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Our blogger heads back to civilization — but first, he answers more of your questions.

Data from 12,608 pregnancies across 7 African countries and a simulation model suggest that the total number of malaria-exposed pregnancies across sub-Saharan Africa exceeded 13 million in 2023, and that current prevention measures avoided more than 2 million malaria-related anaemia cases.

Keeping things neat and tidy.

Once in a lifetime.

The US COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub produced medium to long term projections based on different epidemic scenarios. In this study, the authors evaluate 14 rounds of projections by comparing them to the epidemic trajectories that occurred, and discuss lessons learned for future similar projects.

Persistent DNA lesions can occur throughout the human lifespan and can remain in the genome of affected cells for several years and generate a substantial proportion of the mutational burden.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

Strontium isotope analysis can be applied to animal and plant tissues to help determine their provenance. Here, the authors generate a strontium isoscape of sub-Saharan Africa using data from 2266 environmental samples and demonstrate its efficacy by tracing the African roots of individuals from historic slavery contexts.

This study presents a BRET biosensor that measures how anticancer drugs cooperatively engage PRMT5 complexes in cells, revealing how cellular metabolites such as SAM and MTA enhance drug action and enable precision therapies for MTAP-deleted tumors.

Making a connection.

A consensus cell type atlas for the fly brain provides both an intellectual framework and open-source toolchains for brain-scale comparative connectomics.

An expert-elicitation process identifies current methodological barriers for monitoring terrestrial biodiversity, and how technological and procedural development of robotic and autonomous systems may contribute to overcoming these challenges.

Complete sequences of chromosomes telomere-to-telomere from chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan and siamang provide a comprehensive and valuable resource for future evolutionary comparisons.

Bacterial communities are vital for ecosystem services, but their dynamics and functioning are challenging to predict. This study shows that community dynamics are reproducible, but small initial compositional differences can lead to divergent functional outcomes, highlighting key constraints on predictability.

Using well-calibrated statistical methods the authors jointly analyze Undiagnosed Diseases Network genomes, identifying known and novel disease genes. Software is publicly available to support future cross-cohort rare disease discovery efforts.

Nematodes are important parasites of people and animals. Here, the authors study the population structure of a nematode parasite of wild rats finding that it consists of mixtures of mainly asexual lineages widely dispersed across the host population.

Credible sustainability certifications require robust evaluation to ensure trustworthiness; however, judgements of sustainable practices may differ between the practitioners and the certifiers. Stakeholder engagement can help bridge this gap to provide robust certification evaluation.

In individuals with rare, monogenic disorders it often remains challenging to identify the disease-causing genetic variants among numerous potential candidates. Here, the authors develop a neural network ensemble for variant pathogenicity prediction, specifically for this type of disorder.

A high-bandwidth neuromotor interface offers performant out-of-the-box generalization across people.

Targeted spatial transcriptomics mapped olfactory receptor mRNAs to sections of the murine olfactory bulb to generate an interactive, statistical, 3D model of glomeruli locations and identify an ultra-sensitive receptor-odorant relationship.

Analysing camera-trap data of 163 mammal species before and after the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, the authors show that responses to human activity are dependent on the degree to which the landscape is modified by humans, with carnivores being especially sensitive.

Kidney transplantation usually relies on hypothermia to safely preserve the graft. Here, the authors show that keeping kidneys at 37°C, using a machine to supply them with blood, oxygen, and nutrition, is feasible for up to 24 hours, and may be useful for testing and treating them pre-transplant.

Arctic marine ecosystems have experienced significant change through the Holocene. Here, the authors used sedaDNA from Northern Greenland to reconstruct marine mammal occurrence, demonstrating the impact of air temperature and sea ice cover over the past 12000 years.

Disentangling the impacts of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 transmission is challenging as they have been used in different combinations across time and space. This study shows that, early in the epidemic, school/daycare closures and stopping nursing home visits were associated with the biggest reduction in transmission in the United States.

Petrels are wide-ranging, highly threatened seabirds that often ingest plastic. This study used tracking data for 7,137 petrels of 77 species to map global exposure risk and compare regions, species, and populations. The results show higher exposure risk for threatened species and stress the need for international cooperation to tackle marine litter.

Bovine tuberculosis is a major economic burden on the cattle industry, and attempts to control it have been politically controversial; here farm movement and bovine tuberculosis incidence data are used to construct a mechanistic model and tease apart the factors contributing to epidemic bovine tuberculosis spread.

Koster et al introduce a deep reinforcement learning (RL) mechanism designed to manage common-pool resources successfully encourages sustainable cooperation among human participants by dynamically adjusting resource allocations based on the current state of the resource pool. The RL-derived policy outperforms traditional allocation methods by balancing generosity when resources are abundant and applying temporary sanctions to discourage free-riding, ultimately maximizing social welfare and fairness.

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.

MEMS-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are often limited in speed by mechanical resonances. Here the authors report a programmable architecture for PICs which uses mechanical eigenmodes for synchronized, resonantly enhanced optical modulation.

Biotic homogenization, which is increased similarity in the composition of species among communities, is rising due to human activities. Using North American mammal fossil records from the past 30,000 years, this study shows that this phenomenon is ancient, beginning between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago with the extinction of the mammal megafauna.

Antibody mediated immunity to SARS-CoV-2 will affect future transmission and disease severity. This systematic review on antibody response to coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and endemic coronaviruses provides insights into kinetics, correlates of protection, and association with disease severity.

By modelling the radio, optical, UV and X-ray data of the unusually bright cosmological explosion AT 2022cmc, Pasham et al. argue for the presence of a highly collimated jet moving at ≳99.99% the speed of light.

Structure of bones' superficial layers suggests most dinosaurs were still growing when they died.

Here, the authors show that neutralization of human sera from both BNT162b2 vaccine recipients and from convalescent COVID-19 patients is less efficient against SARS- CoV-2 variants B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 and negatively associated with patient age.

Two ‘outrigger’ telescopes were added to CHIME, leading to the localization at detection of FRB 20210603A. The burst originated from deep within the star-forming disk of its host galaxy.

Cold snaps make for unbalanced reptiles.

Kidney injury disrupts the intricate renal architecture and triggers regeneration, inflammation and fibrosis. Here, Polonsky et al. used imaging based spatial transcriptomics (seqFISH) and identified distinct signaling between injured epithelial cells and fibroblasts and initiation of chronic immune responses to kidney injury.

High-performance promoters are needed for gene drives; these are currently lacking in Drosophila melanogaster. Here the authors tested eleven Drosophila melanogaster germline promoters in several configurations and show higher drive conversion efficiency with minimal embryo resistance.

Rift Valley fever is a zoonotic haemorrhagic fever with complex transmission dynamics influenced by environmental variables and animal movements. Here, the authors develop a metapopulation model incorporating these factors and use it to identify the main drivers of transmission in the Comoros archipelago.

Gambiense human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness or gHAT) has been targeted for elimination of transmission by 2030. Here, the authors project impacts of gHAT interventions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and derive a priority list of health zones requiring enhanced control to achieve this target.

The seeding of native species is critical to the success of dryland restoration efforts. Here the authors evaluate success of seeding establishment at 174 sites on six continents, finding that some sites had nearly 100% of species successfully recruit, while 17% of sites had zero seedling success.

Whether Alzheimer’s disease originates in basal forebrain or entorhinal cortex remains highly debated. Here the authors use structural magnetic resonance data from a longitudinal sample of participants stratified by cerebrospinal biomarker and clinical diagnosis to show that tissue volume changes appear earlier in the basal forebrain than in the entorhinal cortex.

Interleukin-7 (IL-7) is a central cytokine in T cell homeostasis. Here the authors show that allelic variation at rs6897932, an autoimmune GWAS risk allele at IL7R, regulates surface and soluble IL-7R in stimulated monocytes, indicating a function of monocytes in IL-7-related autoimmunity.

Jepma and colleagues provide evidence that prior beliefs about pain influence perceived intensity of pain, and the degree of learning about pain intensity. This finding helps to explain why beliefs are often resistant to updating with experience.

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.

The goals, resources and design of the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) programme are described, and analyses of rare variants detected in the first 53,831 samples provide insights into mutational processes and recent human evolutionary history.

Grosmark et al. use simultaneous calcium imaging and electrophysiology to track the formation and long-term evolution of hippocampal memory traces in mice and uncover a role for post-learning reactivation in the formation of spatially uniform cognitive maps.

The study shows that non-linear perceptions of probabilistic rewards explain non-normative information demand in instrumental and noninstrumental conditions, and correlate with personality traits and nonlinearities in risky-choice tasks

Observations from the JWST of the second brightest GRB ever detected, GRB 230307A, indicate that it belongs to the class of long-duration GRBs resulting from compact object mergers, with the decay of lanthanides powering the longlasting optical and infrared emission.