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This study finds that crowd-sensed plants as living sensors uncover climate and soil patterns in 326 European cities; extend the urban heat island effect to moisture, pH, salinity and disturbance; and show built-up areas homogenize whereas urban forests preserve environmental diversity.

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 cities of the developing world are spectacularly ill-prepared for the explosion in urban living.

In this perspective, the authors propose integrating urban nature and its biodiversity into the 15-minute city concept to meet both human needs and biodiversity conservation goals.

The study reveals that most buildings in eight global cities fail the 3-30-300 benchmark for urban nature, due to insufficient tree canopy. The ‘3’ standard is often met, and the ‘300’ standard is patchy. Cities need better planting conditions and governance to support tree growth.

Great tits hit the high notes to ensure that their mating calls are heard above the city's din.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

The urban-heat-island effect drives community-level shifts towards smaller body sizes; however, habitat fragmentation caused by urbanization favours larger body sizes in species with positive size–dispersal links.

Activities in cities are important drivers of global carbon fluxes. Here the authors trace the carbon metabolism in 16 global cities in terms of both physical and virtual carbon inflows, stock changes and outflows in relation to the supply chains of urban production and consumption and show that the total carbon impacts of global cities are found to be highly varied in either per capita, intensity or density measures.

Analysis of ground-sourced and satellite-derived models reveals a global forest carbon potential of 226 Gt outside agricultural and urban lands, with a difference of only 12% across these modelling approaches.

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.

Wood used in construction stores carbon and reduces the emissions from steel and cement production. Transformation to timber cities while protecting forest and biodiversity is possible without significant increase in competition for land.

Nitryl chloride, an active halogen, can be produced through the night-time reaction of dinitrogen pentoxide with chloride-containing aerosol in the polluted marine boundary, and has been measured at levels that are sufficient to affect the photochemistry of oxidants off the southwestern US coast and near Houston, Texas.

We reconstruct the spatial distribution and timing of wetland loss through conversion to seven human land uses between 1700 and 2020, elucidating the magnitude and land-use drivers of global wetland losses to improve assessments of wetland loss impacts.

Here, using metagenomic profiling in 180 individuals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the authors find associations between the gut microbiome and konzo, a neurodegenerative disease that mostly affects children and is caused by the consumption improperly processed cassava.

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.

This study explores four decades of biodiversity change across the tree of life in Germany’s terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems by sequencing standardized biota samples from a long-term pollution monitoring archive.

A risk-based, spatially explicit analysis of carbon storage in sedimentary basins establishes a prudent planetary limit of around 1,460 Gt of geological carbon storage, which requires making explicit decisions on priorities for storage use.

Species’ traits and environmental conditions determine the abundance of tree species across the globe. Here, the authors find that dominant tree species are taller and have softer wood compared to rare species and that these trait differences are more strongly associated with temperature than water availability.

Wood density is an important plant trait. Data from 1.1 million forest inventory plots and 10,703 tree species show a latitudinal gradient in wood density, with temperature and soil moisture explaining variation at the global scale and disturbance also having a role at the local level.

Schizophrenia (SCZ) risk is influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Here, the authors develop a statistical method for analyzing gene-by-environment effects in SCZ risk across Denmark with fine spatial resolution.

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.

Researchers demonstrate phase-stable sub-cycle self-compressed light transients, as well as their sampling down to half of an optical cycle, and determine their waveform phase offset. They apply the transients to soft X-ray high-harmonic generation and attosecond X-ray absorption spectroscopy.

Some atmospheric pollutants may disrupt chemical communication in insects. Here, the authors show that exposure to elevated ozone disrupts pheromone-mediated mate recognition and increases hybridization in laboratory colonies of four Drosophila species.

Analysis of a global data set of local biodiversity comparisons reveals an average 13.6% reduction in species richness and 10.7% reduction in abundance as a result of past human land use, and projections based on these data under a business-as-usual land-use scenario predict further substantial loss this century, unless strong mitigation efforts are undertaken to reverse the effects.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

Analysis of plastic debris found in surface waters shows that lakes and reservoirs in densely populated and urbanized regions, as well as those with elevated deposition areas, are particularly vulnerable to plastic contamination.

Population growth and associated increases in food and feed demand may drive cropland expansion at the expense of natural area and biodiversity, as well as higher greenhouse gas emissions. This study shows how a more efficient and better targeted use of phosphorus is key to avoiding such environmental problems.

Monkeypox virus genomic data from Nigeria and Cameroon, sampled between 2018 and 2023, indicate that the virus spread through repeated zoonoses in Cameroon, whereas in Nigeria, it spread mainly through human–human transmission, predominantly originating in Rivers State.

Examining drivers of the latitudinal biodiversity gradient in a global database of local tree species richness, the authors show that co-limitation by multiple environmental and anthropogenic factors causes steeper increases in richness with latitude in tropical versus temperate and boreal zones.

Chen et al. show that PEX39 cooperates with PEX7 in the peroxisomal import of proteins containing a PTS2 site and uncover an (R/K)PWE motif in PEX39 and PEX13 that binds to PEX7 and facilitates the import of PTS2-containing proteins.

Analysis of HbA1c and FPG levels across 117 population-based studies demonstrates regional variation in prevalence of previously undiagnosed screen-detected diabetes using one or both measures and suggests that use of elevated FPG alone could underestimate diabetes prevalence in low- and middle-income countries.

Here, Thorsen et al. bridge new and previous results from the COPSAC₂₀₀₀ prospective birth cohort and the later COPSAC₂₀₁₀ cohort, by constructing a combined bacterial pathogen score with implications for the early-life airway microbiota and the risk of asthma later in childhood

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

In this study the authors consider the structural variants (SVs) present within cancer cases of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. They report hundreds of genes, including known cancer-associated genes for which the nearby presence of a SV breakpoint is associated with altered expression.

Chikungunya virus is endemic in Brazil and cases have been rapidly increasing in recent years. Here, the authors describe the expansion of a genomic surveillance program across the country allowing them to characterise the emergence and dispersal of two distinct subclades mainly seeded from the north eastern region.