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Here, the authors demonstrate a chip-scale device that realizes a comprehensive set of resonant second order nonlinear processes including optical parametric oscillation with a threshold power of 70 microwatts.

Bhattacharjee and Schaeffer et al. map exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) in 94 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), finding increased EBF practice and reduced subnational variation across the majority of LMICs from 2000 to 2018. However, only six LMICs will meet WHO’s target of ≥70% EBF by 2030 nationally, and only three will achieve this in all districts.

An integrated device that combines optical parametric oscillation and electro-optic modulation in lithium niobate creates a flat-top frequency-comb-like output with low power requirements.

After early initiation of anti-retroviral therapy in infants infected with HIV-1 in utero, some children sustain undetectable virus levels, despite treatment interruption, which associated with distinct features of the transmitted virus.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a progressive and incurable chronic condition that involves accumulation of inflammatory macrophages in the lung tissue. Authors here show in mouse models of lung disease that PRMT7, a protein arginine methyltransferase, is an important regulator of recruitment and the pro-inflammatory phenotype of macrophages.

From 1980 to 2018, the levels of total and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol increased in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreased in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe.

Mikkola and colleagues show that medial HOXA gene expression, induced by retinoic acid signalling, marks the establishment of the definitive HSC fate and controls HSC identity and function.

Whole-genome sequencing of lung cancer in never smokers identifies different copy number subtypes and shows a lack of tobacco smoking signatures, even in cases exposed to secondhand smoke.

Understanding the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 is dependent on being able to distinguish COVID-19 immune responses from cross-reactive immune responses to other coronaviruses. Here the authors show that choice of antigens and whether an ICS, ELISPOT or T cell proliferation assay is used has a major effect on this discriminatory ability.

Questions have arisen as to whether patients with severe COVID-19 disease can generate a T cell response against SARS-CoV-2. Tao Dong and colleagues report that convalescent patients with COVID-19 harbor functional memory CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cells that recognize multiple epitopes that span the viral proteome. CD4⁺ T cells predominated the memory response in patients with severe disease, whereas higher proportions of CD8⁺ T cells were found in patients with mild disease.

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.

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.

Ten new RNA polymerase II kinases were identified, of these Hrr25 was engineered to enable covalent and noncovalent chemical inhibition in vivo, revealing that this kinase regulates polymerase function at noncoding snoRNA genes.

The authors propose EPICS, a method to predict microbial community structures by estimating effective pairwise interactions that subsume high-order interactions between species. EPICS is more efficient and applicable to larger communities than current approaches.

The impact of other pathogens on disease outcome was studied in European infants with RSV infection. Additional viruses were commonly co-detected during infection but were weakly linked to severity. However, presence of Haemophilus bacteria strongly associated with severe cases.

Singlet oxygen relaxes in water to its triplet ground state. Here, the authors show that heavy-atom tunnelling speeds up this reaction from time scales longer than the age of the universe to microseconds.

High resolution characterisation of the virus specific T cell response to SARS CoV2 provides further understanding to the immune response to the infection. Here the authors apply a reverse phenotyping approach to interrogate the SARS-CoV-2 T cell compartment at single cell resolution.”

Arturas Petronis and colleagues present the first genome-wide study of interindividual differences in DNA methylation through genome-scale DNA methylation profiling in tissues from monozygotic and dizygotic twins. The data showed that dizygotic co-twins have higher degrees of epigenetic differences than monozygotic co-twins, which the authors attribute at least partially to epigenetic, as opposed to genetic, differences in the zygotes.

Metastatic melanoma is associated with a poor prognosis and understanding the genetic features of metastases may enable better treatment strategies. Here, the authors analyse multiple metastases from individual patients finding high levels of heterogeneity in metastases from different organs.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common infection in children and older adults but little is known about within-host viral population diversity. Here, the authors perform deep sequencing and find that RSV subgroup B exhibited more diversity than subgroup A, with implications for development of therapeutics and vaccines.

Derailed differentiation of human-specific progenitors of the developing cerebellar rhombic lip is the cause of group 4 medulloblastoma, the most common childhood brain tumour. 

Squeezed light allows for quantum-enhanced, sub-shot-noise sensing, but its generation and use on a chip has so far remained elusive. Here, the authors fill this gap by demonstrating a thin-film lithium-niobate-based integrated quantum optical sensor, which beats shot-noise-limited SNR by ~ 4%.

The engagement of immunological memory is a key component to the protective anti-SARS-CoV-2 B and T cell responses. Here the authors assess the B and T cells of a cohort of UK healthcare workers in response to infection and longitudinally track the compartment showing distinct trajectories following early priming.

The authors measure the nucleon axial vector form factor, which encodes information on the distribution of the nucleon weak charge, through antineutrino–proton scattering.

THE flat rotation curves of spiral galaxies, including our own, indicate that

they are surrounded by unseen haloes of ‘dark matter’^1,2. In

the absence of a massive halo, stars and gas in the outer portions of a galaxy would

orbit the centre more slowly, just as the outer planets in the Solar System circle the

Sun more slowly than the inner ones. So far, however, there has been no direct

observational evidence for the dark matter, or its characteristics.

Paczyński³suggested that dark bodies in the halo of our Galaxy can

be detected when they act as gravitational ‘microlenses’, amplifying the

light from stars in nearby galaxies. The duration of such an event depends on the mass,

distance and velocity of the dark object. We have been monitoring the brightness of three

million stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud for over three years, and here report the

detection of two possible microlensing events. The brightening of the stars was

symmetrical in time, achromatic and not repeated during the monitoring period. The

timescales of the two events are about thirty days and imply that the masses of the

lensing objects lie between a few hundredths and one solar mass. The number of events

observed is consistent with the number expected if the halo is dominated by objects with

masses in this range.

Blockade of lymphotoxin β-receptor (LTβR) signalling restores WNT signalling and epithelial repair in a model of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Excess macrophage elastase MMP-12 is a major driver of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Here the authors show that the endolysosomal ion channel TRPML3 is a regulator of the cellular reuptake of MMP-12, thus neutralizing harmful MMP-12 in the lung.

Contrary to the view that urbanization is a major driver of the global rise in obesity, the global increase in body-mass index is shown to be mostly due to increases in the body-mass indexes of rural populations.

Vascular endothelial cadherin (VE-cadherin), endothelial cell-cell adhesive protein maintains blood vessel barrier integrity and vascular homeostasis. Here, the authors show that infectious bacterial toxin activates ubiquitin ligase CHFR which in turn degrades VEcadherin via ubiquitylation in endothelial cells to cause vascular injury.

Aftab Ansari and his colleagues show that antibody-mediated masking of α4β7 integrin impedes intravaginal transmission of simian immunodeficiency virus in macaques.

Michael Talkowski, David FitzPatrick, Erica Davis and colleagues report rare inherited or de novo missense variants in SMCHD1 in arhinia patients. Some of the same mutations in SMCHD1 are known to cause a phenotypically distinct muscular dystrophy disorder, FSHD2, and the distinct clinical features of the two disorders suggests that additional genes interact with SMCHD1 to cause arhinia.