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The combination of strong light-matter interactions and controllable magnetic properties make magnetic semiconductors attractive for both fundamental physics and the development of devices. Here, Hendriks et al show how the optically driven magnetization dynamics in Cr₂Ge₂Te₆ can be controlled via electrostatic gating.

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.

The quark structure of the f₀(980) hadron is still unknown after 50 years of its discovery. Here, the CMS Collaboration reports a measurement of the elliptic flow of the f₀(980) state in proton-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 8.16 TeV, providing strong evidence that the state is an ordinary meson.

This study reconstructs global fire methane emissions from 2003 to 2020, revealing 27% higher estimates than previous models, which is likely due to undetected small fires and underestimated emission intensity from the coarse-resolution model data.

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.

Droughts can lead to large-scale decline in net CO₂ uptake and increased water-use efficiency by plants, according to global analyses of atmospheric carbon isotope data from 2001 to 2011. This suggests that current climate models may underestimate carbon–drought feedbacks.

The amount of carbon dioxide released by the Australian wildfires of 2019–2020 is uncertain, but is estimated here using satellite observations of carbon monoxide to be more than twice the amount suggested by fire inventories.

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.

The extent to which the onset of bioturbation affected global biogeochemistry during the Palaeozoic remains unclear. Here, the authors integrate bioturbation into the COPSE model, compare output with geochemical proxies, and suggest shallow burrowing contributed to a global low oxygen state during the early Cambrian.

Timothy Frayling, Joel Hirschhorn, Peter Visscher and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for adult height in 253,288 individuals. They identify 697 variants in 423 loci significantly associated with adult height and find that these variants cluster in pathways involved in growth and together explain one-fifth of the heritability for this trait.

Multi-ancestry meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies for self-reported physical activity during leisure time, leisure screen time, sedentary commuting and sedentary behavior at work identify 99 loci associated with at least one of these traits.

Oceanic deposition of wildfire aerosols can enhance marine productivity, as supported here by satellite and in situ profiling floats data showing that emissions from the 2019–2020 Australian wildfires fuelled phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis study here shows novel genetic loci to be associated to body fat percentage, and describes cross-phenotype association that further demonstrate a close relationship between adiposity and cardiovascular disease risk.

Identifying patients that will respond to a particular therapy remains a key challenge in precision oncology. Here, in gastric cancer, the authors show that circulating tumour DNA can predict recurrence, provided that the signal from white blood cells is filtered out.

Frequencies of rare variants fluctuate over populations, hampering gene discovery. Here the authors use a population-specific reference panel, the Genome of the Netherlands, to discover four novel loci involved in lipid metabolism, including an exonic variant in ABCA6.

The CMS Collaboration reports the study of three simultaneous hard interactions between quarks and gluons in proton–proton collisions. This manifests through the concurrent production of three J/ψ mesons, which consist of a charm-quark–antiquark pair.

The CMS Collaboration reports evidence for off-shell Higgs boson contributions in the production of Z boson pairs, and measures the width of the Higgs boson, which is inversely related to its lifetime.

How groundwater recharge changes with global warming is not well constrained. Here, the authors use an empirical relationship to show that groundwater recharge is more sensitive to aridity changes than expected, implying a strong response of water resources to climate change.

The most up-to-date combination of results on the properties of the Higgs boson is reported, which indicate that its properties are consistent with the standard model predictions, within the precision achieved to date.

Muscle weakness has been associated with morbidity and mortality in older people. Here, the authors have investigated this trait further by performing a genome-wide meta-analysis of grip strength and Mendelian randomization to discover causal relationships between muscle weakness and other diseases.

Flickering gamma-ray flashes associated with terrestrial thunderstorms have been observed, which may be the missing link between gamma-ray glows and TGFs.

Tropical thunderclouds over ocean and coastal regions are shown to emit gamma rays for several hours over areas of up to a few thousand square kilometres, contradicting the quasi-stationary picture of glows.

Paul de Bakker, Cisca Wijmenga and colleagues report on The Genome of the Netherlands Project, including whole-genome sequencing of 769 individuals of Dutch ancestry from 250 parent-offspring families and construction of a phased haplotype map. Their intermediate-coverage population sequencing data set provides a complementary resource to other publicly available data sets, including the 1000 Genomes Project.

The authors summarize the data produced by phase III of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, a resource for better understanding of the human and mouse genomes.

Optical imaging that exploits invisible near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent light (700–900 nm) has the potential to improve cancer surgery outcomes, minimize anaesthesia time and lower health-care costs via its improved contrast and depth of tissue penetration relative to visible light. This Review introduces the concept of NIR fluorescence imaging and examines imaging system and contrast agent optimization.

Greenhouse-gas payback times are derived for biofuel production systems using five feedstocks under high- and low-input farm management to assess replacement of natural vegetation with crop-based biofuels. Estimates ranged from 1–162 years.

Hand grip strength as a proxy of muscular fitness is a clinical predictor of mortality and morbidity. In a large-scale GWA study, the authors find 16 robustly associated genetic loci that highlight roles in muscle fibre structure and function, neuronal maintenance and nervous system signal transduction.

Human population genomic studies, including whole‐genome sequencing, were undertaken to identify determinants of bone mineral density (BMD), a major predictor of osteoporotic fractures. Non‐coding variants with large effects on BMD and fractures were identified near the EN1 locus and mouse studies confirmed this gene has an important role in skeletal biology.

Combined analysis of proton-proton collision data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN by the CMS and LHCb collaborations leads to the observation of the extremely rare decay of the strange B meson into muons; the result is compatible with the standard model of particle physics, and does not show any signs of new physics, such as supersymmetry.

Most of the more than 200 known genetic risk loci for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) reside in regulatory regions. Here, the authors provide eQTL datasets for six circulating immune cell types and ileal, colonic and rectal biopsies to map regulatory modules and identify potential causative genes for IBD.