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The processes that lead to losses of highly energetic particles from Earth’s radiation belts remain poorly understood. Here the authors compare observations and models of a 2013 event to show that electromagnetic ioncyclotron waves provide the dominant loss mechanism at ultra-relativistic energies.

The authors report on the implementation of a data-efficient machine learning approach to predict plasma dynamics. This enables offline design of robust trajectories to terminate the plasma without disruptive instabilities. Experimental results at the TCV tokamak show statistically significant improvements in key figures of merit and the ability to a priori predict the dynamics of key plasma properties.

A fresh approach to protein design that incorporates excited intermediate states enables precise control over the lifetime of protein interactions, with potential applications in cell-signalling modulation and in biosensors and synthetic circuits.

The zinc–zinc bonded complex, Cp*ZnZnCp* (Cp* = pentamethylcyclopentadienyl), undergoes facile addition to the metal (or semi-metal) centres of a series of main group carbene analogues based on silicon, aluminium, gallium or indium. The addition of Cp*ZnZnCp* to silicon(II) provides a compelling case for a prototypical reductive addition process.

Mutual paracrine regulation of the cytokines GREM1 and SPP1 mediate mesenchymal and epithelial cell fate in pancreatic cancer.

Functional roles of natural acetylcholine (ACh) dynamics are not fully understood. This study reveals dynamic changes in ACh release across the mouse striatum during learning and extinction, identifying how and where release dynamics shape brain plasticity to gate learning and promote extinction of cue-reward associations.

The authors present a multicenter database to investigate the neural correlates of dreaming, including physiological, behavioral and experiential data. This database could boost the research on the mechanisms of dreaming in humans and the signatures of consciousness.

As part of the BICCN consortium, the authors used a single-cell transcriptomic imaging method to produce a highly defined atlas of cell types across the mouse primary motor cortex.

EchoNext, a deep learning model for electrocardiograms trained and validated in diverse health systems, successfully detects many forms of structural heart disease, supporting the potential of artificial intelligence to expand access to heart disease screening at scale.

Axonal injury, induced in the white matter by expansion of early tumour cells, is a key driver of glioblastoma progression.

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.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

Sznajder et al. identified a molecular link between autism and myotonic dystrophy, showing that a tandem repeat mutation in a single gene can disrupt splicing of multiple autism-related genes during brain development, leading to autism-like traits.

Together with a companion paper, the generation of a transcriptomic atlas for the mouse lemur and analyses of example cell types establish this animal as a molecularly tractable primate model organism.

The expression of each of the roughly 22,000 genes of the mouse genome has been mapped, at cellular resolution, across all major structures of the mouse brain, revealing that 80% of all genes appear to be expressed in the brain.

Pyramidal cells are classically thought to comprise the excitatory output of the subiculum. Here, the authors show the existence of “ovoid cells”, excitatory subiculum neurons with specialized gene expression, morphology, projections, and function.

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).

A large language model designed for health monitoring provides personalized sleep and fitness predictions, insights and advice.

Using well-calibrated statistical methods the authors jointly analyze Undiagnosed Diseases Network genomes, identifying known and novel disease genes. Software is publicly available to support future cross-cohort rare disease discovery efforts.

Sosa et al. find that hippocampal neural activity in mice encodes both environmental location and experience relative to rewards, spanning distances far from reward, through parallel and flexible population-level codes.

Little is known about von Economo neurons, which have been described in a subset of mammals and appear to be selectively lost in several human neurological diseases. Here, authors reveal the gene expression profile of these cells and show that they are likely long-distance projection neurons.

A challenge in psychiatric drug discovery is to predict the therapeutic potential of a novel compound. Here, the authors show that brain-wide imaging of immediate early gene expression can be used to classify a panel of drugs including psychedelics and antidepressants with high accuracy.

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.

Machine-learning algorithms trained on 25,000 geolocated soil samples are used to create high-resolution global maps of mycorrhizal fungi, revealing that less than 10% of their biodiversity hotspots are in protected areas.

A study reports whole-genome sequences for 490,640 participants from the UK Biobank and combines these data with phenotypic data to provide new insights into the relationship between human variation and sequence variation.

Genome-wide sequencing of 180 ancient individuals shows a continuous gradient of ancestry in Early-to-Mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers from the Baltic to the Transbaikal region and distinct contemporaneous groups in Northeast Siberia, and provides insights into the origins of modern Uralic and Yeniseian speakers.

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.

A platform for profiling single-cell density reveals insights into the regulation of cell density homeostasis and patient drug responses.

Together with an accompanying paper presenting a transcriptomic atlas of the mouse lemur, interrogation of the atlas provides a rich body of data to support the use of the organism as a model for primate biology and health.

A spatially resolved transcriptional atlas of the mid-gestational developing human brain has been created using laser-capture microdissection and microarray technology, providing a comprehensive reference resource which also enables new hypotheses about the nature of human brain evolution and the origins of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Comprehensive integration of gene expression with epigenetic features is needed to understand the transition of kidney cells from health to injury. Here, the authors integrate dual single nucleus RNA expression and chromatin accessibility, DNA methylation, and histone modifications to decipher the chromatin landscape of the kidney in reference and adaptive injury cell states, identifying a transcription factor network of ELF3, KLF6, and KLF10 which regulates adaptive repair and maladaptive failed repair.

A high-bandwidth neuromotor interface offers performant out-of-the-box generalization across people.

Whole-brain anatomical and activity surveys identify the lateral hypothalamus as a key driver of recovery from spinal cord injury, leading to a deep brain stimulation therapy that augments the recovery of walking in humans.

¹³⁴Ce and ¹³⁴La have great potential as companion diagnostic isotopes for radiotherapeutics labelled with α-emitting ²²⁵Ac and ²²⁷Th. Now, by controlling the Ce^III/Ce^IV redox couple, the large-scale production, purification and characterization of ¹³⁴Ce- and ¹³⁴La-based radiolabels has been achieved and their use for in vivo positron emission tomography is demonstrated.

A consensus cell type atlas for the fly brain provides both an intellectual framework and open-source toolchains for brain-scale comparative connectomics.

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.

Back-arc spreading centre jumps have been suggested to be controlled by a number of different drivers. Here, the authors, using 3D numerical models, show that transform faults can trigger back-arc spreading centre jumps, without the need of any ad hoc factors.

The BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network has constructed a multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex in a landmark effort towards understanding brain cell-type diversity, neural circuit organization and brain function.

The affected cellular populations during Alzheimer’s disease progression remain understudied. Here the authors use a cohort of 84 donors, quantitative neuropathology and multimodal datasets from the BRAIN Initiative. Their pseudoprogression analysis revealed two disease phases.

Consuming microplastics is known to harm marine wildlife in several ways, but effects on the microbiome are understudied. Here the authors demonstrate that two species of wild seabirds with larger amounts of microplastic in their guts had fewer commensal gut microbial species but more pathogens.

Ancient DNA from the eastern Maghreb (Tunisia and Algeria) dating between 15,000 and 6,000 years ago shows that this region was far less affected by external gene flow than the rest of the Neolithic Mediterranean, including not only Europe but also the western Maghreb (Morocco).

Three electron microscopy datasets are combined to provide a complete connectomic description of the neural circuitry that makes up the neck connective in Drosophila, including the descending neurons, ascending neurons and sensory ascending neurons.