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Heterosis, or hybrid vigor, refers to the phenotypic superiority of hybrids relative to their parental inbred lines. Recent work showed that manipulation of the soil microbial community consistently altered heterosis, but the direction of the effect was dependent on microbiome composition, environment, or both. Abiotic factors such as temperature, water availability, and soil nutrients are known modifiers of heterosis expression; however, whether interactions between the soil microbial community and abiotic properties affect heterosis is largely unknown. To further understand how microbes influence heterosis, we characterized variation in maize heterosis when grown in soil inocula derived from historical maize farms or prairies. Although we did not observe consistent differences in heterosis among plants grown in these inocula, our observations affirm that microbial effects on heterosis are likely specific to the local microbial community. The introduction of a nutrient amendment resulted in greater heterosis in the presence of an agricultural soil inoculum than in the presence of a prairie soil inoculum. In addition, the interaction between soil inoculum and nutrient treatment structured bacterial and fungal community composition in the root endosphere. Root bacterial diversity was also significantly higher under nutrient-limited conditions. These results suggest that the contributions of genotype-by-environment interactions to heterosis are dependent on microbial context. They also provide direct evidence for the interactive effect of the soil microbial community and abiotic environment on heterosis and suggest that consideration of the soil microbial community may be helpful for breeding hybrid maize varieties for high performance in diverse environmental contexts. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2026 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY 4.0 International license . 

{"Abstract":["Data and code from the submitted manuscript "The interaction between abiotic and biotic soil factors modulates heterosis expression in maize". Descriptions of each file can be found in the README.txt file. The raw sequence data associated with this work is available in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive under BioProject PRJNA1235732."],"Other":["This work was supported by the United States National Science Foundation (award #IOS-2033621 to M.R.W., P.B.K., and M.K.) and the United States Department of Agriculture (#2022-67013-36672 to K.M.C.). The University of Kansas Medical Center Genomics Core is supported by the Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (NIH U54 HD090216), the NIH S10 High End Instrumentation Grant (NIH S10 OD036343) and the Frontiers CTSA Grant (UL1TR002366)."]} 

A<sc>bstract</sc> Thepp→W^±(→μ^±ν_μ)Xcross-sections are measured at a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy$$ \sqrt{s}=5.02 $$ $\sqrt{s}=5.02$TeV using a dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 100 pb⁻¹recorded by the LHCb experiment. Considering muons in the pseudorapidity range 2.2< η <4.4, the cross-sections are measured differentially in twelve intervals of muon transverse momentum between 28< p_T<52 GeV. Integrated overp_T, the measured cross-sections are$$ {\displaystyle \begin{array}{c}{\sigma}_{W^{+}\to {\mu}^{+}{\nu}_{\mu }}=300.9\pm 2.4\pm 3.8\pm 6.0\ \textrm{pb},\\ {}{\sigma}_{W^{-}\to {\mu}^{-}{\overline{\nu}}_{\mu }}=236.9\pm 2.1\pm 2.7\pm 4.7\ \textrm{pb},\end{array}} $$ $\begin{array}{c}{\sigma }_{W^{+}\to {\mu }^{+}{\nu }_{\mu }}=300.9\pm 2.4\pm 3.8\pm 6.0\mathrm{pb},\\ {\sigma }_{W^{-}\to {\mu }^{-}{\overline{\nu }}_{\mu }}=236.9\pm 2.1\pm 2.7\pm 4.7\mathrm{pb},\end{array}$ where the first uncertainties are statistical, the second are systematic, and the third are associated with the luminosity calibration. These integrated results are consistent with theoretical predictions. This analysis introduces a new method to determine theW-boson mass using the measured differential cross-sections corrected for detector effects. The measurement is performed on this statistically limited dataset as a proof of principle and yields$$ {m}_W=80369\pm 130\pm 33\ \textrm{MeV}, $$ $m_W=80369\pm 130\pm 33\mathrm{MeV},$ where the first uncertainty is experimental and the second is theoretical. 

The first dedicated $Z$-boson mass measurement at the LHC with $Z\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$decays is reported. The dataset uses proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, recorded in 2016 by the LHCb experiment, and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of $1.7{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$. A template fit to the ${\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$mass distribution yields the following result for the $Z$-boson mass: $m_Z=91,185.7\pm 8.3\pm 3.9\mathrm{MeV}$, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. This result is consistent with previous measurements and predictions from global electroweak fits. 

The substructure of jets in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) has garnered significant attention with the advent of infrared- and collinear-safe clustering algorithms and observables. A key question emerging from these studies is how in-jet emissions at soft and hard energy scales, across collinear and wide angles relative to the emitter, differ with the mass of the emitting parton. The Lund jet plane (LJP) is a perturbatively well-defined substructure observable that maps the radiation pattern of jets onto a plane, visually distinguishing emissions with different kinematic properties. Comparing LJP for jets containing hadrons of low versus high mass enables the testing of QCD splitting functions from first-principles calculations across both soft and hard regimes and at different radiation angles. This article presents the first measurement of the LJP for light-quark-enriched and beauty-initiated jets at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at LHCb. This marks the first direct observation of the dead-cone effect in beauty-quark jets, measured in the collinear region of the LJP. 

We report measurements of time-dependent $CP$asymmetries in $B^0\to K_S^0{\pi }^0\gamma$decays based on a data sample of $(388\pm 6)\times {10}^{6}B\overline{B}$events collected at the $\mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(4S\right)$resonance with the Belle II detector. The Belle II experiment operates at the SuperKEKB asymmetric-energy $e^{+}{e}^{-}$collider. We measure decay-time distributions to determine $CP$-violating parameters $S$and $C$. We determine these parameters for two ranges of $K_S^0{\pi }^0$invariant mass: $m\left(K_S^0{\pi }^0\right)\in (0.8,1.0)\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$, which is dominated by $B^0\to K^{*0}(\to K_S^0{\pi }^0)\gamma$decays, and a complementary region $m\left(K_S^0{\pi }^0\right)\in (0.6,0.8)\cup (1.0,1.8)\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$. Our results have improved precision as compared to previous measurements and are consistent with theory predictions. Published by the American Physical Society2025 

We describe a measurement of charge-parity ( $CP$) violation asymmetries in $B^0\to {\eta }^{\prime }{K}_{\mathrm{S}}^0$decays using Belle II data. We consider ${\eta }^{\prime }\to \eta (\to \gamma \gamma ){\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}$and ${\eta }^{\prime }\to \rho (\to {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-})\gamma$decays. The data were collected at the SuperKEKB asymmetric-energy $e^{+}{e}^{-}$collider between the years 2019 and 2022, and contain $(387\pm 6)\times {10}^6$bottom-antibottom meson pairs. We reconstruct $829\pm 35$signal decays and extract the $CP$violating parameters from a fit to the distribution of the proper-decay-time difference between the two $B$mesons. The measured direct and mixing-induced $CP$asymmetries are $C_{{\eta }^{\prime }{K}_{\mathrm{S}}^0}=-0.19\pm 0.08\pm 0.03$and $S_{{\eta }^{\prime }{K}_{\mathrm{S}}^0}=+0.67\pm 0.10\pm 0.03$, respectively, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second are systematic. These results are in agreement with current world averages and standard model predictions. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

A<sc>bstract</sc> We report a determination of the CKM angleϕ₃, also known asγ, from a combination of measurements using samples of up to 711 fb⁻¹from the Belle experiment and up to 362 fb⁻¹from the Belle II experiment. We combine results from analyses ofB⁺→ DK⁺,B⁺→ Dπ⁺, andB⁺→ D^*K⁺decays, whereDis an admixture ofD⁰and$$ {\overline{D}}^0 $$ ${\overline{D}}^0$mesons, in a likelihood fit to obtainϕ₃= (75.2±7.6)^°. We also briefly discuss the interpretation of this result. 

A<sc>bstract</sc> An angular analysis ofB⁰→ K^*0e⁺e⁻decays is presented using proton-proton collision data collected by the LHCb experiment at centre-of-mass energies of 7, 8 and 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9 fb⁻¹. The analysis is performed in the region of the dilepton invariant mass squared of 1.1–6.0 GeV²/c⁴. In addition, a test of lepton flavour universality is performed by comparing the obtained angular observables with those measured inB⁰→ K^*0μ⁺μ⁻decays. In general, the angular observables are found to be consistent with the Standard Model expectations as well as with global analyses of otherb → sℓ⁺ℓ⁻processes, whereℓis either a muon or an electron. No sign of lepton-flavour-violating effects is observed.