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2D transition metal nitrides (TMNs) exhibit various interesting physical properties, such as tunable magnetism, but their synthesis remains challenging. Here, the authors report the growth of 15 different types of 2D TMN crystals with tunable magnetic properties by using metastable metal chlorides as transient templates.

By unifying ultra-high optical gain and broadband electro-optic dynamics in an Er-doped lithium niobate thin-film platform, the authors demonstrate an exciting monolithic integration of amplification and modulation on a compact photonic chip. This exciting work showcases record performance for on-chip amplifiers while enabling self-amplified 50 Gbps digital encoding and pre-amplified RF front-end signal recovery.

A hybrid cathode interfacial layer (AZnO-F3N) is developed, delivering 21.0% efficiency along with excellent stability, mechanical robustness and broad versatility, highlighting its potential to advance organic solar cells.

Time-reversal invariant topological states in twisted 2D semiconductors have been previously reported, but their direct visualization in real space has remained elusive. Here, the authors report scanning tunnelling microscopy/spectroscopy measurements of twisted bilayer InSe, showing the formation of magnetic-field sensitive topological edge modes at the moiré domain boundary.

Gene isoforms are quantified with a machine learning method that optimally integrates long and short sequencing reads.

Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) is a prevalent and complex disorder in older adults. Guo et al. identify human antigen R as a regulator of ARHL in aged mice and demonstrate that cochlear human antigen R overexpression alleviates ARHL, highlighting it as a therapeutic target for the condition.

Tandem catalysts are important in electrocatalysis but suffer from uncontrollable interfaces, limited crystal phases, and complex synthesis. Here, the authors report the facile synthesis of hetero-phase 4H/fcc Au–Cu tandem catalysts with tunable interfaces for ammonia electrosynthesis from nitrate.

EvoScan combines EvolvR mutagenesis and phage selection to explore the protein sequence space in different dimensions, identifying anchor points with critical mutations. Next, EvoAI, a deep learning-based method, uses these anchor points to accurately reconstruct the protein sequence space and design new proteins.

Cervical cancer remains a significant public health problem in many regions. Here, the authors perform a proteogenomic analysis of cervical cancer in Chinese patients; they reveal proteomic subgroups associated with clinical and biological features, and a potential biomarker of response to radiotherapy.

This study reports an adsorption-independent O₂ activation pathway for superior ¹O₂ electrosynthesis via an O₂ mono-hydrogenation process on compressive-strained rutile TiO₂. The compressive-strained TiO₂ suppresses the formation of reductive unsaturated sites for O₂ adsorption and enhances the reductive ability of atomic hydrogen, thereby enabling direct O₂ hydrogenation into free ^•OOH without the O₂ adsorption.

By utilizing an AI-accelerated silicon photonic slow-light technology, researchers demonstrate a record 400 Gbps/λ PAM-4 transmission based on pure silicon modulators, paving the way for next-generation optical interconnects in computing centers.

Surface high-valent iron-oxo species (≡Fe⁴⁺=O) are effective and environmentally friendly reagents for oxygen atom transfer. Here, the authors create a planar, asymmetric ≡Fe⁴⁺=O with a Fe–Cl₁S₃ structure using pyrite and chlorite, which enhances electron delocalization and weakens the Fe=O bond to improve reaction efficiency.

The high non-radiative energy loss is a bottleneck issue for efficient organic solar cells. Here, the authors regulate the charge transfer state disorder and rate of back charge transfer through a ternary system, achieving low non-radiative energy loss of 0.183 eV and device efficiency of 20.25%.

A photodiode with bio-plausible event sensing, filtering and adaptation behaviours to replicate the retinal nanostructure and visual pathway is presented, enabling consistent and high-performance machine vision under extreme lighting.

Prediction of Unseen Proteins’ Subcellular localization (PUPS) combines a protein language model and an image inpainting model to utilize both protein sequence and cellular images for predicting protein localization on unseen proteins in a way that captures single-cell variability and cell-type specificity.

Here, the authors observe room-temperature ferroelectricity in van der Waals layered GaSe down to monolayer with mirror symmetric structures and attribute it to the intralayer sliding of the Se atomic sublayers.

Myddosomes, in which MyD88 forms barrel-like scaffold structures for effector protein recruitment and activation, contain proteins that act at all stages and regulate all effector responses of the TLR signalling pathways.

KIM1 is dramatically upregulated in acute kidney injury (AKI) and but how KIM1 affects AKI remains unknown. Here, the authors report that renal specific Kim1 knockout relieves AKI, unveil a YY1-KIM1-DR5 axis in the progression of AKI, and suggest potential therapeutic strategies against AKI.

Multi-principal element alloy (MPEA) 3D printing is challenging due to the tradeoff between achieving high-temperature and sufficient heating zone. Here, the authors report an ultrahigh-temperature melt printing method that can achieve rapid melting and uniform elemental mixing for MPEA fabrication.

During the flow of water, the transfer of electrons between the solid and liquid phases leads to simultaneous interfacial chemical reactions and solid-liquid contact charging.

Developing low-temperature solution epitaxy and elucidating its underlying mechanisms is highly desired for low-cost fabrication of single-crystal ferroelectric films. Here, the authors show that a polarization screening between ferroelectrics and substrates can tailor the interface energy and drive the solution epitaxy of polarization-gradient ferroelectric oxide films, demonstrating a remarkable photovoltaic effect.

The unconventional hexagonal phase CuCo PBA with open structure, large pore size, and high specific surface area is synthesized, and it delivers much better small molecular gas adsorption performance than the traditional cubic counterpart.

Many technological materials are intentionally 'doped' with foreign elements to impart new and desirable properties, a classic example being the doping of semiconductors to tune their electronic behaviour. Here lanthanide doping is used to control the growth of nanocrystals, allowing for simultaneous tuning of the size, crystallographic phase and optical properties of the hybrid material.

Dandelions exhibit adaptive abilities, continuously adjusting seed pappus shape for dispersal on demand. Haoyang Sun and colleagues propose solar-powered microfliers with shape memory alloy actuators and a drone-mount releasing module for programmable flight and robust self-sustaining operation.

High-entropy hybrid perovskites exhibit improved materials properties compared with their individual components. When employed in solar cells, champion devices achieve a certified power conversion efficiency of 25.5% and an extrapolated T₉₀ lifetime of over 5,000 h under continuous light soaking.

In most ferroelectric materials, the domain walls are of neutral type due to the high electrostatic energy cost for charged domain walls. Here, the authors observe abundant charged 180° domain walls in elemental ferroelectric Bi monolayer.

Previous chaos suffers from limited parallelism for high-speed systems. Here the authors harness chaotic microcombs as parallel chaos, demonstrating low inter-channel correlation and high throughput for random bit generation and optical decision making.

Two-dimensional multiferroics with effective magnetoelectric coupling has not been realized. Here, the authors find a magnetoelectric coupling mechanism in two-dimensional CuCrP₂S₆ interlocked with heterogeneous ferrielectric state.

Across 16 countries, this research finds consistent cognitive and social predictors of COVID-19 misinformation susceptibility, and shows how accuracy prompts and literacy tips reduce misinformation sharing and how wisdom of crowds can identify false claims cross-culturally.

Plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) is an industrially compatible microelectronics technology. Here, the authors use PECVD to obtain low-temperature, catalyst-free growth of poly-crystalline two-dimensional hexagonal-boron nitride, thus enabling superior thermal dissipation in WSe₂ field-effect transistors with mobility up to 121 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹.

The regulation of heterogeneous material properties to enhance the peroxymonosulfate activation remains a challenge. Here, authors synthesize S−scheme heterojunction PBA/MoS2@chitosan hydrogel to achieve photoexcitation synergistic peroxymonosulfate activation driven by interface electric field.

MYC2 is a master component of jasmonate signalling, working in concert with MED25, a subunit of the Mediator transcriptional co-activator complex. Here it is shown that MYC2 and MED25 have largely overlapping targets and mediate DNA looping between these enhancer and promoter sequences.

A single-element ferroelectric state is observed in a black phosphorus-like bismuth layer, in which the ordered charge transfer and the regular atom distortion between sublattices happen simultaneously and ferroelectric switching is further visualized experimentally.

Exciton diffusion length and graded vertical phase separation of the active layer play a critical role in the realization of high-performance thick-film organic solar cells (OSCs). Here, authors demonstrated OSCs with an efficiency of 17.31%, with an active layer thickness of around 300 nm.

To realize efficient optoelectronic devices based on two-dimensional (2D) organic crystals, optimizing the photoelectrical response and growth of these materials at the 2D limit is vital. Here, the authors report enhanced internal photoresponse in large-area 2D crystals using a novel growth method.

Chen et al. report on a renal UTX-phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase axis that regulates serine secretion to affect lipid metabolism in the kidney and liver upon over-nutrition, suggesting potential treatment targets for obesity-related diseases.

Mechanical forces in lungs facilitate breathing motions. Here the authors use a microfluidic human lung alveolus chip to study influenza infection and find that mechanical forces from active chips also induce innate inflammatory responses via, at least partially, signaling from TRPV4 and RAGE, thereby implicating them as potential therapeutic targets for lung inflammation.

Cortistatin (CST) may have the capability to prevent GC-induced apoptosis and metabolic disorder of osteoblasts in the pathogenesis of ONFH via the GHSR1a/AKT signaling pathway.