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Global Burden of Disease analysis found that in 2023, suboptimal diet was estimated to be responsible for 4 million deaths and 97 million morbidity burdens from ischemic heart disease.

Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

Re-excitation, whereby a single excitation pulse leads to the emission of multiple photons, limits the single-photon purity of quantum emitters. Here, by examining the re-excitation dynamics of a quantum dot under incoherent excitation, the authors resolve spectro-temporal correlations in the emission that can be used to suppress multiphoton noise and boost performance of a single-photon source.

The effects of global biodiversity loss on local plant communities have been equivocal. Across 57,398 European time series, covering > 100 years, local plant diversity gains are often associated with rises in generalist and non-native plants.

When 100 social and behavioural science claims were examined, 34% of reanalyses closely matched the original results, with 74% reaching the same conclusion, revealing limited robustness of single-path analyses and the need to address analytical uncertainty.

Phages install chemically complex DNA hypermodifications as anti-defense strategies. Here, the authors uncover transfer and rearrangement of glycine on dA driven by Mom, a tRNA-dependent DNA aminoacyltransferase encoded by phage Mu.

Authors investigate ancient DNA from animal remains and identify multiple signatures of ancient zoonotic pathogens. They find ancient pathogen genomics from archaeological animal remains may inform zoonotic disease emergence.

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.

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.

The APOE-ε4 allele is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but it is not deterministic. Here, the authors show that common genetic variation changes how APOE-ε4 influences cognition.

SC83288 is an antimalarial candidate in preclinical development. Here the authors show that SC83288 kills malaria parasites by blocking DNA replication, while resistance arises through PfATP6-mediated sequestration of the compound into the endoplasmic reticulum.

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.

Federated learning (FL) algorithms have emerged as a promising solution to train models for healthcare imaging across institutions while preserving privacy. Here, the authors describe the Federated Tumor Segmentation (FeTS) challenge for the decentralised benchmarking of FL algorithms and evaluation of Healthcare AI algorithm generalizability in real-world cancer imaging datasets.

This long-term, large-scale intervention and follow-up MRI study suggests that sustained visceral fat loss, rather than weight loss, is linked to better cognition and attenuation of brain atrophy years later, mainly via improved glycaemic control.

In a phase 3 trial for Huntington’s disease, pridopidine did not meet its primary endpoints but was safe and favored in some prespecified subgroup analyses.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

Engineered mucus-tethering bispecific nanobodies neutralize and entrap viruses to enhance mucosal immunity, preventing influenza infection and limiting SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

In a phase 2 trial evaluating healthy donor fecal microbial transplantation plus either anti-PD-1 in patients with non-small cell lung cancer or anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4 in patients with melanoma, encouraging efficacy was seen in both cohorts, with responses linked to significantly greater loss of baseline bacterial species.

In this Stage 2 Registered Report, Buchanan et al. show evidence confirming the phenomenon of semantic priming across speakers of 19 diverse languages.

The authors use time-resolved scanning near-field optical microscopy to probe the ultrafast excitonic processes and their impact on waveguide operation in transition metal dichalcogenide crystals. They observe significant modulation of the complex index by monitoring waveguide modes on the fs time scale, and identify both coherent and incoherent manipulations of WSe₂ excitonic resonances.

The origin and dispersal of the chicken across Eurasia is unclear. Here, the authors examine eggshell fragments from southern Central Asia with paleoproteomics to identify chicken eggshells, suggesting that chickens may have been an important dietary component as early as 400BCE.

The combination of short-read sequence data, synthetic long reads and physical genome mapping allows for a phased de novo assembly of human genomes.

The impact of variants of uncertain significance (VUS) on protein function and cancer risk remain unclear. Here, the authors focus on the functional impact of VUS of the PALB2 gene and identify defects in DNA damage repair by homologous recombination associated with increased risk of breast cancer.

A highly potent and selective small-molecule catalytic inhibitor of the protein lysine methyltransferase NSD2 shows therapeutic efficacy in preclinical models of KRAS-driven pancreatic cancer and lung cancer.

Lee et al. use an aggregation-prone CLN4 mutant that causes lysosomal damage in neurons and show that in non-neurons, the ubiquitin ligase CHIP prevents CLN4-dependent lysotoxicity via microautophagy.

Inherited mitochondrial DNA mutations can result in diverse clinical phenotypes. Here, the authors characterise a heteroplasmic tRNA^Ala mutation (m.5019A>G) in mice and demonstrate that macrophages carrying this mutation display altered function and metabolism in vitro, along with increased type I IFN release following LPS challenge in vivo.

Hypermutation and microsatellite burden determine responses and long-term survival following PD-1 blockade in children and young adults with refractory cancers resulting from germline DNA replication repair deficiency.

An analysis of the impact of logging intensity on biodiversity in tropical forests in Sabah, Malaysia, identifies a threshold of tree biomass removal below which logged forests still have conservation value.

The vaginal microbiome is a critical determinant of health. Here, the authors present VIRGO2, a gene catalog describing these microbial communities and analyze vaginal metagenomes and metatranscriptomes to derive insights into their function and ecology.

What is the state of trust in scientists around the world? To answer this question, the authors surveyed 71,922 respondents in 68 countries and found that trust in scientists is moderately high.

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.

Infant gliomas behave differently to their childhood or adult counterparts. Here, the authors perform a large-scale genetic analysis of these tumours, revealing genetic alterations which may offer therapeutic opportunities.

Literature produced inconsistent findings regarding the links between extreme weather events and climate policy support across regions, populations and events. This global study offers a holistic assessment of these relationships and highlights the role of subjective attribution.

Here, the authors compared measurements between 34 laboratories from 19 countries, to quantify by mass spectrometry four ceramides of clinical relevance in human blood plasma Standard Reference Materials. The main goals were to evaluate concordance obtained in a large inter-laboratory trial and to report absolute concentrations of four circulating lipids in a publicly available standard.

This Registered Report presents evidence from 87 countries and regions showing that brief emotion-regulation interventions consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

Temporal single-cell RNA sequencing analysis of viral and host transcriptional responses during human cytomegalovirus infection of macrophages and monocytes reveals molecular features influencing distinct infection courses and suggests additional latency reservoirs.

Moscot is an optimal transport approach that overcomes current limitations of similar methods to enable multimodal, scalable and consistent single-cell analyses of datasets across spatial and temporal dimensions.

Zangari et al. show that d-cysteine targets NFS1, thus affecting Fe–S cluster biogenesis and impairing tumour growth.

Genome-wide ancient DNA data from individuals from the Middle Bronze Age to Iron Age documents large-scale movement of people from the European continent between 1300 and 800 bc that was probably responsible for spreading early Celtic languages to Britain.