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Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

Polygenic risk scores can help identify individuals at higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Here, the authors characterise a multi-ancestry score across nearly 900,000 people, showing that its predictive value depends on demographic and clinical context and extends to related traits and complications.

A geological, petrographic and geochemical survey of distinctive mudstone and conglomerate outcrops of the Bright Angel formation on Mars reveals textures, chemical and mineral characteristics, and organic signatures that warrant consideration as potential biosignatures.

Current chemical automation ontologies are disconnected from essential structured programming constructs such as variables, functions, and loops. Herein the authors present an approach to translating computer science concepts to first-class primitives within a universal high-level chemical programming language executable in the Chemputer.

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.

A randomized controlled trial found no difference in paranoid ideations between virtual reality-based and gold-standard cognitive behavioral therapy for patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, in contrast to previous trials using wait-list or passive controls.

Gene editing of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells offers promise as a curative treatment for chronic granulomatous disease (CGD). Here, the authors develop a D10A Cas9n based gene editing strategy to treat CGD with no detectable off-target activity or chromosomal translocations.

There has been much interest recently in the transport mechanisms of metals from hydrothermal vents. Here the authors found that nanoparticulate pyrite is not removed from the plume and can account for over 50% of filtered iron one metre from the vent mouth.

The Perseverance rover has made the most definitive identification of Fe-phosphate minerals on Mars to date. High-resolution chemical and textural PIXL analyses suggest they originally formed after vivianite in a potentially habitable environment.

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.

Genome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in ancestrally diverse populations implicate candidate causal genes and mechanisms underlying type 2 diabetes. Trans-ancestry genetic risk scores enhance transferability across populations.

Silver compounds have long been known to possess exceptional solid-state conductivity. Here the authors present silvercloso-boranes in which facile Ag⁺migration occurs, leading to exceptionally high ion conductivities and potential utility in silver nanowire production and photocatalysis due to their semiconductivity.

The use of III-V semiconductor nanowires can overcome the need for lattice matching in multi-junction solar cells, which restricts the choice of materials and their bandgaps. This work demonstrates efficient solar cells with GaAsP single nanowires with tunable bandgap and grown on low-cost Si substrates.

A long- and short-read barley pan-transcriptome assembled from 20 diverse barley genotypes offers insights into genotype- and tissue-dependent gene expression and function.

Biochemical control cannot be achieved by the use of somatostatin analogs alone in a large number of patients with acromegaly. Combination therapy with somatostatin analogs and the growth-hormone-receptor antagonist pegvisomant is, however, highly effective at normalizing levels of insulin-like growth factor I. In this Review, the efficacy and safety of somatostatin analog–pegvisomant combination therapy as a potential tool for the medical management of patients with acromegaly is discussed.

The light concentrating properties of single p-i-n GaAs nanowires are shown to result in far greater photocurrent densities than expected under one sun illumination. The results suggest that such cells could in principle operate with power conversion efficiencies beyond the Shockley–Queisser limit.

This study demonstrates that the MKK3b/6 signalling pathway drives the skeletal muscle growth-promoting effects of resistance exercise.

Combining 32 genome-wide association studies with high-density imputation provides a comprehensive view of the genetic contribution to type 2 diabetes in individuals of European ancestry with respect to locus discovery, causal-variant resolution, and mechanistic insight.

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.

An observational longitudinal clinical trial, incorporating a SmartPill and metabolomics, reveals the role of host factors in shaping the gut microbiome in healthy human adults.

A pangenome analysis of 76 wild and domesticated barley accessions in combination with short-read sequence data of 1,315 barley genotypes indicates that allelic diversity at structurally complex loci may have helped crop plants to adapt to agricultural ecosystems.

Using slitless spectroscopy, JWST/NIRCam has simultaneously mapped three ice species across a dense cloud along 44 lines of sight. This cospatial mapping enables the local cloud chemistry to be probed with a spatial resolution of hundreds of astronomical units, representing a step change in ice mapping.

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of type 2 diabetes (T2D) identifies more than 600 T2D-associated loci; integrating physiological trait and single-cell chromatin accessibility data at these loci sheds light on heterogeneity within the T2D phenotype.

Zooplankton impact Southern Ocean carbon cycling. Here, the authors examine carbon export at the Antarctic Peninsula, finding that krill pellets are efficiently exported, while salp pellets are retained and recycled in surface waters.

The authors collate a meta-collection of ex situ living plant diversity held in 50 botanical collections worldwide, spanning a century of data and currently containing ~500,000 accessions. Their analyses examine the capacities and constraints within living plant collections, reveal the impact of the Convention on Biological Diversity and its consequences for material exchange and conservation, and call for the re-evaluation of strategic priorities.

Trans-ethnic analyses of exome array data identify new risk loci for type 2 diabetes. Fine-mapping analyses using genome-wide association data show that the index coding variants represent the likely causal variants at only a subset of these loci.

Both rare and common variants contribute to the aetiology of complex traits such as type 2 diabetes (T2D). Here, the authors examine the effect of coding variation on glycaemic traits and T2D, and identify low-frequency variation in GLP1Rsignificantly associated with these traits.

Data from over 700,000 individuals reveal the identity of 83 sequence variants that affect human height, implicating new candidate genes and pathways as being involved in growth.

Cecilia Lindgren and colleagues report results of a large-scale genome-wide association study for waist-to-hip ratio, a measure of body fat distribution. They identify 13 new loci associated with this trait, several of which show stronger effects in women than in men.

This meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies four genetic loci associated with circulating leptin levels independent of adiposity. Examination in mouse adipose tissue explants provides functional support for the leptin-associated loci.

Photoinduced metal-to-ligand (or ligand-to-metal) charge-transfer (CT) states in metal complexes have been extensively studied, but primarily limited to CT transitions between d- and π-orbitals. Here, CT emission from 4f- to π-orbitals is demonstrated using a trivalent europium complex.

We illustrate that including data from Greenlandic Inuit can greatly reduce inequity in genomic-based healthcare in Greenland and other indigenous Arctic populations.

Exome-sequencing analyses of a large cohort of patients with type 2 diabetes and control individuals without diabetes from five ancestries are used to identify gene-level associations of rare variants that are associated with type 2 diabetes.

Exome-wide analysis identifies rare and low-frequency coding variants associated with body mass index. Gene-based meta-analysis and functional studies implicate 13 genes, eight of which are novel, and neuronal pathways as factors in human obesity.

Bond dissociation enthalpies are key quantities in determining chemical reactivity, their computations with quantum mechanical methods being highly demanding. Here the authors develop a machine learning approach to calculate accurate dissociation enthalpies for organic molecules with sub-second computational cost.

A trans-ancestry meta-analysis of GWAS of glycemic traits in up to 281,416 individuals identifies 99 novel loci, of which one quarter was found due to the multi-ancestry approach, which also improves fine-mapping of credible variant sets.

Meta-analyses in up to 1.3 million individuals identify 87 rare-variant associations with blood pressure traits. On average, rare variants exhibit effects ~8 times larger than the mean effects of common variants and implicate candidate causal genes at associated regions.

Sequencing data from two large-scale studies show that most of the genetic variation influencing the risk of type 2 diabetes involves common alleles and is found in regions previously identified by genome-wide association studies, clarifying the genetic architecture of this disease.

Excessive nutrient loading is a threat to aquatic ecosystems; however, denitrification may be key in removing large amounts of reactive nitrogen and, therefore, mitigating consequent eutrophication. Here, the authors explore how meiofauna may impact the rate of denitrification in sediments.

Under field conditions, acquisitive tree species generally grow slowly, whereas conservative species show generally higher realized growth, owing to their ability to tolerate unfavourable environmental conditions.

In mouse and nonhuman primate models, treatment with selective, long-acting neurokinin 2 receptor agonists aids weight loss by suppressing appetite and increasing energy expenditure, as well as by increasing insulin sensitivity.

Kyle Gaulton, Mark McCarthy, Andrew Morris and colleagues report fine mapping and genomic annotation of 39 established type 2 diabetes susceptibility loci. They find that the set of potential causal variants is enriched for overlap with FOXA2 binding sites in human islet and liver cells, and they show that a likely causal variant near MTNR1B increases FOXA2-bound enhancer activity, providing a molecular mechanism to explain the effect of this locus on disease risk.

Here, Imamuraet al. conduct meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies to identify novel susceptibility loci for type 2 diabetes (T2D) in the Japanese population. By doing so, this study shows that both ethnicity-specific and ethnically-shared genetic loci can contribute to T2D risk.

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.

Analysis of population decline shows that frequent disturbances enhance a population’s capacity to resist and recover from downturns and that trade-offs exist when adopting new or alternative land-use strategies.