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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 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%.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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 ability to encode and recall information about food is critical for survival. We reveal that ventral hippocampus projections to the lateral hypothalamus encode meal-related memories, and that disruption of this circuit promotes excessive eating.

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.

The understanding of the reemergence of pressure induced superconductivity in alkali-metal intercalated FeSe is hampered by sample complexities. Here, Sun et al. report the electronic properties of (Li_1–xFe _x )OHFe_1–ySe single crystal not only in the reemerged superconducting state but also in the normal state.

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.

Heusler compounds have been predicted to host topological order with other emergent properties, which yet awaits for experimental evidence. Here, Liu et al. report a direct observation of topological surface states on half-Heusler compounds LnPtBi.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A miniaturized and low-power-consumption system is designed to allow the accurate sensing and wireless transmission of internal temperature and strain signals inside lithium-ion batteries with negligible influence on their performance, improving their safety.

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.

Exploring low-cost, efficient catalysts to replace platinum is crucial for electrocatalytic hydrogen generation. Here, the authors report a termination-acidity strategy that boosts the activity of molybdenum carbides, achieving a low overpotential and sustaining hydrogen generation for over 200 h.

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.

This paper shows that nano-enabled dehydrogenation catalysis in biological systems induces a domino effect, including reductive stress, immunosuppression and tumour metastasis.

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.

Origami-based soft robotic manipulators offer compactness, cost-effectiveness, and scalability, but challenges related to stiffness, precision, and dexterity remain. To address these issues, the authors introduce the Micro-X4, a 4-degree-of-freedom origami micromanipulator that is capable of achieving three-dimensional translational motion, along with rotation around the central axis of the moving platform.

Weyl semimetals are interesting because they are characterized by topological invariants, but specific examples discovered to date tend to have complicated band structures with many Weyl points. Here, the authors show that TaIrTe₄ has only four Weyl points, the minimal number required by time-reversal symmetry.

Dense calcium imaging combined with co-registered high-resolution electron microscopy reconstruction of the brain of the same mouse provide a functional connectomics map of tens of thousands of neurons of a region of the primary cortex and higher visual areas.

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.

Fracture behaviours in multilayer h-BN, involving interlayer-friction toughening and edge-reconstruction embrittlement, are identified through in situ experiments and theoretical analyses.

It is unclear how often genetic mosaicism of chromosome X arises. Here, the authors examine women with cancer and cancer-free controls and show that X chromosome mosaicism occurs more frequently than on autosomes, especially on the inactive X chromosome, but is not linked to non-haematologic cancer risk

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.

Nickelate superconductors attract enormous attention in the field of high-temperature superconductivity. Here the authors report observation of perfect diamagnetism and interfacial effect on the electronic structures in infinite layer Nd_0.8Sr_0.2NiO₂ superconductors.

The collective-flow-assisted nuclear shape-imaging method images the nuclear global shape by colliding them at ultrarelativistic speeds and analysing the collective response of outgoing debris.

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

With the generation of large pan-cancer whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing projects, a question remains about how comparable these datasets are. Here, using The Cancer Genome Atlas samples analysed as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the authors explore the concordance of mutations called by whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing techniques.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

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

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.