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When modern humans colonized India is debated. Here, Clarkson and colleagues report an archaeological site in India that has been occupied for approximately 80,000 years and contains a stone tool assemblage attributed to Homo sapiens that matches artefacts from Africa, Arabia, and Australia.

Biological nitrogen fixation may impose stronger constraints on the carbon sink in natural terrestrial biomes and represent a larger source of agricultural nitrogen than is generally considered in analyses of the global nitrogen cycle.

The rapid expansion of low-carbon technologies in Brazil has multiple socio-economic impacts on rural populations by further fuelling competition for land and intensifying large-scale land deals. This study traces how global ownership of, and investment in, wind and solar photovoltaic installations has evolved over time, driving substantial privatization of public and common lands.

Multicriteria optimization identifies global priority areas for ecosystem restoration and estimates their benefits for biodiversity and climate, providing cost–benefit analyses that highlight the importance of optimizing spatial planning and incorporating several biomes in restoration strategies.

Evidence from genetics, skeletal remains and dietary isotopes indicates that sex-specific height disparities in Early Neolithic Europe can be linked to culture, more than environment or genetics. This suggests that a cultural preference for males may have had biological effects 7,000 yr ago.

A project that gives Congolese pygmies new ways to tell logging companies about the trees that are important to them, and their own radio station to discuss community issues, is really putting their interests on the map, says Michael Hopkin.

Across many North American forests, recent years with exceptional area burned are not unprecedented when considering the multi-century perspective offered by fire-scarred trees. Nevertheless, abundant evidence suggests that the severity of contemporary wildfire is unprecedented in its adverse impacts on forests and humans.

‘Pre-contact era humans from coastal South America were infected by Mycobacterium pinnipedii, most likely, through contact with infected pinnipeds. Here, the authors investigate the presence of M. pinnipedii in pre-contact era humans from inland South America and explore potential scenarios of human-to-human or animal-mediated transmission.’

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.

Amidst the collective push to establish nature conservation initiatives, little attention has been paid to ensuring that they persist over time. The abandonment of conservation commitments is a blind spot that threatens progress towards global environmental goals.

Analysis of soundscape data from 139 globally distributed sites reveals that sounds of biological origin exhibit predictable rhythms depending on location and season, whereas sounds of anthropogenic origin are less predictable. Comparisons between paired urban–rural sites show that urban green spaces are noisier and dominated by sounds of technological origin.

Natural rubber has many uses in a variety of industries, enabled by ‘crosslinking’ between its tangled polymers, which creates elasticity. But rubber can crack and suffer fatigue. It is now shown that reducing the crosslink density in highly entangled natural rubber increases its crack resistance and prolongs its useful life.

Analysis of ground-sourced and satellite-derived models reveals a global forest carbon potential of 226 Gt outside agricultural and urban lands, with a difference of only 12% across these modelling approaches.

A reconstruction of the genomic history of japonica and indica rice over 9,000 yr with geographic, environmental, archaeobotanical and paleoclimate data.

Four scientists reflect on how to foster a more sustainable relationship between water and society amid complex and wide-ranging challenges.

The rate and extent of global biodiversity change is surpassing our ability to measure, monitor and forecast trends. We propose an interconnected worldwide system of observation networks — a global biodiversity observing system (GBiOS) — to coordinate monitoring worldwide and inform action to reach international biodiversity targets.

World Heritage Sites are under threat of severe impacts due to climate change. This Perspective discusses three facets of management—integrating pluralistic values, adopting holistic methods and ensuring Indigenous leadership—that can assist the conservation of sites.

Scientists are attempting to rapidly domesticate wild plant species by editing specific genes, but they face major technical challenges — and concerns about exploitation of Indigenous knowledge.

The impacts of armed conflict on biodiversity have long been neglected. A United Nations meeting hosted by Colombia is a golden opportunity to begin changing that.

Here, the authors look at present day and medieval genome samples from Northern France to piece together demographic history and population structure across Brittany and the Loire basin.

In Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, people live alongside polar bears with tolerance and reciprocal respect and the meaning of their coexistence, mobilization of Indigenous knowledge, and recommendations for future wildlife management are explored in an analysis that uses mixed methods.

Gene duplication and subsequent paralogue diversification are major obstacles to genotype-to-phenotype predictability.

Food system transformations need nuanced approaches to modelling future outcomes. This Review explores current challenges and outlines paths forward for food system transformation modelling, with an emphasis on diversification of the approaches used and integration into decision-making processes.

A study shows that the rapid diversification of cichlids in African lakes is driven by their ability to evolve between having simple or complex teeth.

Seersholm et al. analysed permafrozen middens from Inuit and Viking settlements to uncover evidence of diet in prehistoric Greenland. Using ancient DNA, they identified 42 different species and found that whales were surprisingly common.

Learning from the failure to meet the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, the authors recommend effective global and national targets and other measures to ensure the post-2020 targets are more successful.

Low read depth sequencing of whole genomes and high read depth exomes of nearly 10,000 extensively phenotyped individuals are combined to help characterize novel sequence variants, generate a highly accurate imputation reference panel and identify novel alleles associated with lipid-related traits; in addition to describing population structure and providing functional annotation of rare and low-frequency variants the authors use the data to estimate the benefits of sequencing for association studies.

Here the authors reveal the structural basis of how the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor type found on skeletal muscle and in fish electric organs desensitizes in response to agonist and how the arrow poison curare antagonizes the channel by stabilizing a desensitized state.

Analyzing readouts of inflammaging across four cohorts, Franck and colleagues identify strong variation and observe that inflammaging, in its known form, primarily emerges in industrialized—but not nonindustrialized—populations.

Identifying Neanderthal and Denisovan bone fragments using collagen peptide mass fingerprinting and mitochondrial DNA analysis at Denisova Cave, the authors are able to date the earliest secure Denisovan presence at the cave to c. 200 ka. The stratigraphic association with lithics and faunal remains allows the authors to explore the behavioural and environmental adaptations of these elusive hominins.

Uncertainty is a factor in most decisions. Here the authors quantify tolerance for two forms of economic uncertainty—risk and ambiguity—and show that greater lifetime stressor exposure (as assessed by a comprehensive lifetime stressor exposure inventory) was associated with higher aversion to decisions involving ambiguity, but not risk.

Treatment with neoadjuvant BRAF/MEK-targeted therapy results in higher rates of major pathological response in female compared with male patients with melanoma, and pharmacological inhibition of androgen receptor signalling improved the responses of male and female mice to BRAF/MEK-targeted therapy.

Five studies, including experiments and experience-sampling, show effortful leisure feels more meaningful than less effortful leisure while maintaining enjoyment. Results suggest effortful leisure can bolster purpose as work hours decline.

Advanced ecological modelling reveals how Sahul (Australia and New Guinea) was first peopled, suggesting the most probable routes and surprisingly rapid early settlement of this continent by anatomically modern humans starting 50,000 to 75,000 years ago.

Biogeochemistry of teeth from the Italian site of Grotta Paglicci show different mobility strategies for humans using the cave either side of the Last Glacial Maximum.

The Seshat database has made it possible to reveal large-scale patterns in human cultural evolution. Here, Shin et al. investigate transitions in social complexity and find alternating thresholds of polity size and information processing required for further sociopolitical development.

Arginine methylation by PRMTs is dysregulated in cancer. Here, the authors use functional genomics screens and identify PRMT1 as a vulnerability in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, and further show that PRMT1 regulates RNA metabolism and coordinates expression of genes in cell cycle progression, maintaining genomic stability and tumour growth.

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) pose negative worldwide impacts that could be minimized through the development of a forecasting tool. Quantitative analysis of peptides produced by a coastal microbiome prior to a HAB reveals predictive biomarkers that can forecast bloom events over 24 hours in advance.

The Tyrolean Iceman is 5,300 years old and his mitochondrial genome has been previously sequenced. This study reports the full genome sequence of the Iceman and reveals that he probably had brown eyes, was at risk for coronary disease and may have been infected with the pathogen Lyme borreliosis.