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A global analysis reveals regional trends of net forest ageing but also that widespread stand-replacing disturbances, such as fire and harvest, are driving declining forest age in many areas, often accompanied by substantial losses in aboveground carbon stocks and shifts in carbon sink dynamics.

Analyses of the relationships between temperature, moisture and seven key plant functional traits across the tundra and over time show that community height increased with warming across all sites, whereas other traits lagged behind predicted rates of change.

Protein biosynthesis is a major target of existing antibiotics that inhibit the efficiency or fidelity of the bacterial ribosome. Here, the authors show that a synthetic peptide displays bactericidal activity through a different mechanism, inducing co-translational aggregation of nascent peptidic chains.

Plastic deformation induces robust magnetism in SrTiO3, which is completely absent in pristine samples. This magnetism coexists with ferroelectric order, showcasing plastic deformation as a powerful tool for manipulating quantum material properties.

rDNA repeats residing in the nucleolus must be released to the nucleoplasm to allow repair by homologous recombination. Here the authors reveal insights into the molecular mechanism proposing that phosphorylation and SUMOylation of the rDNA-tethering complex facilitate the nucleolar release of damaged repeats to maintain genome integrity.

Patients with neurodevelopmental conditions without a monogenic diagnosis have a higher polygenic burden than those with a monogenic diagnosis. Non-transmitted common alleles in the parents are associated with the child’s phenotype, and the common and rare variants conferring risk are correlated.

Carbon nanotubes are one-dimensional materials with remarkable electronic and mechanical properties. The authors show that chiral versions of these nanotubes can generate a chirality-dependent current-induced orbital magnetization (Edelstein effect) which is tunable by gating or doping, making them promising for future spin-orbitronic technologies.

Alzheimer’s disease is heterogeneous in its neuroimaging and clinical phenotypes. Here the authors present a semi-supervised deep learning method, Smile-GAN, to show four neurodegenerative patterns and two progression pathways providing prognostic and clinical information.

Fishing has had a profound impact on global reef shark populations, and the absence or presence of sharks is strongly correlated with national socio-economic conditions and reef governance.

Systematic analysis from the Global Burden of Disease study reported that, despite global improvements from 1990 to 2021, dietary iron deficiency-associated disease burden remains high in women, children and residents in low socio-demographic index countries.

Quantum simulations of chemistry and materials are challenging due to the complexity of correlated systems. A framework based on reconfigurable qubit architectures and digital–analogue simulations provides a hardware-efficient path forwards.

The Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid framework can be used to describe 1D quantum systems, spanning fermions, bosons and anyons. In this Review, we discuss the various platforms that can host TLL states, including Josephson junctions, cold atoms and topological materials, and discuss the advances TLL theory can provide in quantum criticality, nonequilibrium dynamics and condensed-matter physics exploration.

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission’s impact on asteroid Dimorphos has led to various impact related features. Here, the authors show that those features result naturally from the dynamical interaction of the ejecta with the binary system and solar radiation pressure.

The authors study molecular vibrations in the near field of single antennas, showing that the vibrational signature in SEIRA spectra can be explained by field-enhanced molecular scattering. This opens pathways for the development of sensitive SEIRA sensors exploiting this concept.

Signalling endosomes are known to be essential for neuronal survival. Here the authors show that, in cultured hippocampal neurons and live Drosophilalarval motor neurons, neuronal activity increases the retrograde flux of signalling endosomes, and this coupling depends on TrkB activation.

We analyse a global dataset of genomic DNA sequences for Ophiuroidea to gain an understanding of phylogenetic divergence and biotic movement across oceans, finding phylogentically divergent faunas at shelf depths but greater connectivity of species at deep-sea depths.

In superconducting thin films of a few atomic layers, surface and bulk orders may compete. Here, the authors measure how the Pearl length, which characterizes the distribution of magnetic field in vortices, varies with thickness in NbSe₂, showing that surface superconductivity dominates at low thickness.

Peer review information: Nature Communications thanks Martino Poggio, and the other, anonymous, reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.

The loss of biodiversity at the global scale has been difficult to reconcile with observations of no net loss at local scales. Vegetation surveys across European temperate forests show that this may be explained by the replacement of small-ranged species with large-ranged ones, driven by nitrogen deposition.

Prostate cancer (PrCa) involves a large heritable genetic component. Here, the authors perform multivariate fine-mapping of known PrCa GWAS loci, identifying variants enriched for biological function, explaining more familial relative risk, and with potential application in clinical risk profiling.

Multivariate genome-wide association analyses of the latent genetic architecture of frailty identify one general factor of genetic overlap across all frailty deficits and six factors indexing a shared genetic signal across specific groups of deficits.

In this study, the authors assess the global response to the toxic aldehyde glyoxal (GO) in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, suggesting that GO controls quorum sensing during infection through a mechanism involving a novel protein, ArqI.

Alternative stable states in forests have implications for the biosphere. Here, the authors combine forest biodiversity observations and simulations revealing that leaf types across temperate regions of the NH follow a bimodal distribution suggesting signatures of alternative forest states.

An analysis of habitat fragmentation using a dataset of more than 4,000 species worldwide shows that fragmentation reduces biodiversity at all scales, and that increases in β diversity do not compensate for the loss of α diversity.

Epidemiological models are commonly fit to case and pathogen sequence data to estimate parameters and to reconstruct disease dynamics. Here, the authors present an inference approach based on sequence data that is well suited for model fitting early on during the expansion of a viral lineage.

Deep learning methods show great promise for the analysis of microscopy images but there is currently an accessibility barrier to many users. Here the authors report a convenient entry-level deep learning platform that can be used at no cost: ZeroCostDL4Mic.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

Foutel et. al. identify conformational buffering as a mechanism for functional selection in intrinsically disordered protein regions that allows robust encoding of a tethering function by a hypervariable disordered linker through compensatory changes in sequence length and composition.

Two logical qubits are encoded in ensembles of four physical qubits through the surface code, then entangled by lattice surgery, which is a protocol for carrying out fault-tolerant operations.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

Randomised controlled experiments are the gold standard for scientific inference, but environmental and social scientists often rely on different study designs. Here the authors analyse the use of six common study designs in the fields of biodiversity conservation and social intervention, and quantify the biases in their estimates.

By implementing random circuit sampling, experimental and theoretical results establish the existence of transitions to a stable, computationally complex phase that is reachable with current quantum processors.

A high-resolution, global atlas of mortality of children under five years of age between 2000 and 2017 highlights subnational geographical inequalities in the distribution, rates and absolute counts of child deaths by age.

A hybrid analogue–digital quantum simulator is used to demonstrate beyond-classical performance in benchmarking experiments and to study thermalization phenomena in an XY quantum magnet, including the breakdown of Kibble–Zurek scaling predictions and signatures of the Kosterlitz–Thouless phase transition.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

Monolayer graphene can support the quantum Hall effect up to room temperature. Here, the authors provide evidence that graphene encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride realizes a novel transport regime where dissipation in the quantum Hall phase is mediated predominantly by electron-phonon scattering rather than disorder scattering.

Spatial host–microbiome sequencing simultaneously profiles microbes and host transcriptomes from mouse colons.

Geospatial estimates of the prevalence of anemia in women of reproductive age across 82 low-income and middle-income countries reveals considerable heterogeneity and inequality at national and subnational levels, with few countries on track to meet the WHO Global Nutrition Targets by 2030.

Previously, superradiance was observed from sizeable crystals or close to liquid-helium temperatures. Here, Bradec et al. report the observation of room-temperature superradiance from single, highly luminescent diamond nanocrystals with spatial dimensions much smaller than the wavelength of light.

To improve desired properties of drugs or other molecules, deep learning can be used to guide the optimization process. Chen et al. present a method that optimizes molecules one fragment at a time and requires fewer parameters and training data while still improving optimization performance.

Nonlocality has gained increasing attention in metamaterial and metasurface design. This Review discusses recent advances, focusing on the physical mechanisms of nonlocality that lead to intriguing properties and functions.

Moreno-Layseca et al. identify Swip1 as an integrin-specific endocytic adaptor controlling the dynamics of integrin adhesion complexes as well as the migration and invasion of breast cancer cells.

Within-host evolution is a critical regulator of commensal pathogenicity that provides a unique source of stochasticity in the development and progression of microbiota-driven disease.

Bat influenza viruses use MHCII, not sialic acids, for entry. Using high-resolution microscopy. on live cells, the authors show at the nanoscale that viral particles attach to clusters of MHCII. and attract additional molecules to the attachment site.