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Stretchable electrodes are essential for wearable electronics and soft robots, yet their performance always degrades under strain. Here, authors use robotics- and machine learning integrated workflow to design microtextured nanocomposites for strain-insensitive gold conductors and zinc batteries.

Global Burden of Disease estimates show that between 1990 and 2023, the prevalence and burden of drug use disorders, inclusive of amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine and opioid use, have been increasing in high-income countries, particularly in the USA.

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study reveal declines in chronic respiratory disease mortality between 1990 and 2023—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the burdens on people affected remain substantial.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

The study reveals maps of the heliosphere’s termination shock strength. Asymmetries in the shock strength across the sky, from nose to tail and port to starboard flanks, are caused by the solar wind and interstellar medium dynamics.

Electrically conductive hydrogels based on conducting polymers often rely on covalent and therefore irreversible crosslinking mechanisms. Here, the authors report a thermo-responsive conducting polymer that undergoes a fully reversible non-covalent crosslinking at 35 °C within less than a minute to form conductive hydrogels.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

In a first-in-human phase 1/2 study in seven patients with sickle cell disease, autologous hematopoietic stem cell lentiviral gene therapy using reduced-intensity conditioning was considered feasible and safe, achieving >80% reduction in the frequency of vaso-occlusive events.

Genome-wide CRISPRi screens for modulators of androgen receptor (AR) protein levels using live-cell quantitative endogenous AR fluorescence reporters identify PTGES3 as a new regulator of AR stability and function in prostate cancer.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, mathematical epidemiologists share their views on what models reveal about how the disease has spread, the current state of play and what work still needs to be done.

Glioblastoma—the deadliest form of brain cancer—alters the calvarial bone and its marrow components, pushing it toward producing more myeloid cells and contributing to an immunosuppressive environment.

Although there are many reports on the development of devices for terahertz signal processing, the possibility of electrical control of the functionality remains elusive. Here, the authors use electrically actuated liquid metal components incorporated into terahertz waveguides for controlling power flow and for frequency filtering.

At terahertz frequencies, link discovery by scanning is impractically slow. Here, the authors propose an alternative, single-shot link-finding method based on a leaky-wave device.

Analyses of 2,658 whole genomes across 38 types of cancer identify the contribution of non-coding point mutations and structural variants to driving cancer.

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.

Telomere shortening is a hallmark of several disorders and aging. Here, the authors uncover that RIOK2 maintains telomerase activity, thereby preventing telomere shortening. Thus, increasing RIOK2 levels may help rescue telomere biology disorders.

The transcription factor CREM is a pivotal regulator of NK cell function, making CREM a valuable target to increase the efficacy of anticancer immunotherapies based on this cell population and chimeric antigen receptors.

Systematic analysis from the Global Burden of Disease study reported that, despite global improvements from 1990 to 2021, dietary iron deficiency-associated disease burden remains high in women, children and residents in low socio-demographic index countries.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

Mechanistic studies in a mouse model of tuberous sclerosis complex reveal that heightened integrated stress response in oxytocin receptor positive neurons disrupts prefrontal cortex function and produces sex-specific anxiety behaviors under social isolation.

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.

Fibrosis of the skin plays an important role in scleroderma. Here the authors demonstrate genetic and epigenetic abnormalities at the centromere that affect the replication of the chromosomes, resulting in activation of pathways involved in inflammation and fibrosis

Tacrolimus is a critical immunosuppressant for liver transplant recipients, but its dosing is challenging due to individual variability. Here, the authors show that a phenotypic personalized medicine approach improves tacrolimus dosing precision, reducing large deviations from target levels and shortening hospital stays in a Phase 2 randomized trial.

Entanglement was observed in top–antitop quark events by the ATLAS experiment produced at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN using a proton–proton collision dataset with a centre-of-mass energy of √s  = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 fb⁻¹.

As wireless communications move towards terahertz frequencies, previously unidentified jamming vulnerabilities are revealed. Novel features not typically observed at lower frequencies are studied, including high directional attacks, beat jamming and asymmetric bit interference.

The authors present SVclone, a computational method for inferring the cancer cell fraction of structural variants from whole-genome sequencing data.

Many tumours exhibit hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypoxic tumours often respond poorly to therapy. Here, the authors quantify hypoxia in 1188 tumours from 27 cancer types, showing elevated hypoxia links to increased mutational load, directing evolutionary trajectories.

Olfactory perception shows marked sexual dimorphism, yet its genetic basis remains underexplored. Here, the authors show sex-specific and shared genetic loci for odour identification, implicating olfactory receptor clusters and links to Alzheimer’s disease risk.

The worldwide distribution and water supply of water towers (snowy or glacierized mountain ranges) is indexed, showing that the most important water towers are also the most vulnerable to socio-economic and climate-change stresses, with huge potential negative impacts on populations downstream.

Enfortumab vedotin (EV) is the current standard treatment for advanced bladder cancer, but resistance typically develops within a year, highlighting the need for new therapies. This study demonstrates that NECTIN4-targeting CAR T cells are effective against bladder cancer, including EV-resistant cells, and their potency can be further enhanced by using rosiglitazone to boost NECTIN4 expression.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

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.

With the generation of large pan-cancer whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing projects, a question remains about how comparable these datasets are. Here, using The Cancer Genome Atlas samples analysed as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the authors explore the concordance of mutations called by whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing techniques.

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.

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.

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.

The second Global Amphibian Assessment finds that the status of amphibians is continuing to deteriorate globally, driven predominantly by climate change, disease and habitat loss.

In somatic cells the mechanisms maintaining the chromosome ends are normally inactivated; however, cancer cells can re-activate these pathways to support continuous growth. Here, the authors characterize the telomeric landscapes across tumour types and identify genomic alterations associated with different telomere maintenance mechanisms.

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.

The characterization of 4,645 whole-genome and 19,184 exome sequences, covering most types of cancer, identifies 81 single-base substitution, doublet-base substitution and small-insertion-and-deletion mutational signatures, providing a systematic overview of the mutational processes that contribute to cancer development.

Machine learning-assisted robots produce MXene aerogels containing cellulose, gelatin, and glutaraldehyde, fabricating 162 compositions. Inverse design from resulting properties affords tailored compression-stable materials for Joule heating.

There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

Whole-genome sequencing data from more than 2,500 cancers of 38 tumour types reveal 16 signatures that can be used to classify somatic structural variants, highlighting the diversity of genomic rearrangements in cancer.

A pan-cancer genomic analysis reports the effects of structural variations on chromatin domains (TADs). Most TAD disruptions do not result in appreciable changes in expression of nearby genes.