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In this disease mapping study, the authors estimate disability-adjusted life year rates for three of the major causes of mortality for children under five 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. They identify significant heterogeneity at the subnational level, highlighting the need for a targeted intervention approach.

The alignment of the bandgap of adjacent materials in a heterostructure largely determines the electronic properties of a device. Here, the authors measure the conduction and valance band offsets at the interface between two two-dimensional materials: molybdenum disulphide and tungsten diselenide.

Fine-scale geospatial mapping of overweight and wasting (two components of the double burden of malnutrition) in 105 LMICs shows that overweight has increased from 5.2% in 2000 to 6.0% in children under 5 in 2017. Although overall wasting decreased over the same period, most countries are not on track to meet the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025.

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have been investigated as a potential treatment for Covid-19 in several clinical trials. Here the authors report a meta-analysis of published and unpublished trials, and show that treatment with hydroxychloroquine for patients with Covid-19 was associated with increased mortality, and there was no benefit from chloroquine.

Using a globally distributed standardized aerial sampling of fungal spores, we show that the hyperdiverse kingdom of fungi follows globally highly predictable spatial and temporal dynamics, with seasonality in both species richness and community composition increasing with latitude.

Orbitronics uses the electron’s orbital angular momentum to enable next-generation memory and computing technologies. This Perspective outlines recent advances, key challenges and future directions in this rapidly evolving field.

The authors present a feasible strategy of anion-induced strain engineering to regulate the lattice structure and properties of super-elongated BiFeO₃ epitaxial films, revealing the correlations among lattice distortion, local electronic hybridization, and multiferroic properties.

Recent estimates of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) intake are generally unavailable. Here the authors show a global SSBs intake of 2.7 servings/week in 2018 in adults (range: 0.7 South Asia, 7.8 Latin America/Caribbean); intakes were higher among males, younger, more educated, and urban adults.

Tuning the b-axis length of silicalite-1 crystals allows control over the migration–agglomeration–lockup of active metal species in zeolites, which enables the creation of stable and durable catalysts for propane dehydrogenation in industrial applications.

Although progress in the coverage of routine measles vaccination in children in low- and middle-income countries was made during 2000–2019, many countries remain far from the goal of 80% coverage in all districts by 2019.

We find that 2D–3D perovskitoid passivation applied to perovskite solar cells impedes cation migration and decreases carrier recombination at the interface, providing enhanced operating stability at elevated temperatures and increased power conversion efficiencies.

To understand the potential for seaweed as a Blue Carbon strategy, the authors quantify carbon burial under 20 globally distributed seaweed farms. They attribute an average of 1.06 ± 0.74 tCO₂e ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ to seaweed farms, and show increased accumulation of carbon with farm age.

The manner in which carboxylates bind to the surface of nanoparticles has been an important question in materials science. Now, multinuclear magnetic resonance experiments — alongside DFT calculations, XPS and TEM measurements — have elucidated the three-dimensional ligand structures of gold nanoparticles capped with various ratios of carboxylate-containing ligands, and enabled the determination of the most probable binding modes.

The efficiency of organic blends used for photovoltaic applications depends on their ability to convert photoexcited charges into free holes and electrons. It is now demonstrated that the lowermost energetic states formed at the donor/acceptor interface can reach conversion efficiencies close to 100%, and therefore do not behave as traps for charge carriers.

Biallelic mutations in the sorbitol dehydrogenase gene SORD are identified as a common cause of hereditary neuropathy. Functional studies suggest that SORD deficiency may be treatable with aldose reductase inhibitors.

Mathematical modelling of 15 years of data from South Africa reveals the spread and vaccine-driven changes in fitness and antimicrobial resistance of Streptococcus pneumoniae.

The band-edge optical response of transition metal dichalcogenides is dominated by tightly bound valley excitons. Here, the authors use optical two-dimensional Fourier transform spectroscopy to determine the exciton homogeneous linewidth in monolayer tungsten diselenide.

Solar photovoltaics is entering a multi-terawatt era, driven by decades of cost, performance and reliability gains. In this Perspective Alberi et al. discuss the role of historical and future learning, highlighting the increasing importance of sustainability considerations.

Lead halide perovskites are developed for a number of optoelectronic applications. Here, Cho et al. use a thermal gradient to achieve directional crystallization of methyl ammonium lead iodide films. The periodic microarrays exhibit anisotropic charge transport properties.

Analysis of 20 chemical and morphological plant traits at diverse sites across 6 continents shows that the transition from semi-arid to arid zones is associated with an unexpected 88% increase in trait diversity.

Extreme confinement of water and ions within nanofluidic channels gives rise to unusual transport phenomena. Here the authors investigate how electronic properties of carbon nanotube porins influence the transport efficiency of water and ions.

Metal-halide perovskite based tandem solar cells are appealing but making a high efficiency device is not trivial. Here Chen et al. increase the carrier collection in the perovskite layer and largely enhance the efficiency in tandem cells when combined with colloidal quantum dot or silicon layers.

Despite large sequencing and data sharing efforts it often remains challenging to provide a genetic diagnosis for individuals with suspected Mendelian (single-gene) disorders. Here, the authors describe their experiences in identifying likely causal genetic variants in thousands of families and highlight the need to consider a wide range of challenges rather than a narrow focus on sequencing technologies.

An analysis based on data from the Global Dietary Database shows mean animal-sourced food intakes among children and adolescents increased modestly from 1990 to two portions per day in 2018, but remain low in sub-Saharan Africa, India and Bangladesh.

The role of Ce one Mn-based catalysts for the selective catalytic reduction of NOx at low temperature is an ongoing debate. Here the authors demonstrate that Ce has a structural promoting effect but impacts negatively on the intrinsic catalytic activity of Mn.

The genetics and clinical consequences of resting heart rate (RHR) remain incompletely understood. Here, the authors discover new genetic variants associated with RHR and find that higher genetically predicted RHR decreases risk of atrial fibrillation and ischemic stroke.

A major goal of spintronics is to manipulate magnetic order with electric fields. The typical approach is to use a material with spin-orbit coupling, and the resulting Edelstein effect. Here, González-Hernández et al. show theoretically that non-collinear magnets can also host an Edelstein effect, even in the absence of spin-orbit coupling.

A continuum spanning from 300 and 3000 nm is used to synthesize a single-cycle field transient and measure its waveform through electro-optic sampling, speeding up this sensitive technique so that it can access the electric field of visible light.

Soils from 30 grasslands across Europe were subjected to 4 contrasting extreme climatic events under drought, flood, freezing and heat conditions, with the results suggesting that soil microbiomes from different climates share unified responses to extreme climatic events.

Dietary quality is reported at the global, regional and national level across 185 countries. Though diet quality increased modestly since 1990 at the global level, in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa it did not improve. In some regions, children’s dietary quality is lower than that of adults.

Current-driven dynamic atomic rearrangements in layered In₂Se₃ are visualized. The authors identify an intralayer ‘unzipping’ and interlayer ‘zipping’ phase-transition pathway in which bond formation across the van der Waals gaps drives bond cleavage within covalent layers.

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.

Infection with Omicron after vaccination produces cross-neutralizing antibodies to other variants of concern, whereas this induces a limited response to non-Omicron variants in unvaccinated individuals.

The short-range diffusion length of organic semiconductors severely limits exciton harvesting and charge generation in organic bulk heterojunction solar cells. Here, the authors report exciton diffusion length in the range of 20 to 47 nm for a wide range of non-fullerene acceptors molecules.

Genomic and phenomic screens of 827 wheat landraces from the A. E. Watkins collection provide insight into the wheat population genetic background, unlocking many agronomic traits and revealing haplotypes that could potentially be used to improve modern wheat cultivars.