Search

Hypoxic conditioning—controlled, brief and repeated exposure to moderate levels of low-oxygen air—is safe in people with Parkinson’s disease, with participants reporting mild, short-term improvement in Parkinson’s symptoms.

Our basic understanding of neuromodulation in the claustrum remains limited. Here Madden et al., identify a key mechanism by which serotonin and the psychedelic psilocybin modulate cortical signalling through the claustrum, a brain region involved in regulating cognition and brain network states.

Siddiqui et al. explore the role of islet-specific XBP1 expression in type 2 diabetes (T2D) and glycemic traits across diverse ancestries. XBP1 eQTL is associated with T2D, beta-cell function, HbA1c and drug response in East and South Asians in whom this variant is common and beta-cell dysfunction is a significant driver of early onset T2D.

To address an evidence gap for the efficacy of hypertension therapy using dual drug combinations in patients of South Asian origin, a randomized clinical trial conducted in India found that three types of dual drug combinations, each administered in a single pill, had similarly large effects on reducing blood pressure.

Nguyen et al. identify TDP-43 and METTL3 as key regulators of disrupted RNA splicing in Huntington’s disease, offering insight into how TDP-43 mislocalization and aberrant m6A RNA modification and localization relate to disease pathogenesis.

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.

Nerve injury activates microglia to remove spinal synapses, disrupting spinal sensory processing and contributing to chronic pain. Blocking complement protein C1q preserves synapses, highlighting a potential therapeutic target for neuropathic pain.

Large barocaloric effects driven by pressure may lead to environmentally friendly cooling, but they have only been observed in a small number of relatively expensive magnetic materials. Here, the authors show large barocaloric effects near the ferrielectric phase transition in ammonium sulphate.

It is challenging to maintain the CO selectivity under high current densities in CO₂ electro-reduction process. Here the authors report the synergistic interface between redox active CO₂ organic sorbents and defective Ag catalysts that can enable an ampere level CO₂-to-CO conversion.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

A multi-ancestry meta-regression study analyses diverse genome-wide association studies and genome loci associated with tobacco and alcohol use.

The detrimental effects of aged blood on cognition and nervous system function in mice can be combatted by targeting brain endothelial cell dysfunction via inhibition of aberrant VCAM1 signaling at the blood–brain barrier.

Electrocaloric effects are large in a limited set of materials that display hysteretic first-order phase transitions. Here epitaxial SrTiO₃ thin films are strain engineered to achieve anhysteretic second-order phase transitions, with electrocaloric effects enhanced by one order of magnitude over bulk.

Current screens to assess tumour drug resistance require a large amount of material, normally not available from patients. Here the authors report CombiSeq, a scalable microfluidic workflow to screen hundreds of drug combinations in picoliter-size droplets using transcriptome changes as a readout.

Bulk RNA sequencing of organs and plasma proteomics at different ages across the mouse lifespan is integrated with data from the Tabula Muris Senis, a transcriptomic atlas of ageing mouse tissues, to describe organ-specific changes in gene expression during ageing.

Characterization of bacterial microbiomes associated with >1,000 microscopic marine invertebrates reveals that phylosymbiosis is rare across animal lineages.

There is great interest, in refrigeration technology, in replacing harmful volatile hydrofluorocarbons with solid materials. Here the authors show that commercially available plastic crystal neopentylglycol displays colossal and reversible barocaloric effects comparable with those exploited in hydrofluorocarbons, which make it suitable for application.

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.

Non-orthogonal magnetization switching is related to the shear strain associated with ferroelectric domains, with implications for magnetoelectric devices.

Mutations in ATP8b1 are found in certain individuals susceptible to pneumonia. Ray et al. now report that bacterial pneumonia is associated with elevated levels of the phospholipid cardiolipin in airway fluids, that ATP8b1 is a cardiolipin importer and that excessive cardiolipin in the lung contributes to impaired lung function. The findings suggest that ATP8b1 might be a new therapeutic target for the treatment of pneumonia.

At present, magneto-, electro- and mechanocaloric effects are intensely investigated as the basis for possible cooling applications. This Review discusses and compares the three effects from both a fundamental and an applied perspective, with an emphasis on the experimental methods used to measure them.

Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of progenitor cells from human adipose depots reveals an adipogenic and a structural branch of cells, the latter named SWAT cells and shown to display a multipotent phenotype.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a major cause of blindness worldwide. Here, the authors carry out a two-stage genome-wide association study for AMD and identify three new AMD risk loci, highlighting the shared and distinct genetic basis of the disease in East Asians and Europeans.

A wealth of gene expression data is publicly available, yet is little use without additional human curation. Ma’ayan and colleagues report a crowdsourcing project involving over 70 participants to annotate and analyse thousands of human disease-related gene expression datasets.

The authors investigate the mechanisms of long-term depression of inhibitory synapses onto medium spiny neurons in the striatum. They identify direct vs. indirect pathway-specific and state-dependent differences in endocannabinoid signaling mechanisms underlying this plasticity.

The coupling of ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials could enable more efficient non-volatile information storage. Surprisingly, Ghidini et al. observe electrically-driven magnetic reversal events in commercially produced multilayer capacitor devices.

High-quality multilayer capacitors of a perovskite oxide show that large electric-field-driven caloric effects could improve solid-state refrigeration technology and challenge today’s standard (based on magnetocaloric effects in gadolinium).

Key properties of transition metal perovskite oxides are degraded after epitaxial growth on ferroelectric substrates due to lattice-mismatch strain. Here, the authors use epitaxial lift-off and transfer to overcome this problem and demonstrate electric field control of a bulk-like magnetization.

The thermodynamic properties of magnetocaloric materials show significant promise for energy-efficient cooling applications. The demonstration that large and reversible magnetocaloric effects can be created by means of strain suggests a new approach for inducing them in other magnetic materials.

In bulk, the spin ice Dy₂Ti₂O₇ has posed an enigma because – due to its slow dynamics – it is unclear whether and how the material will reach a zero entropy state at zero temperature. Here, the authors show that in thin films of Dy₂Ti₂O₇a zero entropy state is induced at 0.4 K, plausibly by lattice strain.

Electrocaloric materials can be electrically driven to pump heat and hold promise for use in efficient solid-state refrigeration. Here, the authors demonstrate an approach to recycle recoverable energy from electrocaloric cycles, offering a method to enhance performance in electrocaloric refrigeration systems.

As alternative technologies for non-volatile memory elements are looked at, the utilization of ferroelectric layers to read-write upon is seen as promising. However, it is plagued by several problems, including a destructive readout process. Now, by using a thin layer of BaTiO₃ put under intense strain, it has been shown possible to read out the polarization state of the material without destroying it.