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Food price elasticities are key to the design of policy interventions aimed at shifting food consumption. Using a comprehensive longitudinal dataset of grocery purchases, this study calculates own-price and cross-price elasticities of demand for commonly consumed food categories in Australia, both at the population level and for different socioeconomic groups.

Net-zero bioplastics are possible when combined with high recycling rates. This study presents a mixed polyester recycling process integrated with monomer separation and purification for both fossil- and bio-based plastics. Techno-economic and life cycle analyses confirm its environmental and commercial advantages, advancing the path toward circular, low-emission polyester plastics.

Owing to its short atmospheric life, methane’s contribution to agricultural emissions and climate change may vary substantially depending on the temporal scale considered. Based on projections from three agricultural economic models, this study reveals how different appreciations of methane’s global warming potential may affect the cost-effectiveness of carbon pricing and low-meat diets.

Enzymatic recycling is an emerging technology to circularize the ubiquitous polyester poly(ethylene terephthalate). Here the authors evaluate and implement multiple process changes to improve the scalability and viability of this recycling technology. Process modeling demonstrates that these changes could enable cost competitiveness and greatly reduce overall life cycle impacts.

Results show meaningful variations in electric vehicle costs and emissions benefits across the United States, differing by vehicle category and charging systems: Direct Current Fast Charging, Battery Swapping, and Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer.

Urgent action is needed to ensure food security and mitigate climate change. Through a multi-model comparison exercise, this study shows the potential negative trade-offs between food security and climate change mitigation if mitigation policies are carelessly designed.

Integrated multi-omic analyses using samples from the TRACERx study highlight cross-talk between DNA hypermethylation and genomic lesions in non-small cell lung cancer.

Modelled supply curves show that, with policy reform and technological innovation, the production of food from the sea may increase sustainably, perhaps supplying 25% of the increase in demand for meat products by 2050.

Agriculture sustains a large and growing human population, but generates widespread impacts. This study assesses the health effects of air pollution caused by maize production. Reduced air quality leads to 4,300 premature deaths annually in the United States, akin to US$39 billion in damages, and climate change damages of US$4.9 billion.

Agricultural CH₄ and N₂O emissions represent around 11% of total anthropogenic GHGs. Here agriculture mitigation potentials are quantified, in the context of the 1.5 °C target, and decomposed by emission source, region and mitigation mechanism.

This study reports on biologically sourced polymuconate polymers with weakened C–C backbone bonds, designed for closed-loop chemical recycling to monomers. Synthesized via free-radical polymerization, these materials achieve tunable mechanical properties comparable to those of commercial plastics. A techno-economic analysis shows that recycling significantly reduces costs and environmental impacts, enhancing the competitiveness of these polymers in the sustainable plastics market.

Federated learning (FL) algorithms have emerged as a promising solution to train models for healthcare imaging across institutions while preserving privacy. Here, the authors describe the Federated Tumor Segmentation (FeTS) challenge for the decentralised benchmarking of FL algorithms and evaluation of Healthcare AI algorithm generalizability in real-world cancer imaging datasets.

Acetic acid efficiently depolymerizes aliphatic and aromatic epoxy-amine thermosets used in carbon fibre-reinforced polymers (CFRPs) to yield recoverable monomers and pristine carbon fibres, which, based on process modelling, techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment, could enable industrial recycling of CFRPs.

Emerging limitations on climate and low-carbon technology would require adjusting our 15.C climate change mitigation pathways. However, this could increase average annual emissions reductions to around 3GtCO₂/year using a broad portfolio of mitigation measures.

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 geographic extent of stripe rust, a fungal disease that adversely affects wheat production, has increased in recent decades. Observations and model simulations suggest that over 5 million tonnes of wheat are lost to this pathogen each year, necessitating a sustained annual investment of at least US$32 million into rust resistance research.

This study assessed COVID-19 social science preprints’ replicability using structured groups. Both beginners and more-experienced participants used a elicitation protocol to make better-than-chance predictions about the reliability of research claims under high uncertainty.

Natural hosts of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)—such as African green monkeys—have evolved to tolerate SIV infection without developing immune deficiency. Jason Brenchley and his colleagues provide a mechanism. They show that CD4⁺ T cells from these animals downregulate the CD4 receptor upon entering the memory pool. Immune functions normally attributed to CD4⁺ T cells are preserved, but the cells become resistant to SIV infection.

Some countries are disproportionately responsible for climate change damages and should compensate those remaining within fair shares of the 1.5 °C carbon budget. This study presents a procedure to quantify the level of compensation owed in a ‘net zero’ scenario where all countries decarbonize by 2050.

Hickel and colleagues find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. They find Southern wages are 87-95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income.

Benchmarking of scATAC-seq protocols demonstrates the effects of data quality on downstream analyses.

Genome-wide analyses identify 30 independent loci associated with obsessive–compulsive disorder, highlighting genetic overlap with other psychiatric disorders and implicating putative effector genes and cell types contributing to its etiology.

Predators, including prawns, can suppress schistosomiasis by eating snail hosts. This modelling study finds that two prawn species in sub-Saharan Africa can reduce snail hosts and help control schistosomiasis at densities that maximize profits of associated aquaculture—a potential win–win.

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).

Protecting the ocean from increasing threats requires the development of high-seas marine reserve networks. An approach that optimizes biodiversity, minimizes climate change exposure and reduces fisheries conflict enables low-regret climate-smart conservation areas to be identified.

The microbial RNA-guided CRISPR/Cas9 system has robust genome-editing activities, but the off-target effects of the Cas9 nuclease have only recently begun to be analysed. Here the authors provide evidence for high specificity of the Cas9 nuclease on targeting of the Tafazzin gene in human-induced pluripotent stem cells and demonstrate the impact of single-nucleotide variations of the human genome on Cas9 specificity.

Meehan and colleagues study access to running water in large US cities since 1970, finding that the 2008 financial crisis worsened household ‘plumbing poverty’ in many cities. This disproportionately impacted households of color and generally squeezed lower-income households into more precarious living situations.

Economy-wide GHG emissions reductions may negatively affect food security. Stringent mitigation policies, modelled as carbon prices, are shown to lead to an increase in production costs, food prices and the population’s risk of hunger.

Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions often reduces co-emitted air pollutants, with advantages for human health. Avoided mortality from air pollution, a co-benefit of CO₂ abatement, is estimated under global climate change mitigation scenarios to be in the range of US$50–US$380 per tonne of CO₂. This exceeds the projected mitigation costs for 2030 and 2050, and is within the lower range of costs expected in 2100.

Central nervous system lesions are reduced following focused ultrasound treatment in a mouse model.

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.

Recently, nanosatellite capabilities, driven by commercial and scientific innovation, have led to the development of high-performance satellite payloads and subsystems. This article reflects on the history, current state and future of the field.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.

A genome-wide association study suggests 41 previously unreported loci on top of the 23 known loci that influence the disease risk for lumbar disc herniations. Many of these loci harbour genes implicated in disc structure and inflammation, as well as genes related to the nervous system and nerve function.

Genetic associations based on parental history of Alzheimer’s disease are shown to be impacted by uncorrected survival bias and nonrandom survey participation, underscoring the need for caution when interpreting results based on this study design.

Altered stem cell homeostasis underlies functional tissue decline during muscle aging and disease progression. Janus kinase–signal transducer and activator of transcription (JAK-STAT) signal transduction is a crucial regulator of muscle regeneration, and targeting this pathway in mice relieves aspects of debilitating muscle wasting.

Analysing camera-trap data of 163 mammal species before and after the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, the authors show that responses to human activity are dependent on the degree to which the landscape is modified by humans, with carnivores being especially sensitive.

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are associated with increased faecal N-acylethanolamines (NAEs), which are primarily host-produced signalling lipids, in patients and a mouse model of colitis. These metabolites can enhance the growth of bacterial species enriched in IBD faecal samples and are associated with the expression of respiratory chain genes necessary for microbial metabolism of NAEs.

Decoupling emission reduction target determination, air pollution modelling, and health benefit estimation complicates control strategy design. Here an integrated approach identifies strategies to reduce health damages of air pollution, showing that benefits can be achieved cost-effectively by electrifying sources with high primary PM_2.5 emission intensities.

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.

There is a balance in mitigation pathway design between economic transition cost and physical climate threats. This study provides a comprehensive framework to assess the near- and long-term risks under various warming scenarios globally and in particular regions.

Berger et al. use detailed credit data from the USA to examine the trade-off between government welfare support and consumer reliance on high-cost credit during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Simon, Bugos and colleagues report the design and characterization of monospecific and bispecific synthetic chimeric T cell receptors, conferring increased antigen sensitivity and antitumor activity in B cell malignancies and multiple myeloma models.

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.

Openshaw and colleagues find myeloid inflammation and complement activation signatures in patients with long COVID who were previously hospitalized.