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Global analysis of obesity trends from 1980 to 2024 in 200 countries and territories using data from 4,050 population-based studies reveals that framing obesity as a single global epidemic masks the highly varied dynamics across countries and age groups.

The response of Mars’ ionosphere to major solar energetic events has been known, but such observations are challenging. Here, the authors show mutual radio occultation observations revealing that a solar flare in May 2024 enhanced the lowest ionospheric layer of Mars by 278% of its typical size.

Little is known about the ecology and evolution of the nosocomial pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii outside the hospital. Here, Wilharm et al. show that the lifestyle of A. baumannii includes soil-dwelling and airborne dissemination, which helps to explain its adaptability and predisposition to establish within hospitals.

The Amazon faces worsening droughts, yet little is known about large-scale variation in the physiological limits of Amazon trees. Here, the authors reveal family-level conservatism in embolism resistance and estimate that Brazilian and Guiana shield forests are more resistant than Western Amazonia forests.

Understanding the mechanisms of block copolymer crystallization is fundamentally important. Here the authors investigated the crystallization behavior from a miscible melt of a polymeric material composed of five potentially crystallizable and biocompatible, chemically distinct blocks.

Accorsi et al. show that the apple snail Pomacea canaliculata has eyes similar to humans and can fully regenerate them. They then developed genetic tools to establish these snails as a novel model system to study the mechanisms of eye regeneration

Pertpy serves as a one-stop and performant framework for single-cell perturbation data analysis.

Natural products have historically made a major contribution to pharmacotherapy, but also present challenges for drug discovery, such as technical barriers to screening, isolation, characterization and optimization. This Review discusses recent technological developments — including improved analytical tools, genome mining and engineering strategies, and microbial culturing advances — that are enabling a revitalization of natural product-based drug discovery.

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.

Physiological and biophysical studies of Tke5 reveal is a pore-forming toxin that kills resilient phytopathogens via ion-selective membrane depolarisation. Neutralised by Tki5, Tke5 offers a targeted biocontrol mechanism to replace chemical pesticides.

The authors defined a roadmap for investigating the genetic covariance between structural or functional brain phenotypes and risk for psychiatric disorders. Their proof-of-concept study using the largest available common variant data sets for schizophrenia and volumes of several (mainly subcortical) brain structures did not find evidence of genetic overlap.

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.

In chocolate production, a complicated tempering process is used to guide the crystallization of cocoa butter towards its most desirable polymorph, which gives the chocolate proper melting behavior, gloss, and snap—hallmarks of good quality chocolate. Here, the authors find that simply adding a specific phospholipid also directs crystallization towards this polymorph, producing chocolate with comparable microstructure and properties to tempered chocolate.

Wood density is a key control on tree biomass, and understanding its spatial variation improves estimates of forest carbon stock. Sullivan et al. measure >900 forest plots to quantify wood density and produce high resolution maps of its variation across South American tropical forests.

Genome-wide association analyses of intracranial and nine subcortical brain volumes in 74,898 participants of European ancestry identify 254 independent loci and yield polygenic scores accounting for brain variation across ancestries.

Semicrystalline polymers are formed when polymer chains have sufficient stereo- and regioregularity, but some unusual atactic polymers can also crystallize despite their lack of regularity, resulting in semicrystalline materials. This Review highlights the factors that induce crystallization in atactic polymers and describes tools for synthesizing them.

In a GWAS study of 32,438 adults, the authors discovered five novel loci for intracranial volume and confirmed two known signals. Variants for intracranial volume were also related to childhood and adult cognitive function and to Parkinson's disease, and enriched near genes involved in growth pathways, including PI3K-AKT signaling.

The oncogene MYC plays a key role in cancer initiation and progression. Using thousands of CRISPR perturbations, the authors investigate regulators of MYC in six different cancers. These tumor-specific regulators suggest potential therapeutic targets for this oncogene.

Genome-wide analysis identifies variants associated with the volume of seven different subcortical brain regions defined by magnetic resonance imaging. Implicated genes are involved in neurodevelopmental and synaptic signaling pathways.

Polymers are known to spontaneously produce micro- and nanoplastics but the mechanisms by which environmentally-triggered Å-level random bond breaking events lead to the formation of these relatively large fragments are unclear. Here, the authors show that chain scission accumulates in the amorphous phase of a semicrystalline morphology which leads to mechanical failure and the concurrent release of nanoplastics even under quiescent conditions.

The authors analyse tree responses to an extreme heat and drought event across South America to understand long-term climate resistance. While no more sensitive to this than previous lesser events, forests in drier climates showed the greatest impacts and thus vulnerability to climate extremes.

Well-defined multicrystalline multiblock polymers are essential model polymers for advancing the physics of crystallization but due to the different chain properties and incompatible synthetic methodologies, multicrystalline multiblock polymers with more than two crystallites are rarely reported. Here the authors combine polyhomologation, ring-opening polymerization and a catalyst switch strategy to synthesize a pentacrystalline pentablock quintopolymer.

Cost-effective biodiversity monitoring through time is important for evidence-based conservation. Here, the authors show that automated bioacoustics monitoring can be used to track tropical forest recovery from agricultural abandonment, suggesting its use to assess restoration outcomes.

The hippocampus in mammalian brain varies in size across individuals. Here, Hibar and colleagues perform a genome-wide association meta-analysis to find six genetic loci with significant association to hippocampus volume.

The role of non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) in mediating the impacts of drought in tropical trees is unclear. Here, the authors analyse leaf and branch NSC in 82 Amazon tree species across a Basin-wide precipitation gradient, finding that allocation of leaf NSC to soluble sugars is higher in drier sites and is coupled to tree hydraulic status.

A pan-Amazon study of forests shows large variations in drought tolerance traits and finds that forests in regions of pronounced climate change are losing biomass and may be operating beyond their hydraulic limits.

Biomedical image analysis challenges have increased in the last ten years, but common practices have not been established yet. Here the authors analyze 150 recent challenges and demonstrate that outcome varies based on the metrics used and that limited information reporting hampers reproducibility.

Enteric glial cells have tissue-wide immunoregulatory roles through the upregulation of IFNγ-dependent genes both at steady state and after parasite infection, promoting immune homeostasis and CXCL10-mediated tissue repair after pathogen-induced intestinal damage in mice.

Cortex morphology varies with age, cognitive function, and in neurological and psychiatric diseases. Here the authors report 160 genome-wide significant associations with thickness, surface area and volume of the total cortex and 34 cortical regions from a GWAS meta-analysis in 22,824 adults.

Absorption lines of iron in the dayside atmosphere of an ultrahot giant exoplanet disappear after travelling across the nightside, showing that the iron has condensed during its travel.

The photocurrent generated in organic photodetectors and solar cells can be enhanced by increasing light absorption in the active layer. It is now shown that an extended persistence length can increase the oscillator strength of conjugated polymers.

The millimetre image of the Centaurus A nucleus by the Event Horizon Telescope reveals a highly collimated, asymmetrically edge-brightened jet. The source’s event horizon shadow should be visible at terahertz frequencies, consistent with the universal scale invariance of black holes.

Careful selection of Cas13 variants and delivery methods minimizes collateral RNA degradation.

Paul Thompson and colleagues report a genome-wide association study for hippocampal, intracranial and total brain volume. They identify a locus at 12q24 associated with hippocampal volume and a locus at 12q14 associated with intracranial volume.

Contrary to the view that urbanization is a major driver of the global rise in obesity, the global increase in body-mass index is shown to be mostly due to increases in the body-mass indexes of rural populations.

Genome-wide association studies are used to identify common genetic variants that affect the structure of selected subcortical regions of the human brain; their identification provides insight into the causes of variability in brain development and may help to determine mechanisms of neuropsychiatric dysfunction.

The optical properties of two species of localized interlayer excitons in a van der Waals heterostructure are shown to depend on their spin–valley–layer configuration, enabling the identification of the moiré atomic registry and offering insights for engineering quantum states in two-dimensional materials.

Genome-wide analysis of self-reported dyslexia identifies 42 associated loci, including 27 not previously associated with cognitive traits. Dyslexia shows genetic correlation with ambidexterity but not neuroanatomical measures of language-related circuitry.

Ibargüen-González, Heller et al. analyze plasma levels of pancreatic enzymes and inflammatory markers in a retrospective cohort study of 120 COVID-19 patients. Host factor PLAC8 is found to be required for SARS-CoV-2 pancreatic infection.