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Exciton-polaritons are hybridized light-matter states that exhibit intriguing phenomena that are unobserved in purely excitonic states. Here, the authors elucidate the photophysical mechanism of polariton-assisted long-range energy transfer in carbon nanotubes using two-dimensional white-light spectroscopy and quantum calculations.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

Activation of Esr1⁺ neurons of the mouse ventromedial hypothalamus initiates graded social behavioural responses–weak activation triggers close investigation (sniffing) during a social encounter that often leads, with continued stimulation, to mounting behaviours by males towards either gender; mounting behaviour transitions to aggressive attacks with greater stimulation intensity.

How We Feel is a web and mobile-phone application for collecting de-identified self-reported COVID-19-related data. These data are used to map a diverse set of symptomatic, demographic, exposure and behavioural factors relevant to the ongoing pandemic.

Genetic association studies have identified loci including the choline transporter SLC44A2 as a potential regulator of thrombosis. Here the authors report that loss of SLC44A2 impairs platelet activation and thrombosis in mice via a reduction of mitochondrial ATP production.

How epigenetic regulation affects pancreatic development is unclear. Here, the authors show that the histone demethylase LSD1 regulates the epigenetic state of developmental enhancers during pancreatic specification and controls how these enhancers respond to extracellular signals, namely retinoic acid.

Clinical and genetic phenotyping of consanguineous family cases of neonatal syndromic diabetes and type 2 diabetes, combined with in-depth functional studies in pluripotent stem cells, reveals a role for genetic variants of ONECUT1 in monogenic and multifactorial diabetes.

The genetic basis of tinnitus and how it relates to hearing loss genetics is unknown. In a large GWAS for tinnitus, the authors discover tinnitus’ distinct genetic architecture from hearing loss and its correlation with a spectrum of psychiatric disorders.

High-throughput time-series data is increasingly available, yet estimating time-derivatives from such data can remain a challenge. Here, the authors provide a non-parametric method for inferring the first and second time-derivatives from multiple replicates of time-series data and for estimating errors in this inference and in any summary statistics.

Climate simulations suggest that the contribution of methane to climate warming and wetting due to absorption of long-wave radiation is partially counteracted by short-wave absorption.

Interactions between the immune system and adipose tissue contribute to the regulation of body weight, however, the underlying mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Here the authors dissect the role of two structurally and functionally similar immune mediators, BAFF and APRIL, in modifying diet-induced weight gain and adipocyte lipid handling.

Transmission spectroscopy observations from the James Webb Space Telescope show the detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the gas giant exoplanet WASP-39b.

The Huntington's disease (HD) induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) consortium describe the combined use of differentiated patient-derived iPSCs and systems biology to discover underlying mechanisms in HD. They identify neurodevelopmental deficits in HD cells that can be corrected in cells and in vivo with a small molecule.

Bennu’s surface presents evidence of a variety of particle sizes, from fine regolith to metre-sized boulders. Its moderate thermal inertia suggests that the boulders are very porous or blanketed by thin dust. Bennu’s boulders exhibit high albedo variations, indicating different origins and/or ages.

A global gauge-corrected monthly river flow and storage dataset suggests that residence time is a key driver of water storage and variability and indicates substantial freshwater discharge to the ocean from the Maritime Continent.

In this study, Massachusetts Consortium for Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) investigators assess the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 viral load and COVID-19 disease severity and report that the levels of detectable viral RNA, especially in plasma, correlates with severity of respiratory disease, inflammatory markers and predicted risk of death.

Resistance to first line treatment is a major hurdle in cancer treatment, that can be overcome with drug combinations. Here, the authors provide a large drug combination screen across cancer cell lines to benchmark crowdsourced methods and to computationally predict drug synergies.

AI language modelling and generation approaches have developed fast in the last decade, opening promising new directions in human–AI collaboration. An AI-in-the loop conversational system called HAILEY is developed to empower peer supporters in providing empathic responses to mental health support seekers.

Chemogenetic modulation of claustro-cortical neurons alters cortical activity and functional connectivity as measured by mesoscale calcium fluorescence imaging in mice.

Lesions resulting in addiction remission occur in multiple different brain locations but map to a specific brain circuit.

Near-Earth rubble-pile asteroid Bennu has an unexpectedly old surface, with numerous candidate impact craters and morphologically diverse boulders, according to early observations by the OSIRIS-REx mission.

This overview of the ENCODE project outlines the data accumulated so far, revealing that 80% of the human genome now has at least one biochemical function assigned to it; the newly identified functional elements should aid the interpretation of results of genome-wide association studies, as many correspond to sites of association with human disease.

Direct prospective comparison of circulating tumor DNA and tissue biopsy sequencing shows the superiority of liquid biopsies for capturing clinically relevant alterations mediating resistance to targeted therapies in cancer patients.

A study reports the distribution, replication and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 throughout the human body including in the brain at autopsy from acute infection to more than seven months following symptom onset.

Building crystal structures into the electron density is an important step in protein structure solution. Here, the authors recruit online game players, students, and experienced crystallographers to compete in a competition to solve a new structure, and find that crowdsourcing model-building works.

Gallo and his colleagues report that commensal bacteria on the skin help to dampen inflammation caused by skin injury in mice. They show that, after wounding, necrotic cells release RNA that triggers TLR3 on keratinocytes, causing inflammatory cytokine release. Commensal bacteria in the skin suppress this inflammatory response through triggering TLR2 on the keratinocytes.

The mechanisms underlying drought-induced tree mortality are not fully resolved. Here, the authors show that, across multiple tree species, loss of xylem conductivity above 60% is associated with mortality, while carbon starvation is not universal.

Memory is hypothesised to depend on different brain regions that interact in a network. Here, the authors use case studies of stroke patients with amnesia from the literature to identify brain regions that are part of this network.

Alternative expression analysis by sequencing (ALEXA-seq) aligns RNA-seq reads from different cell types to a database of alternative expression sequence features and quantifies isoforms that are differentially expressed between samples.

Doil Choi and colleagues report the genome sequence of the hot pepper, Capsicum annuum, as well as the resequencing of two cultivated peppers and a wild species, Capsicum chinense. Comparative genomic analysis across Solanaceae provides insights into genome expansion, pungency, ripening and disease resistance in hot peppers.

A study demonstrating increasing error suppression with larger surface code logical qubits, implemented on a superconducting quantum processor.

Vicinity of small bodies might be dangerous to the spacecrafts and to their instrumentation. Here the authors show the operational environment of asteroid Bennu, validate its photometric phase function and demonstrate the accelerating rotational rate due to YORP effect using the data acquired during the approach phase of OSIRIS-REx mission.

Mechanical forces exerted on tendons during locomotion cannot be readily measured without invasive methods. Here, the authors develop a non-invasive wearable device to track tendon loads by measuring shear wave propagation speed, and demonstrate its use during dynamic human movements.

The Impact of Genomic Variation on Function Consortium is combining single-cell mapping, genomic perturbations and predictive modelling to investigate relationships between human genomic variation, genome function and phenotypes and will provide an open resource to the community.

An international consortium reports the genomic sequence for ten Drosophila species, and compares them to two other previously published Drosophila species. These data are invaluable for drawing evolutionary conclusions across an entire phylogeny of species at once.

Bennu’s surface has experienced continuous changes, mostly induced by its accelerating spin rate, which could have resulted in a collapse of its interior in the past. This scenario is also supported by the heterogeneity of Bennu’s internal mass distribution.

With the rapid development of natural language processing (NLP) models in the last decade came the realization that high performance levels on test sets do not imply that a model robustly generalizes to a wide range of scenarios. Hupkes et al. review generalization approaches in the NLP literature and propose a taxonomy based on five axes to analyse such studies: motivation, type of generalization, type of data shift, the source of this data shift, and the locus of the shift within the modelling pipeline.

Analysis of whole-genome sequence data from 3,474 families finds an excess of private, likely gene-disrupting variants in individuals with autism. These variants are under purifying selection and suggest candidate genes not previously associated with autism.

In a cerebral amyloid angiopathy rat model, the authors show that spinal fluid moves more rapidly but partly bypasses the brain, thereby reducing and delaying waste removal via the glymphatic and lymphatic systems.

Signatures of phyllosilicate-like hydrated minerals are widespread on Bennu’s surface, indicating significant aqueous alteration. The lack of spatial variations in the spectra down to the scale of ~100 m indicates both a relatively uniform particle size distribution and a lack of compositional segregation, possibly due to surficial redistribution processes.

Estimations of body shape and three-dimensional digital reconstructions of representative archosaurs along the ancestral bird line support hypotheses of a gradual, stepwise acquisition of more-crouched limb postures across much of theropod evolution but indicate that an accelerated change, rather than a discrete transition from more-upright postures, occurred within the clade Maniraptora (birds and their closest relatives, such as deinonychosaurs).