K to over 48 K by applying hydrostatic pressure to the films.

Catalysts synthesized by current methods for CO₂ electroreduction to CO exhibit limited activity and selectivity over broad potentials. Here, the authors report an in situ etching method to create NiN₂ sites with uniform-large vacancies that achieve high activity across a wide potential window.

Xiang, Wang, Tian et al. report that during nutrient insufficiency, inflammatory cytokines promote a ZBTB5-mediated mechanism to activate mTORC1 signalling, thereby enhancing amino acid uptake in tumour cells and restricting antitumour immune response.

Metal selenides have been reported as promising oxygen-evolution catalysts but their active forms are yet to be elucidated. Here, the authors show that metal selenides are unstable under oxygen-evolution conditions and that in situgenerated metal oxides/hydroxides are responsible for their high activity.

Conventional amides electrosynthesis methods confine reactions to solely electrochemical reduction or oxidation processes, resulting in low amides yield rates. Here, the authors report a tandem electrolyzer that couples cathodic nitrate reduction with anodic ethanol oxidation to produce acetamide.

Grain chalkiness is an undesirable trait that severely compromises rice quality. Here, the authors report the cloning of an E3 ubiquitin ligase encoding gene Chalk9 and reveal its crucial role in regulating grain chalkiness through mediating the ubiquitination-dependent degradation of OsEBP89.

Benzene and SO₂ coexist as hazardous air pollutants. Here the authors synthesized a robust pyrazolate MOF sorbent with accessible Ni(II) sites that can simultaneously capture trace amounts of benzene and SO₂ under humid conditions.

Here, authors use a membrane electrode assembly is conducted to produce adipic acid with high faradaic efficiency and productivity at an industrially relevant current density, while achieving >50 hours stability.

Single-atom nanozymes are a type of non-protein artificial enzymes and promising for mimicking enzyme active centers, but lack recognition sites to confer substrate specificity. Here, the authors report on a metal-ligand dual-site single-atom nanozyme (Ni-DAB) that mimics the dual-site catalytic mechanism of urate oxidase and has high selectivity in uric acid (UA) oxidation.

A conserved hexameric ring functions as an effector carrier in bacterial type VI secretion systems. Here, the authors shed light on the ring’s assembly mechanisms and how it recognizes structurally diverse protein cargos in Bacteroides fragilis.

Turning CO2 into useful fuels is promising for cleaner energy but remains hard due to low efficiency. This study shows that a spinel-engineered catalyst boosts ethanol formation by promoting C–C coupling while suppressing further carbon-chain growth.

Direct enantioselective α-C(sp³)–H functionalization of Lewis-basic N-alkyl anilines has remained a significant challenge in synthetic chemistry. Now it has been shown that a metallaphotoredox-catalysed radical approach, with a sterically hindered aryl ketone photocatalyst, enables site-selective, enantioselective (hetero)arylation with exceptional functional group tolerance.

Samarium Cobalt-based magnets are a vitally important industrial magnet, and significant effort has been devoted to trying to improve the performance and reduce the cost through the addition of Fe. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of phase stability. Here, Wang et al show through careful choice of composition, a Samarium Cobalt permanent magnet with an ultrahigh coercivity of 6.71 MA/m.

TCL1A binds DNMT3A/B and inhibits their activity. Here, the authors use cryo-EM to determine the structure of TCL1A bound to DNMT3A, and establish the mechanism through which TCL1A inhibits DNMT3A methylation activity.

Electrocatalysts with improved activity and stability for the conversion of CO₂ to CO are being sought. Using operando spectroscopies, the authors identify atomically dispersed Ni(i) as the active site in a nitrogenated-graphene-supported catalyst with high intrinsic activity and stability over 100 hours.

Layered Ni-rich oxide cathodes are susceptible to challenges with surface reconstruction and strain propagation, limiting their cyclability. The authors propose a solution involving oriented attachment-driven reactions, utilizing Wadsley–Roth nanocrystals and layered oxide to induce an epitaxial entropy-assisted coating, effectively addressing these issues.

Identifying and tuning the coordination environment to improve the oxygen evolution reaction kinetics of coordination complexes is important, yet challenging. Here, the authors report a series of coordination complexes as catalytic models and reveal the unique reaction behavior of coordinated water.

A fully self-powered wireless arm interface converts human motion into electrical signals and wireless commands using a compact triboelectric nanogenerator, enabling battery-free, real-time robotic arm control for industrial and human–machine applications.

The links between plate tectonics and deep mantle structure remain unclear. Here, the authors demonstrate that transition elements (Ni, Cr, and Fe/Mn) in basaltic rocks can be used as a tool to trace plume-related magmatism through Earth history, and their results indicate the presence of a direct relationship between the intensity of plume magmatism and the supercontinent cycle.

Superconductivity was recently discovered in La₄Ni₃O₁₀ under pressure in proximity to a density-wave phase. Here, by stabilizing a tetragonal form of La₄Ni₃O₁₀ at ambient pressure, the authors show that the density-wave state is crucial for the superconductivity, but the tetragonal structure is not.

Insulator-to-metal transitions induced by spontaneous magnetization above room temperature have rarely been observed. Here, the authors show that this transition, along with concurrent high-temperature ferrimagnetic order, is realized in the novel 3d/5d hybridized quadruple perovskite oxide CaCu₃Ni₂Os₂O₁₂.

Cyclotelomerization of isoprene can lead to many isomers and controlling the selectivity in this reaction has been challenging for chemical methods. Now, Ni-catalysed nucleophilic cyclotelomerization of isoprene with heterocycles provides cyclic monoterpene derivatives with high selectivity.

Iron-catalyzed C–C reductive coupling avoids sensitive reagents but struggles to build quaternary centers. Using phosphine-ligated Fe and carbonyl directing groups, this work enables tertiary–primary/secondary C(sp³) coupling under mild conditions.

Severe Ni/Li antisite disorder in nickel-rich layered oxides leads to structural degradation and performance decay in Li-ion batteries. Here, authors report a noninvasive strategy of magnetoelectrochemical synergistic activation to realize ordered cation rearrangement and recovery battery capacity.

The use of metal clusters to construct artificial protein-mimic structures with adaptable cavities has potential for simulating the dynamics and functionality of natural proteins. Here, the authors develop a family of chiral metal-peptide assemblies using {Ni3} clusters and flexible peptides, resulting in structures such as octahedral cages, trigonal prisms, and capsules.

Natural deep-mantle peridotites from eastern China reveal Fe-Ni alloys and Fe³⁺-rich olivine, providing direct evidence of iron disproportionation and slab recycling from the mantle transition zone beneath the eastern Asia big mantle wedge.

Spliceosomal snRNP core assembly typically requires chaperones such as the SMN complex. Here, the authors reveal two pathways in budding yeast: a chaperone-mediated pathway involving Brr1 and Lot5, and a direct pathway using stable intermediates, shedding light on chaperone evolution.

Layered double hydroxides of transition metals are known to be highly active for water oxidation, but the nature of their active sites and reaction mechanism are still elusive. Now, a monolayer NiCo hydroxide catalyst, in situ prepared on the working electrode, is reported to exhibit valence oscillation and dynamic generation of active sites during water oxidation.

The upscaling of kesterite photovoltaics is challenging and results in low performance. Xiang et al. tune the thiourea/metal precursor ratio to improve the morphology of the kesterite film, achieving 10.1% certified power conversion efficiency in 10.48-cm² modules.

A template-assisted route inspired by coordinating etching was utilized for the synthesis of noble metal-free, ternary through octonary, hollow HEO nanocubes through optimization of the coordinating etchant and reaction conditions.

Here, Li, Lu, Xia and colleagues identify the maternal complex MPU (PADI6–UHRF1–UBE2D), determine its cryo-electron microscopy structure and show that PADI6 maintains oocyte proteostasis by sequestering UBE2D with the assistance of UHRF1, thereby inhibiting protein ubiquitination. The study, thus, provides a molecular mechanism underlying PADI6-associated female infertility.

This study discovers primitive mantle olivines in the Chang’e-6 lunar soils from the Moon’s far side, shedding new light on the Moon’s origin and evolutionary processes.

Here, the authors report a radical cross-coupling approach in which the native hydroxyl group on saccharides is activated in situ by a phosphorus reagent, enabling C − C bond formation with aryl iodides to afford a broad range of aryl C-glycosides.

EuCo₂Al₉ is identified as a metallic spin supersolid with high thermal conductivity, exhibiting coexisting spin orders, strong quantum fluctuations and a giant magnetocaloric effect enabling efficient sub-Kelvin refrigeration.

The use of Mn-rich layered cathodes in Na-based batteries is hindered by inadequate cycling reversibility and sluggish anionic redox kinetics. Here, the authors report a strategy to stabilize the structure and promote anionic redox via configurational entropy and ion-diffusion structural tuning.

Linear scaling relationships often hinder the optimization of heterogeneous catalysts. Now, an intermediate spillover strategy is put forward by designing bi-component catalysts, thereby decoupling elementary electron-transfer steps and circumventing linear scaling relationships.

Electrodeposition provides a facile fabrication means for electrochemical devices but weak substrate-deposit interactions cause poor performance. Here, authors utilize anion insertion within graphitic layers to improve the material interfaces and construct highly active O₂-evolving electrocatalysts.

Systemic flavivirus dissemination in mosquitoes following initial infection requires protein–protein interactions within extracellular vesicles, which enable infectious particles to be transported through haemolymph and confer species specificity.

Developing efficient strategies to realize divergent arylation of dienes has been a longstanding synthetic challenge. Herein, a nickel-catalyzed divergent Mizoroki–Heck reaction of 1,3-dienes has been demonstrated through the modification of ligands and additives.

Single-crystal metal foils with high-index facets are promising for 2D epitaxy, catalysis and electronics, however fast and deterministic preparation is challenging. Here authors selectively activate the abnormal growth of high-index facets, thus realising the deterministic preparation of single-crystal Cu, Ni and Au foils with high-index facets.

Non-viral vectors are important for transfection but can be limited in the uptake, protection and release of ssDNA. Here, the authors report on the design of metal-organic-framework vectors with precisely controlled pore geometry and demonstrate the vector in the transfection of immune cells.