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Macrorealism assumes that a macroscopic object is at any given time in one of the distinct states it has available, and that it is in principle possible to determine which state the system is in without disturbing its dynamics. An experiment now demonstrates that a superconducting microelectronic system violates macrorealism and obeys the laws of quantum mechanics.

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.

The LHCb experiment at CERN has observed significant asymmetries between the decay rates of the beauty baryon and its CP-conjugated antibaryon, thus demonstrating CP violation in baryon decays.

Whether multimorbidity accelerates brain Aβ deposition in humans remains largely unknown. Here, the authors demonstrate that higher self-reported multimorbidity burden predicts increased brain Aβ accumulation rates in the ADNI cohort.

Asymmetric nickel catalysis is used to intercept transient cyclic allene intermediates to achieve stereocontrol.

Six-membered cyclic 1,2,3-trienes are geometrically distorted, short-lived intermediates that have high reactivity. Now, azacyclic 1,2,3-trienes can be generated and trapped, allowing for the synthesis of annulated pyridones.

A cave art scene at Leang Karampuang, Indonesia, dated to at least 51,200 years ago using laser-ablation uranium-series imaging, depicts human-like figures interacting with a pig.

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.

Transplantation of kidneys from living donors benefits patients with end-stage renal disease, but living donation is associated with short-term and long-term risks. In this Review, the authors summarize studies that have examined the long-term medical outcomes for living kidney donors, focusing on the first 10 years after donation. They also consider the need to further assess risk in specific populations of donors.

A new synthetic method provides a coveted motif, the bicyclo[2.1.1]hexane scaffold, using the uncommon coupling of two strained diradicaloid fragments: transiently generated cyclic allenes and bicyclo[1.1.0]butanes.

Entanglement was observed in top–antitop quark events by the ATLAS experiment produced at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN using a proton–proton collision dataset with a centre-of-mass energy of √s  = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 fb⁻¹.

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).

The second Global Amphibian Assessment finds that the status of amphibians is continuing to deteriorate globally, driven predominantly by climate change, disease and habitat loss.

An initial draft of the human pangenome is presented and made publicly available by the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium; the draft contains 94 de novo haplotype assemblies from 47 ancestrally diverse individuals.

Swarm Learning is a decentralized machine learning approach that outperforms classifiers developed at individual sites for COVID-19 and other diseases while preserving confidentiality and privacy.

An investigation using various methods reports an association between adeno-associated virus 2 and paediatric hepatitis of unknown aetiology.

The host immune response plays a critical role in the immunopathology of SARS-CoV2. Here the authors combine a systems biology approach to implicate monocytes as key drivers of cytokine storm and disturbed neutrophil activation in COVID-19 disease severity.

COVID-19 can be associated with neurological complications. Here the authors show that markers of brain injury, but not immune markers, are elevated in the blood of patients with COVID-19 both early and months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly in those with brain dysfunction or neurological diagnoses.

Safely opening university campuses has been a major challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, the authors describe a program of public health measures employed at a university in the United States which, combined with other non-pharmaceutical interventions, allowed the university to stay open in fall 2020 with limited evidence of transmission.

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.

Bhardwaj et al., have explored the proteomes of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, and have demonstrated the amyloid formation of viral proteins, in vitro, through diverse biophysical techniques.

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

Comparisons within the human pangenome establish that homologous regions on short arms of heterologous human acrocentric chromosomes actively recombine, leading to the high rate of Robertsonian translocation breakpoints in these regions.

Although enzymes are able to cleave amide bonds in nature, it is difficult to selectively break the carbon–nitrogen bond of an amide using synthetic chemistry; now the activation and cleavage of these bonds using nickel catalysts is used to convert amides to esters.

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) is an anti-inflammatory drug proposed as a treatment for COVID19. Here the results are reported from a randomised trial testing DMF treatment in 713 patients hospitalised with COVID-19. DMF was not associated with any improvement in day 5 outcomes.

In Alzheimer’s disease (AD) tau and neurodegeneration have complex regional relationships. Here, the authors show neuronal hypometabolism discordant with tau burden defines functional resilience or susceptibility to Alzheimer’s pathology via limbic/cortical axes. Susceptible groups have faster cognitive decline and evidence of non-Alzheimer’s pathologies.

Ten years after the discovery of the Higgs boson, the ATLAS  experiment at CERN probes its kinematic properties with a significantly larger dataset from 2015–2018 and provides further insights on its interaction with other known particles.

The association between obesity and breast cancer biology remains understudied in humans. Here, using a large retrospective data collection, the authors identify obesity associated changes in the genomic, transcriptomic profile, and the tumor microenvironment of primary untreated breast tumors.

Genome-wide association analysis of an improved telomere length score, calculated from quantitative PCR and whole-genome sequencing measurements in 462,666 individuals in the UK Biobank, identifies novel genes and variants underlying this trait.

A genome-wide association study of critically ill patients with COVID-19 identifies genetic signals that relate to important host antiviral defence mechanisms and mediators of inflammatory organ damage that may be targeted by repurposing drug treatments.

Constructing genome graphs directly from genome assemblies overcomes single-reference bias.

Environmental influences during prenatal development may have implications for health and disease later in life. Here, Czamara et al. assess DNA methylation in cord blood from new-born under various models including environmental and genetic effects individually and their additive or interaction effects.

This study finds that sST2 is a disease-causing factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Higher sST2 levels impair microglial Aβ clearance in APOE4⁺ female individuals. A genetic variant, rs1921622, is associated with a reduction in sST2 level and protects against AD in APOE4⁺ female individuals.