1. Not just a chip off the old block: nanoparticles reveal odd traits

2. This bonobo had a pretend tea party — showing make believe isn’t just for humans

3. Beetle is locked in to an eternal dance ― with an ant

4. Publisher Correction: Colibactin-driven colon cancer requires adhesin-mediated epithelial binding

5. Is UK science in jeopardy? Huge funding reforms spark chaos and anxiety

6. Author Correction: PHGDH heterogeneity potentiates cancer cell dissemination and metastasis

7. NASA’s latest telescope is a feat of early-career leadership

8. First ‘practical PhDs’ awarded in China — for products rather than papers

9. These mysterious ridges could be the secret to younger skin

10. Daily briefing: More than one-third of cancer cases are preventable

11. Innovative CAR-T therapy destroys cancer cells without dangerous side effects

12. How a protein repurposes vitamin B12 as a light sensor

13. A way to gauge the equity of ocean-related initiatives

14. Immune cells from the gut drive development of Parkinson’s disease in the brain

15. Evolutionary insights into a skin fold

16. Atlantic ocean currents defied the ice age

17. How tumours trick the brain into shutting down cancer-fighting cells

18. Particle collisions cast light on how matter forms from seemingly empty space

19. Open-source AI tool beats giant LLMs in literature reviews — and gets citations right

20. Common genetic variants affect risk of a major cause of pregnancy loss

21. A tumour-to-brain pathway hinders anticancer defences

22. Machine learning slashes the testing needed to work out battery lifetimes

23. Chemical capture of diazo metabolites reveals biosynthetic hydrazone oxidation

24. Measuring spin correlation between quarks during QCD confinement

25. Efficient near-telomere-to-telomere assembly of nanopore simplex reads

26. Integrated structural dynamics uncover a new B12 photoreceptor activation mode

27. Mosquito–capsid interactions contribute to flavivirus vector specificity

28. Rete ridges form via evolutionarily distinct mechanisms in mammalian skin

29. Activated ATF6α is a hepatic tumour driver restricting immunosurveillance

30. Resolving intervalley gaps and many-body resonances in moiré superconductors

31. Cleavage of mRNAs by a minority of pachytene piRNAs improves sperm fitness

32. Regulation of STING activation by phosphoinositide and cholesterol

33. Imaging the sub-moiré potential using an atomic single electron transistor

34. Spin-wave band-pass filters for 6G communication

35. ZFTA–RELA ependymomas make itaconate to epigenetically drive fusion expression

36. Single-molecule dynamics of the TRiC chaperonin system in vivo

37. Contemporaneous mobile- and stagnant-lid tectonics on the Hadean Earth

38. Tumour–brain crosstalk restrains cancer immunity via a sensory–sympathetic axis

39. Phenome-wide analysis of copy number variants in 470,727 UK Biobank genomes

40. Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder

41. Imaging a terahertz superfluid plasmon in a two-dimensional superconductor

42. A pore-forming antiphage defence is activated by oligomeric phage proteins

43. Signatures of fractional charges via anyon–trions in twisted MoTe2

44. Bacterial immune activation via supramolecular assembly with phage triggers

45. Discovery Learning predicts battery cycle life from minimal experiments

46. Synthesizing scientific literature with retrieval-augmented language models

47. Large-scale analogue quantum simulation using atom dot arrays

48. Atmospheric H2 variability over the past 1,100 years

49. PtdIns(3,5)P2 is an endogenous ligand of STING in innate immune signalling

50. Biofluid biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative dementias

51. Regulatory grammar in human promoters uncovered by MPRA-based deep learning

52. Atlas-guided discovery of transcription factors for T cell programming

53. A universal concept for melting in mantle upwellings

54. These mysterious ridges could help skin regenerate

55. AI could transform research assessment — and some academics are worried

56. What my cave stay taught me about sensors

57. ‘It means I can sleep at night’: how sensors are helping to solve scientists’ problems

58. The smart sensors improving the world’s biggest cities

59. Eviction notice

60. Author Correction: Cotranslational assembly of protein complexes in eukaryotes revealed by ribosome profiling

61. NIH rolls back red tape on some experiments — spurring excitement and concern

62. Biodiversity conservation has an evidence problem — it’s time to fix it

63. Daily briefing: What people with no ‘mind’s eye’ can tell us about consciousness

64. Quantum computers will finally be useful: what’s behind the revolution

65. Author knows best? Top AI conference asks for self-ranked papers amid paper deluge

66. More than one-third of cancer cases are preventable, massive study finds

67. Ontogeny and transcriptional regulation of Thetis cells

68. Now is not the time to defund human fetal tissue research

69. A history of hocus pocus: witchcraft down the ages

70. Author Correction: Increasingly negative tropical water–interannual CO2 growth rate coupling

71. I know science can’t fix the world — here’s why I do it anyway

72. Many people have no mental imagery. What’s going on in their brains?

73. The ''bible for psychiatry'' is getting a rewrite: your guide to the next DSM

74. The global plastics treaty can be saved — here’s how to break the deadlock

75. Who does academic consulting serve?

76. Calling all scientists: Support your Iranian colleagues

77. Embrace diverse PhD supervision styles — but enforce essential standards

78. Daily briefing: Scientists delve into the smells of history

79. China’s relationship with foreign scientific powers is changing rapidly

80. OpenAI-backed firm to use ultrasound to read minds. Does the science stand up?

81. Long-lived remote ion-ion entanglement for scalable quantum repeaters

82. A broadly protective antibody targeting gammaherpesvirus gB

83. How learning handwriting trains the brain: the science behind the cursive wars

84. See the Sun expand and contract like a pufferfish — January’s best science images

85. Science finds its song

86. Daily briefing: Why we enjoy things more when they’re hard to get

87. Does AI already have human-level intelligence? The evidence is clear

88. Is this journal legitimate? This tool can help you decide

89. Are health influencers making us sick?

90. Author Correction: Albumin orchestrates a natural host defence mechanism against mucormycosis

91. This robot hand detaches and walks by itself

92. Briefing Chat: What Brazilian centenarians could reveal about the science of ageing

93. China is betting on ‘optical’ computer chips – will they power AI?

94. Largest galaxy survey yet confirms that the Universe is not clumpy enough

95. Daily briefing: Brain–immune crosstalk worsens the damage of heart attacks

96. How DeepMind''s genome AI could help solve rare disease mysteries

97. Can academia handle my religious faith?

98. Publisher Correction: Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus coexisted at the close of the Cretaceous

99. Publisher Correction: A domed pachycephalosaur from the early Cretaceous of Mongolia

100. Light-powered bacteria become living chemical factories

101. Longevity is in the genes: half of lifespan is heritable

102. Still conscious? Brain marker signals when anaesthesia takes hold

103. Genetically engineered ‘stinkweed’ comes up roses for making seed oil

104. Author Correction: Hunter-gatherer sea voyages extended to remotest Mediterranean islands

105. 48 hours without lungs: artificial organ kept man alive until transplant

106. This AI has chemical expertise — and helps synthesize 35 new drugs and materials

107. ArXiv says submissions must be in English: are AI translators up for the job?

108. Five ways to make the academic workplace happier and healthier this year

109. Developmental convergence and divergence in human stem cell models of autism

110. Critical social media posts linked to retractions of scientific papers

111. AI chatbots are infiltrating social-science surveys — and getting better at avoiding detection

112. Damage from a heart attack comes from brain signals, mouse study suggests

113. A bendable AI chip for wearable technology

114. Pesticide cocktails negatively affect soil biodiversity

115. Expert-level test is a head-scratcher for AI

116. Alternative explanation for how celestial objects generate large-scale magnetic fields

117. Scraps of viral DNA in biobank samples reveal secrets of Epstein–Barr virus

118. A step towards building miniature human livers

119. Chill out: freezing temperatures produced by letting a stressed alloy relax

120. Structure and mechanism of the human bile acid transporter OSTα–OSTβ

121. Vagal blood volume receptors compensate for haemorrhage and posture change

122. Optical switching of a moiré Chern ferromagnet

123. Observation of a superfluid-to-insulator transition of bilayer excitons

124. Structures of Ostα/β reveal a unique fold and bile acid transport mechanism

125. Pre-assembly of biomolecular condensate seeds drives RSV replication

126. GlycoRNA complexed with heparan sulfate regulates VEGF-A signalling

127. A benchmark of expert-level academic questions to assess AI capabilities

128. Holistic motor control of zebra finch song syllable sequences

129. Disentangling multiple gas kinematic drivers in the Perseus galaxy cluster

130. Optical control over topological Chern number in moiré materials

131. A flexible digital compute-in-memory chip for edge intelligence

132. The Ocean Equity Index

133. Ferromagnet-like binary switching of a Stoner–Wohlfarth antiferromagnet

134. Optofluidic three-dimensional microfabrication and nanofabrication

135. Limit of atomic-resolution-tomography reconstruction of amorphous nanoparticles

136. Psychedelics elicit their effects by 5-HT2A receptor-mediated Gi signalling

137. Vacuum ultraviolet second-harmonic generation in NH4B4O6F crystal

138. A cross-population compendium of gene–environment interactions

139. A cavity-array microscope for parallel single-atom interfacing

140. Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome

141. Robust cytoplasmic partitioning by solving a cytoskeletal instability

142. A prophage-encoded abortive infection protein preserves host and prophage spread

143. Low-power integrated optical amplification through second-harmonic resonance

144. An X-ray-emitting protocluster at z 5.7 reveals rapid structure growth

145. A Cambrian soft-bodied biota after the first Phanerozoic mass extinction

146. PAF15–PCNA exhaustion governs the strand-specific control of DNA replication

147. Frequency reproducibility of solid-state thorium-229 nuclear clocks

148. Human and bacterial genetic variation shape oral microbiomes and health

149. Bandwidth-tuned Mott transition and superconductivity in moiré WSe2

150. Lasing of a cavity-based X-ray source

151. Pesticide residues alter taxonomic and functional biodiversity in soils

152. Population-scale sequencing resolves determinants of persistent EBV DNA

153. Environmentally driven immune imprinting protects against allergy

154. Optical control of integer and fractional Chern insulators

155. Cholinergic modulation of dopamine release drives effortful behaviour

156. Intestinal macrophages modulate synucleinopathy along the gut–brain axis

157. Accurate determination of the 3D atomic structure of amorphous materials

158. Radiation-tolerant atomic-layer-scale RF system for spaceborne communication

159. Multimodal learning with next-token prediction for large multimodal models

160. Prethermalization by random multipolar driving on a 78-qubit processor

161. Constraints on axion dark matter by distributed intercity quantum sensors

162. Projected impacts of climate change on malaria in Africa

163. How your brain chemistry rewards hard work

164. Technologies to give a clearer view of the lungs

165. How ‘forest bathing’ keeps lungs healthy

166. Could the regenerative power of the lungs help to reverse disease?

167. Six highlights from lung-health research

168. Treatments for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis are on the horizon

169. Funding cuts could put research into emerging threats to lung health at risk

170. Exposome studies can improve lung health

171. Act now to clean up air

172. Preserving the respiratory system

173. The unfortunate embossing of Subsector XZ-74

174. Daily briefing: The battle over the identity of the first animals

175. Wikipedia is needed now more than ever, 25 years on

176. Deep-sea robots will search for source of mysterious ‘dark oxygen’

177. The surprisingly big health benefits of just a little exercise

178. How much exercise do you really need?

179. Still working at 107: supercentenarian study probes genetics of extreme longevity

180. Author Correction: Relatively warm deep-water formation persisted in the Last Glacial Maximum

181. Sensors are transforming the world — work together to maximize their benefits

182. Author Correction: Nutrient-sensing nuclear receptors coordinate autophagy

183. Daily briefing: Blister beetles hoodwink bees with floral smells

184. Volcanic personality: the man who recognized volcanoes as a planet-shaping force of nature

185. Would forced retirement solve the academic job crisis?

186. How to eat well and within Earth’s limits

187. What were the first animals? The fierce sponge–jelly battle that just won’t end

188. Spotting viral invaders in koala family trees

189. African science needs to cut reliance on foreign donors

190. Street-dog policy in India is barking up the wrong tree

191. Social-media bans: why corporate fines could backfire

192. Audio long read: ‘I rarely get outside’ — scientists ditch fieldwork in the age of AI

193. Scalable and multiplexed recorders of gene regulation dynamics across weeks

194. Why do women like me get diagnosed with ADHD late?

195. Quantum spinning effect observed in a levitating magnet

196. Defending endangered trees against climate change and hungry goats

197. Exceeding 1.5 C requires rethinking accountability in climate policy

198. As we breach 1.5 C, we must replace temperature limits with clean-energy targets

199. Daily briefing: Why cancer might protect against Alzheimer’s disease

200. Daily briefing: Largest ever ‘superposition’ pushes quantum boundary

201. Technology is changing how we write — and how we think about writing

202. Greenland is important for global research: what''s next for the island''s science?

203. Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology

204. Briefing Chat: The canny cow that can use tools, and how babies share their microbiomes

205. What a 1-billion pledge means for CERN’s ambitious supercollider plans

206. Guinea-Bissau suspends a US-funded vaccine trial as African scientists question its motives

207. Marvellous microbes, memory and the multiverse: Books in brief

208. NIH ends support for some human fetal-tissue research – dismaying scientists

209. Exclusive: key NIH review panels due to lose all members by the end of 2026

210. Cancer might protect against Alzheimer’s — this protein helps explain why

211. Microplastic levels in the air have been overestimated, but are still a big concern

212. What your breath says about the bacteria in your gut

213. When two years of academic work vanished with a single click

214. ‘Bodies like ours aren’t considered in academia’

215. Canny cattle: at least one cow knows how to use tools

216. Daily briefing: Trump — one year in

217. Cause of vision loss discovered in overlooked genes

218. ‘Remote controlled’ proteins illuminate living cells

219. The biggest ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ yet — physicists put 7,000 atoms in superposition

220. Publisher Correction: Polyamine-dependent metabolic shielding regulates alternative splicing

221. Hand stencils in Indonesian cave are world’s oldest known artworks

222. An eye-popping discovery: early vertebrates had four eyes rather than two

223. Sending babies to nursery completely reshapes their microbiomes

224. A variety of early hominin species shared the Afar region of Ethiopia

225. Schrödinger’s cat just got bigger: quantum physicists create largest ever ‘superposition’

226. Illuminating how the bird inner retina works without oxygen solves a 350-year-old structural mystery

227. More than half of authors of leading research say funding is declining

228. Quantum effect observed for biggest objects yet

229. The transition from monocyte to tissue-resident macrophage requires DHPS

230. Atmospheric microplastic emissions from land and ocean

231. Convergent evolution of scavenger cell development at brain borders

232. Accretion bursts crystallize silicates in a planet-forming disk

233. Biological insights into schizophrenia from ancestrally diverse populations

234. Fibroblastic reticular cells direct the initiation of T cell responses via CD44

235. Fibre integrated circuits by a multilayered spiral architecture

236. Baby-to-baby strain transmission shapes the developing gut microbiome

237. Relatively warm deep-water formation persisted in the Last Glacial Maximum

238. Probing quantum mechanics with nanoparticle matter-wave interferometry

239. LetA defines a structurally distinct transporter family

240. Quantum spin resonance in engineered proteins for multimodal sensing

241. Dissecting gene regulatory networks governing human cortical cell fate

242. Common variation in meiosis genes shapes human recombination and aneuploidy

243. Large-scale dynamos driven by shear-flow-induced jets

244. Critical role for a high-plasticity cell state in lung cancer

245. Oxygen-free metabolism in the bird inner retina supported by the pecten

246. Ageing promotes microglial accumulation of slow-degrading synaptic proteins

247. The potential for bridgmanite megacrysts to drive magma ocean segregation

248. Predatory aggression evolved through adaptations to noradrenergic circuits

249. Identification of an allosteric site on the E3 ligase adapter cereblon

250. Four camera-type eyes in the earliest vertebrates from the Cambrian Period

251. Core–envelope miscibility in sub-Neptunes and super-Earths

252. Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi

253. Pyramidal neurons proportionately alter cortical interneuron subtypes

254. Symmetry, microscopy and spectroscopy signatures of altermagnetism

255. Temporal tissue dynamics from a spatial snapshot

256. Extreme barocaloric effect at dissolution

257. Construction of complex and diverse DNA sequences using DNA three-way junctions

258. Afar fossil shows broad distribution and versatility of Paranthropus

259. Editorial Expression of Concern: The X-linked lymphoproliferative-disease gene product SAP regulates signals induced through the co-receptor SLAM

260. Why teens with ADHD are so vulnerable to the perils of social media

261. Why ADHD goes undiagnosed in girls

262. ADHD treatments move beyond stimulants

263. Is paracetamol in pregnancy a risk factor for ADHD?

264. Six highlights from ADHD research

265. Untangling the connection between dopamine and ADHD

266. ADHD is on the rise, but why?

267. Publisher Correction: Multiple oestradiol functions inhibit ferroptosis and acute kidney injury

268. The rich stopped buying yachts the year time went on sale

269. Seven technologies to watch in 2026

270. AI and nuclear energy feature strongly in agenda-setting technologies for 2026

271. Daily briefing: The first documented case of tool use in cattle

272. Girls are starting puberty younger — why, and what are the risks?

273. US Congress set to reject Trump’s sweeping science budget cuts

274. The US is quitting 66 global agencies: what does it mean for science?

275. How much protein do you actually need?

276. Author Correction: Anthropogenic influences on major tropical cyclone events

277. US science after a year of Trump: what has been lost and what remains

278. Mistaken identity and the psychology of human recognition

279. ‘Shattered’: US scientists speak out about how Trump policies disrupted their careers

280. ‘Every aspect of my work life has changed’ — scientists reflect on a year of Trump

281. Fossil-fuel phase out is not enough: countries must remove atmospheric carbon

282. Study decision-making to understand how technology will affect behaviour

283. US funding cuts harm aspiring young scientists, too

284. To gain public trust, make art central to science communication

285. Daily briefing: Gifted dogs have word-learning skills on a par with human toddlers

286. Can ''toxic masculinity'' be measured? Scientists try to quantify controversial term

287. Publisher Correction: A fault-tolerant neutral-atom architecture for universal quantum computation

288. Editorial Expression of Concern: En passant neurotrophic action of an intermediate axonal target in the developing mammalian CNS

289. Collective intelligence for AI-assisted chemical synthesis

290. Author Correction: An autonomous laboratory for the accelerated synthesis of inorganic materials

291. Floating science stations: my month on a research vessel looking after buoys

292. Forget formalism: mathematics was built on infighting and emotional turmoil

293. I’m going to halve my publication output. You should consider slow science, too

294. ‘Greed is the iron cage of our times’ — why nationalism is here to stay

295. Daily briefing: Symbols on ancient pottery could be earliest evidence of mathematics

296. HPV vaccine could help to protect the unvaccinated against cervical cancer

297. Gifted dogs learn new words by overhearing humans

298. Climate trends influence transatlantic flight times

299. My PI is not offering any support or guidance on my PhD project, what should I do?

300. How do vaccine cutbacks affect public health? Ask Japan