Volume 657 Issue 8130, 3 September 2026

In many countries, female engineers are barred from entering deep mines to carry out studies. Differentiating risks can increase access while protecting safety.

A positive trial holds promise for treating people with cancer. More research is needed to get effective vaccines to the clinic.

Lecture preparations prompt a scientist to poke holes in the ‘gallium anomaly’.

Seismologists measured the varying speeds of a ‘thunderquake’ to survey an area with little seismic activity.

Study suggests that male hormones have an effect on nerve endings in the lungs.

Geochemical clues hint that worm-like creatures in the Ediacaran period benefited from symbiosis with bacteria.

Pacific Fusion is breaking ground next door to a US nuclear-weapons laboratory — a partnership that could give it an edge.

They release compounds that contribute to ozone emissions, and rising temperatures could exacerbate the problem.

Promising trial results suggest cancer vaccines work and could be used to target other tumours.

Science sleuth’s findings raise questions for researchers working to improve the reliability of commercial antibodies.

The US science-funding agency is withholding $1 billion of its budget so that the money can go to a special White House project.

The figure, which is much higher than previous estimates of large-language-model use, is for papers published in December and archived in PubMed.

Researchers worry that generative AI is homogenizing culture and cognition.

Hundreds of millions of people have long-term conditions as a result of an infection. Researchers are working out how to help them.

A radical proposal that evolutionary pressures apply to atoms as much as animals should provoke scientific debate.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

His calculations explain the efficiency of batteries and solar cells.

As generative AI becomes embedded in research and publishing, the deeper challenge is preserving accountability for scholarly work.

Optimism about the future can seem in short supply nowadays, but people’s age, where they live and their expectations have a lot to do with it.

Studying a condition after being diagnosed with it can be rewarding but also presents some ethical and psychological challenges.

Spread of diseases between humans and animals is an issue around the world. But AI models can be used to monitor their progress.

An autonomous-vehicle system that directly explains its decisions in a way that can be interpreted by humans could improve driving safety.

Different tropical tree species can vary in their ability to withstand drought — and so too, it seems, can distinct populations of the same tree species.

A long-underexplored test of particle-physics theory has been revived. This method uses quantum entanglement to infer the presence of undetectable particles.

Using available data and modelling to assess the incidence of snakebites and associated deaths provides information needed for efforts to tackle this public-health concern.

The discovery of a transmissible melanoma in a freshwater catfish raises questions about the disease’s origin, mode of transmission and broader impact on the species.

Artificial intelligence in physics experimental design is explored on the basis of searching for optima over a vast space of hardware configurations and proposing entirely new experimental layouts, rather than tuning a handful of parameters.

This Review highlights the state of the art of molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying MASH pathogenesis and its transition to hepatocellular carcinoma.

The therapeutic landscape and advances in biomarkers for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis are reviewed.

Polarization and quantum entanglement measurements of baryon semileptonic decay greatly enhance single-event sensitivity, and combined with lattice quantum chromodynamics calculations enable determination of the |V_us| element of the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix, providing an independent test of the standard model.

Measurements on an array of optically trapped neutral atoms at a quantum phase transition provide a direct observation of the universal excitation spectrum predicted by conformal field theory.

Double-slit interferometry at the atomic scale is demonstrated using scanning transmission electron microscopy to provide evidence of interference fringes generated with a focused electron beam encountering two silicon atomic columns separated by 1.36 Å.

Concept-Wrapper Network, a concept-based explanation approach deployed on a real autonomous vehicle, improves drivers’ ability to understand and predict its behaviour.

Local Lewis-base hardness is tuned through a molecular dipole, an approach constraining the polarizability of the oxygen donor’s outermost electrons, leading to homogeneous WBG films achieving enhanced power conversion efficiency and extended stability.

A new chemistry-based super-resolution imaging framework is described, enabling 3D, laser-free, highly sensitive and ultralong-term imaging of live cells which overcomes the limitations in spatiotemporal resolution associated with reaction-based imaging methods.

A one-pot skeletal-editing reaction replaces isoxazole oxygen with carbon to form challenging pyrroles, enabled by an N-propargylic enaminone intermediate and a computational model predicting reaction outcomes.

A photoexcited pyridoxal phosphate cofactor enables asymmetric radical cross-coupling reactions, expanding photoenzymatic catalysis to new bond-forming transformations beyond existing chromophoric cofactors.

Observations from natural volcanic watersheds demonstrate attenuation of alkalinity fluxes along the complete reactive pathways from soil to river that lead to reductions in exported alkalinity, indicating the limiting effects of critical zone processes.

Scenario simulations using global economic models show that by 2050 the transformation of food systems towards healthy diets, improved productivity and halving of food waste result in a restructuring of global agriculture.

Substantial intraspecific variation, together with species turnover, drives coordinated shifts in drought resistance such as increased embolism resistance and wider stomatal safety margins in drier forests.

A well-preserved fossil snake from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil shows early ecological and brain shape disparity in the group.

An encyclopedia of more than 92 million enhancer–gene regulatory interactions created as part of the ENCODE4 project provides a valuable resource for future studies of gene regulation and human genetics.

Single-nucleus RNA-seq and ATAC-seq analyses on post-mortem brain samples from African American, Latin and white individuals identify cell-type-specific molecular signatures that are associated with cognitive impairment and/or Alzheimer’s disease across diverse population groups.

A high-resolution developmental transcriptional atlas of the Drosophila melanogaster nerve cord identifies a shared transcriptional code that records neuronal birth order and organizes neuronal diversity.

The ARP2/3 complex works together with actomyosin in an oscillatory program at the soma to govern neuronal polarization.

CRISPR–Cas systems transcriptionally tune diverse innate defences using CRISPR RNA-like guides to balance antiviral protection with fitness, and hyperactivate these defences when compromised, establishing a layered bacterial ‘immunity guard’ network.

A systematic evaluation shows that contemporary humanoid robots can perform laparoscopic surgical tasks through teleoperation, highlighting both their promise and key technical challenges before clinical deployment.

Whole-genome sequencing analysis of tumour and matched non-tumour host tissues of the brown bullhead catfish reveals a type of naturally occurring transmissible cancer.

In vivo ligation of clinically used therapeutic antibodies via bioorthogonal click chemistry to antibody–drug conjugates leads to enhanced antitumour activity in heterogeneous and treatment-resistant tumours.

Epitope editing of KIT enables antibody-based, non-genotoxic conditioning that selectively enriches therapeutic BCL11A-edited haematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, supports durable engraftment, preserves clonal diversity and enhances induction of fetal haemoglobin, a therapeutic approach for conditions such as sickle cell disease and β-thalassemia.

Results from a panel of assays that analyse different aspects of DNA sequence specificity reveal more than 100 new motifs to aid the characterization of putative human transcription factors.

Kilobase-scale nickase-targeting (KNIT) editing enables single-nick-based DNA insertion across genomic loci and cell types, supporting insertion of DNA fragments exceeding 10 kb, with high efficiency and minimal unwanted off-target effects.

Pathways to previously undescribed polyenes, including unusual enzymes that introduce more sugars onto polyene scaffolds, are discovered, and their accessibility through clean and efficient fermentation and potential for safe use as antifungal treatments is described.