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Electrochemical acid-base production has attractive applications in mineral recovery and CO₂ removal, but current membrane-based designs are plagued by resistive losses. The authors report a membrane-less system generating useful acid and base solutions at high rates with less energy.

Thermoelectric materials can convert temperature gradients into electrical potential; however, traditional materials have unfavorable mechanical, optical, and electrical properties for devices. Here, the authors design an ionic hydrogel system optimizing these properties for human-machine interface devices.

Flexible organic electronics could eventually be used to create electronic skin. Films of a pressure-sensitive microstructured elastomer are now used as the dielectric layer in organic field-effect transistors to create highly sensitive devices. The elastomer is also used in a matrix pressure sensor that can detect loads in numerous positions.

In situ methods for water quality monitoring is crucial for global water use and management, though many conventional sensors have slow response time and are non-recyclable. Here, the authors report a recyclable amphiphobic dielectric material for fast monitoring of water pollutants.

Solid-state pressure sensors have performance limitations in liquid environments. Here, the authors design a pressure sensor using solid–liquid–liquid–gas multiphasic interfaces where a trapped air layer modulates capacitance changes with pressure to achieve near-friction-free contact line motions for near-ideal pressure sensing.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

Alternating-current electroluminescent fibres hold promise as light sources for smart textiles and soft machines, yet they suffer from low durability and stability. Here, the authors report a bright, durable electroluminescent fibre that recovers from severing damage and remains stable for months, with omnidirectional magnetic actuation.

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.

Free-standing metallic structures with high conductivities and aspect ratios can be 3D printed from Field’s metal using a direct ink writing method that avoids using external pressure to drive ink through the nozzle.

Continuous monitoring of physiological parameters in clinical practice requires wired connections to the sensors that are attached to or implanted in patients. Here, Chen et al. demonstrate a wireless, millimetre-scale sensor, which can monitor intracranial pressure of mice in real-time.

Federated ML (FL) provides an alternative to train accurate and generalizable ML models, by only sharing numerical model updates. Here, the authors present the largest FL study to-date to generate an automatic tumor boundary detector for glioblastoma.

A transparent electronic skin, composed of an elastomer and an ionic liquid, can autonomously self-heal in both dry and wet conditions due to ion–dipole interactions.

Designing mechanosensory system that detects mechanical contact forces like human skin remains a challenge. Here, the authors present artificially innervated self-healing foams by embedding 3D electrodes for piezo-impedance sensors that can operate in both piezoresistive and piezocapacitive sensing modes to address various proximity and mechanical interactions efficiently.

Stretchable and self-healing light-emitting capacitors operating at low frequency and low voltage have been realized using a transparent elastomeric dielectric with high permittivity.

A supramolecular polymer with embedded nanostructured Ni particles shows mechanical and electrical self-healing capabilities as well as piezoresistive properties, making it a good candidate for electronic skin applications.

A textile metamaterial sensor can wirelessly measure biomarkers—such as heart rate and respiration—in vehicles and shows no accuracy degradation when operating in moving environments.

Inbreeding depression has been observed in many different species, but in humans a systematic analysis has been difficult so far. Here, analysing more than 1.3 million individuals, the authors show that a genomic inbreeding coefficient (FROH) is associated with disadvantageous outcomes in 32 out of 100 traits tested.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

Luis Pérez-Jurado, Stephen Chanock and colleagues detect clonal chromosomal abnormalities in peripheral blood or buccal samples from individuals in the general population. They show that the frequency of such events increases with age and is associated with elevated risk of developing subsequent hematological cancers.

The PSA (KLK3) genetic variant rs17632542 is associated with reduced prostate cancer risk and lower serum PSA levels, although the underlying reasons are unclear. Here, the authors show that this PSA variant reduced proteolytic activity and leads to smaller tumours, but also increases invasion and bone metastasis, indicating its dual risk association depending on tumour context; the variant is associated with both lower risk and poor clinical outcomes.

An analysis of 2,954 genomes from 38 cancer subtypes identified 19,166 retrotransposition events in 35% of samples. Aberrant LINE-1 retrotranspositions can lead to the deletion of tumor-suppressor genes as well as the amplification of oncogenes.

Implanted bioelectronic devices have proven useful for health sensing and therapy, while the interconnection of distributed implants remains challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate direct implant-to-implant wireless networking at the scale of the human body using metamaterial textiles.

Transparent films of carbon nanotubes can accommodate strains of up to 150% and demonstrate conductivities as high as 2,200 S cm⁻¹ in the stretched state.

It is unclear how often genetic mosaicism of chromosome X arises. Here, the authors examine women with cancer and cancer-free controls and show that X chromosome mosaicism occurs more frequently than on autosomes, especially on the inactive X chromosome, but is not linked to non-haematologic cancer risk

Flexible pressure sensors may be key in realising biomedical prostheses and robots that can interact with their environment. Here, Schwartz et al.report an organic thin film pressure sensing device that combines fast response times with low power consumption and cyclic stability.

Mark McCarthy, Michael Boehnke, Andrew Morris and colleagues perform large-scale association analyses using the Metabochip to gain insights into the genetic architecture of type 2 diabetes. They report several new susceptibility loci, including two that show sex-differentiated effects on disease risk.

Energy-efficient and secure wireless body sensor networks can be created by using conductive fabrics that support surface-plasmon-like modes at radio communication frequencies.

A printing technique in which functional particles are directly incorporated into soft polymers using particle engulfment—a process in which particles are spontaneously subsumed by the polymer matrix via surface energy—can be used to create elastic devices with wireless sensing, communication and power transfer capabilities.

Multifilament surgical sutures functionalized with a conductive polymer and incorporating pledgets with capacitive sensors operated via radiofrequency identification can be used to monitor physicochemical states of deep surgical sites.

Solution printing of organic semiconductors could in principle be scaled to industrial needs, yet attaining aligned single-crystals directly with this method has been challenging. By using a micropillar-patterned printing blade designed to enhance the control of crystal nucleation and growth, thin films of macroscopic, highly aligned single crystals of organic semiconductors can now be fabricated.

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

Though wireless near-field communication (NFC) technologies that connect wearable sensors for health monitoring have been reported, the short range of NFC readers limits sensor functionality. Here, the authors report a wireless and battery-free body sensor network with near-field-enabled clothing.

Patricia Munroe, Christopher Newton-Cheh, Andrew Morris and colleagues perform association studies in over 340,000 individuals of European ancestry and identify 66 loci, of which 17 are novel, involved in blood pressure regulation. The risk SNPs are enriched for cis-regulatory elements, particularly in vascular endothelial cells.

Erik Ingelsson and colleagues report a large-scale genome-wide meta-analysis for associations to the extremes of anthropometric traits, including body mass index, height, waist-to-hip ratio and clinical obesity. They identify four loci newly associated with height and seven loci newly associated with clinical obesity and find overlap in the genetic structure and distribution of variants identified for these extremes of the trait distributions and for the general population.

Solution printing is a desirable route for manufacturing organic solar cells, whilst the major challenge lies with morphology control. Here, Diao et al.use a microstructured blade to guide the solution flow during printing, which improves polymer crystallization and the resulting device performance.

Tuning of mechanical properties of single composition hydrogel materials and application in integrated devices remains challenging. Here, the authors introduce a macromolecule conformational shaping strategy that enables mechanical programming of polymorphic hydrogel fibre-based devices.

Core/shell/halfshell semiconductor-superconductor nanowire Josephson junctions are promising building blocks for topological quantum devices. The authors show that their geometry shapes the superconducting transport, with the supercurrent exhibiting magnetic-field oscillations that reflect coherent interference around the shell.

Andrew Morris, Mark McCarthy, Michael Boehnke and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for type 2 diabetes, including 26,488 cases and 83,964 controls from populations of European, east Asian, south Asian and Mexican and Mexican American ancestry. They identify seven loci newly associated with type 2 diabetes and examine the genetic architecture of disease across populations.

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.

Christopher Newton-Cheh and colleagues report a genome-wide association study for blood pressure traits as part of the Global BPgen consortium. They report eight loci with replicated association to systolic and/or diastolic blood pressure, with each also showing association to hypertension.