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The quark structure of the f₀(980) hadron is still unknown after 50 years of its discovery. Here, the CMS Collaboration reports a measurement of the elliptic flow of the f₀(980) state in proton-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 8.16 TeV, providing strong evidence that the state is an ordinary meson.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

The authors highlight inconsistencies and divergencies in the literature reporting data on indirect calorimetry for studies on whole-body energy homeostasis, and propose harmonization of standards to facilitate data comparison and interpretation across different datasets.

This flagship study from the European Solve-Rare Diseases Consortium presents a diagnostic framework including bioinformatic analysis of clinical, pedigree and genomic data coupled with expert panel review, leading to 500 new diagnoses in a cohort of 6,000 families with suspected rare diseases.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

An exciting genome-wide association study in the British population for seven common diseases. This analysis confirms previously identified loci and provides strong evidence for many novel disease susceptibility loci.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

The rheological properties of the extracellular fluid in the female reproductive tract vary spatiotemporally. Here, the authors find that elevated fluid viscosity boosts cilia formation and coordination in fallopian tube epithelial cells, potentially facilitating egg and embryo transport for fertilisation and offering new infertility treatment insights.

The authors characterize two phages against Acinetobacter baumannii, both in vitro and in vivo. A. baumannii strains develop resistance against both phages, but are in turn resensitized to different antimicrobial compounds.

A study describes the split integrated stress response, a cellular stress response mechanism characterized by reduced eIF2B activity without eIF2α phosphorylation, which activates the eIF4E–ATF4–PCK2 axis, enabling metabolic reprogramming.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) is an anti-inflammatory drug proposed as a treatment for COVID19. Here the results are reported from a randomised trial testing DMF treatment in 713 patients hospitalised with COVID-19. DMF was not associated with any improvement in day 5 outcomes.

New methods and larger sample groups are used to precisely determine the alleles in the HLA complex which contribute susceptibility to type 1 diabetes.

The ambipolar field of Earth controls the structure of the polar ionosphere and boosts its scale height by 271%, physically driving  the polar wind and acting as the source of the magnetospheric cold H⁺ ion population.

Within-sibship genome-wide association analyses using data from 178,076 siblings illustrate differences between population-based and within-sibship GWAS estimates for phenotypes influenced by demographic and indirect genetic effects.

Single-cell transcriptomics roadmap of human dermal fibroblasts reprogrammed to primed and naive pluripotency reveals a route for the direct reprogramming of somatic cells into induced trophoblast stem cells.

Here, the authors describe the global distribution of crAssphage, its presence in Old-World and New-World primates, and its association with gut bacterial communities and dietary factors, providing insights into the origin, evolution and epidemiology of human gut crAssphage.

Similarities in cancers can be studied to interrogate their etiology. Here, the authors use genome-wide association study summary statistics from six cancer types based on 296,215 cases and 301,319 controls of European ancestry, showing that solid tumours arising from different tissues share a degree of common germline genetic basis.

Severe sepsis has a high mortality rate. Here, the authors provide genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data across four sepsis-causing pathogens and identify a signature of global increase in fatty acid and lipid biosynthesis as well as cholesterol acquisition.

The most up-to-date combination of results on the properties of the Higgs boson is reported, which indicate that its properties are consistent with the standard model predictions, within the precision achieved to date.

An analysis of 52 million births in 26 countries shows small reductions in preterm birth during the first to third months of lockdown. Further research is needed to examine causal pathways.

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

A decadal-scale field trial revealed 1.01 Mg of rhizodeposit and necromass C was stored in soil microaggregate and mineral fractions per Mg biochar-C applied. Microspectroscopic analyses visualize mechanisms for this elevated soil C storage ceiling.

The One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative provides a robust phylogenomic framework for examining green plant evolution that comprises the transcriptomes and genomes of diverse species of green plants.

The expanding use of prenatal ultrasonography has prompted discussion of the feasibility and capabilities of fetal intervention for urological disorders. In this Review, the authors examine the current status of prenatal intervention in fetuses with specific identifiable urologic abnormalities, with a primary focus on fetal interventions for congenital adrenal hyperplasia and lower urinary tract obstruction.

A consortium reports the tripling of the number of genetic markers in Phase II of the International HapMap Project. This map of human genetic variation will continue to revolutionize discovery of susceptibility loci in common genetic diseases, and study of genes under selection in humans.