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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.

Authors use a high-entropy engineering approach to produce fully amorphous BiTO films by exfoliation and annealing, creating crystalline regions, leading to flexible ceramics with dielectric properties.

The study of isotopes away from the beta stability valley is crucial for the understanding of nuclear structure, especially for neutron-deficient heavy nuclei. Here, the authors report the observation of the alpha-decay isotope 210-protactinium (Pa), extending the alpha-decay systematics of underexplored regions of the nuclides chart.

While Bell inequalities have been violated several times—mostly in photonic systems—their violations within particle physics experiments are less explored. Here, the BESIII Collaboration showcases Bell-violating nonlocal correlations between entangled hyperon pairs.

The realization of high-performance flexible perovskite/crystalline-silicon tandem solar cells requires efficient photocarrier transport and mitigation of residual stress. Here, authors reveal the critical role of perovskite phase homogeneity, achieving flexible devices with efficiency of 29.88%.

Optically generated microwaves offer exceptionally low noise, crucial for radar and communications. Here, authors demonstrate a compact photonic chip-based interleaver multiplying pulse rates of mode-locked lasers to 14 GHz, significantly enhancing microwave power and reducing phase noise.

Xue et al. report self-powered photoelectrochemical photodetectors based on CuOx decorated AlGaN nanowires with staggered energy band structure. High-energy photons can be absorbed by CuOx to trigger the multiexciton generation effect, enabling an external quantum efficiency of 131.5% at 255 nm.

Hydrogel materials have emerged as versatile platforms for biomedical applications. Here this group reports an mRNA lipid nanoparticle-incorporated microgel matrix for immune cell recruitment/antigen expression and presentation/cellular interaction thereby eliciting antitumor efficacy with a single dose.

The authors report their observation of the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect in rhombohedral hexalayer graphene/hBN moiré superlattice devices.

Analysis of whole-genome sequencing data from 3,023 human genomes from mainland Southeast Asia identifies high genetic heterogeneity among populations in the region and many unique small and structural variants.

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.

The authors report that the metallic spin-1/2 chain compound Ti₄MnBi₂ forms near a quantum critical point with inherent frustration. They identify strong 1D spin and 3D electron coupling that should stimulate the search for materials exhibiting a 1D Kondo effect and heavy fermions.

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

The bactericidal action of some antibiotics is associated with increased ATP consumption, cellular respiration, and reactive oxygen species formation. Here, Li et al. show that constitutive hydrolysis of ATP and NADH (or ‘bioenergetic stress’) potentiates the evolution of antibiotic resistance and persistence in E. coli.

Complete sequences of chromosomes telomere-to-telomere from chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan and siamang provide a comprehensive and valuable resource for future evolutionary comparisons.

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.

The red fluorescent protein mScarlet3-H is bright, photostable and very robust to high temperature, chaotropic conditions and oxidative environments. mScarlet3-H works well in correlative light and electron microscopy, tissue clearing and time-lapse super-resolution microscopy.

Continuous shape morphing for small robots can offer advantages, but it is difficult to perform tasks if they are not stiff enough. Xu et al. present here a design combining liquid crystal elastomers and shape memory polymers to lock morphable elements in place.

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 semileptonic decay channels of the Λc baryon can give important insights into weak interaction, but decay into a neutron, positron and electron neutrino has not been reported so far, due to difficulties in the final products’ identification. Here, the BESIII Collaboration reports its observation in e+e- collision data, exploiting machine-learning-based identification techniques.

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.

Entanglement was observed in top–antitop quark events by the ATLAS experiment produced at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN using a proton–proton collision dataset with a centre-of-mass energy of √s  = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 fb⁻¹.

By controlling the flow or composition of liquids, optofluidics provides numerous possibilities for devices, and so has great potential for transformation optics. Here, a multi-mode optofluidic waveguide is presented, which manipulates light to produce controllable chirped focussing and interference.

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.

The authors showcase a photonic integrated circuit chip for fast optical frequency variation measurement, fabricated with thin-film lithium niobate, with a size of 5.5 mm × 2.7 mm, a speed up to 2500 THz/s, a resolution of 2 MHz, and a range of 160 nm.

Oxide memristors exhibit noise in excess of 2–4 orders of magnitude above the baseline at quantized conductance states. Here, the authors measure anomalous electrical noise at these states in tantalum oxide memristors and relate it to thermally-activated atomic fluctuations by numerical simulations.

The authors study CsV₃Sb₅ by nuclear quadrupole resonance. At ambient pressure, there are two superconducting gaps with line nodes in the smaller one. For pressures above P_c ~ 1.85 GPa, where the charge-density wave phase is completely suppressed, they observe fully-gapped superconductivity with broken rotational symmetry.

Landau-Zener transitions near an avoided level crossing are a broadly relevant concept in quantum systems. Here the authors use a superconducting flux qubit to shed new light on the role of the environment in Landau-Zener tunneling by observing a crossover between weak and strong coupling.

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.

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.

A complete genome assembly of a crab-eating macaque, revealing 46% fewer segmental duplications and 3.83 times longer centromeres than those of humans, is presented, enhancing understanding of lineage-specific phenotypes, adaptation and primate evolution.

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.

Wide use of graphene nanosheets has raised concerns about the potential for environmental toxicity. Here, the authors explore the use of humic acid, traditionally considered to reduce graphene nanosheet toxicity, and show the coating has increased toxicity to model bacteria.

The instability of quantum dot inks hinders the scaling up of colloidal quantum dot electronics. Now, Shi and team stabilize the inks with an iodine-rich environment in a weakly coordinating solvent, achieving 13.4% in small-area solar cells and over 10% in modules.

Investigating the inner structure of baryons is important to further our understanding of the strong interaction. Here, the BESIII Collaboration extracts the absolute value of the ratio of the electric to magnetic form factors and its relative phase for e + e − → J/ψ → ΛΣ decays, enhancing the signal thanks to the vacuum polarisation effect at the J/ψ peak.

It is extremely difficult to separate tritium from radioactively contaminated water. Here the authors introduce catalytic hydrogen isotope exchange to water distillation, realizing excellent detritiation performance.

The existence and properties of tetraquark states with two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks have been widely debated. Here, the authors use a unitarized model to study the properties of an exotic narrow state compatible with a doubly charmed tetraquark.

A connectome of the right optic lobe from a male fruitfly is presented together with an extensive collection of genetic drivers matched to a comprehensive neuron-type catalogue.

Semiconductor polymers containing selenophene in their backbones and immunomodulatory groups in their side chains enable the fabrication of implantable bioelectronic devices with enhanced immune compatibility and low foreign-body response.

Heavy-atom molecules can possess complicated electronic structures due to pronounced electron correlation and relativistic effects. Here, the authors describe electronic states of RaF in detail by combining accurate spectroscopy and theory approaches.

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.

The interfaces in perovskite solar cells are critical to the device performance. Li et al. tune the bond strength of the interfacial molecule with the perovskite and the electron transport layer, increasing the power conversion efficiency of the cells.

Preeclampsia poses significant risks in pregnancy, and accurately predicting delivery timing is crucial for optimal care. Here, the authors show that deep-learning models, using limited electronic health record features, can effectively predict the time from preeclampsia diagnosis to delivery, potentially offering a tool for better resource allocation.

The CMS Collaboration reports evidence for off-shell Higgs boson contributions in the production of Z boson pairs, and measures the width of the Higgs boson, which is inversely related to its lifetime.

Using multi-ancestry genome-wide association study and fine-mapping, 298 loci and 36 credible genes are identified in the aetiology of bipolar disorder.

Gold with FCC phase is very ductile, while the yield strength is well below the theoretical limit. Here, the authors report on the mechanical properties of single-crystalline gold nanoflakes with HCP phase that illustrate the benefits of phase engineering.

Knowledge of effective Coulomb interactions is central to understand emergent quantum phases in strongly correlated systems. Here, Boschini et al. report a dynamic quasi-circular spectrum of charge density wave fluctuations in the CuO₂ plane of Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+δ, shedding a light on understanding how Coulomb interactions can lead to rotational and translational symmetry breaking in the cuprates.

Electron scattering measurements are shown to reproduce only qualitatively state-of-the-art lepton–nucleus energy reconstruction models, indicating that improvements to these particle-interaction models are required to ensure the accuracy of future high-precision neutrino oscillation experiments.

The authors observe X-ray coherent scattering speckles from substrate-supported planar patterns in grazing incidence reflection geometry, which constitutes hard X-ray holograms revealing three-dimensional high-resolution structural information in a single image.