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Efforts to discourage new smokers and help people to quit are bringing smoking rates down in many places, but it’s going to take more to put an end to tobacco smoking altogether.

AlphaStar uses a multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm and has reached Grandmaster level, ranking among the top 0.2% of human players for the real-time strategy game StarCraft II.

The study by Gómez et al. of frontline fighters and non-combatants shows that a willingness to fight and die in intergroup conflict is associated with the sacrifice of material concerns for sacred values, and the perceived spiritual strength of in-groups and adversaries.

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).

Giant academic social networks have taken off to a degree that no one expected even a few years ago. A Nature survey explores why.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

US president wants to make room for research to grow in 2013 — but faces an uphill battle.

When the body becomes the target of its own defensive arsenal, medicine must step in.

Samples of different body regions from hundreds of human donors are used to study how genetic variation influences gene expression levels in 44 disease-relevant tissues.

A constellation of laser battle stations in low Earth orbit could intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in their boost phase. If such lasers are available decades hence, they will face fast-burn ICBMs and find their task more difficult. How difficult is shown by an elementary analysis taking into account laser retarget time.

Journals and researchers are under fire for controversial studies using this technology. And a Nature survey reveals that many researchers in this field think there is a problem.

As holidays beckon, Nature's reviewers and editors offer a selection of reading for researchers away from the bench and lecture hall.

During myocardial infarction, cardiac macrophages expand, become activated and play an important role in cardiac repair and remodelling. Here the authors show that integrin α5 is upregulated in infarct macrophages and contributes to myocardial repair, triggering an angiogenic phenotype and protecting from adverse remodelling.

An analysis involving the shotgun sequencing of more than 300 ancient genomes from Eurasia reveals a deep east–west genetic divide from the Black Sea to the Baltic, and provides insight into the distinct effects of the Neolithic transition on either side of this boundary.

Rising sea levels could submerge Mississippi Delta but leave other systems intact.

A zealous focus on discovery should not come at the expense of improving basic intervention.

A case–control study investigating the causes of recent cases of acute hepatitis of unknown aetiology in 32 children identifies an association between adeno-associated virus infection and host genetics in disease susceptibility.

Using data from sixty thousand generations of the E. coli long-term evolution experiment, the authors shed new light on the processes that govern molecular evolution.

A growing underground art movement combines mathematics, technology, stalks and whimsy. Richard Taylor looks forward to a bumper batch of intricate crop patterns this summer.

The influence of climate on premodern civil conflict and societal instability is debated. Here, the authors combine archeological, historical, and paleoclimatic datasets to show that drought between 1400-1450 cal. CE escalated civil conflict at Mayapan, the largest Postclassic Maya capital of the Yucatán Peninsula.

The politics of cancer are becoming increasingly polarised with environmentalists taking one extreme view and industrialists the other. Richard Peto argues that a more dispassionate and disinterested approach is required for a realistic assessment both of the risks from environmental carcinogens and of the preventative regulations needed

Cancer treatments that target the characteristics of an individual's tumour could have a wider impact.

In part two of a series, a pair of researchers race to secure the funding that will keep their operations going.

Modern medicine has brought huge health benefits. Now researchers want to go further.

Integrated data, including 100 human genomes from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Early Bronze Age periods show that two major population turnovers occurred over just 1,000 years in Neolithic Denmark, resulting in dramatic changes in the genes, diet and physical appearance of the local people, as well as the landscape in which they lived.

The current Syrian conflict is considered a major humanitarian crisis. Here, the authors show a decline in population well-being with the onset of the conflict, and show how this decline compares to other populations experiencing wars, civil unrest or natural disasters.

Visualisation tools that use dimensionality reduction, such as t-SNE, provide poor visualisation on large data sets of millions of observations. Here the authors present opt-SNE, that automatically finds data set-tailored parameters for t-SNE to optimise visualisation and improve analysis.

The authors show that rare genetic variants contribute to large gene expression changes across diverse human tissues and provide an integrative method for interpretation of rare variants in individual genomes.

The Dimensions database promises a financial perspective on scholarly literature.

Employers have been slow to adjust to the changes in graduate supply. Soon, with decreasing numbers of school leavers, they may have to.

Geophysicists have come to believe that the Earth was covered with a thick crust more than four billion years ago. New measurements challenge that theory, indicating the importance of crustal destruction in Earth's early history.

Mitochondrial DNA is known to exhibit heterogeneity of variants, even within a single cell. Here, the authors assessed this heteroplasmy of mitochondrial DNA within the UK Biobank cohort and showed that the presence of heteroplasmy and a functional score generated from heteroplasmic SNVs were associated with all-cause mortality and certain cancers.

The importance of appropriate patient selection necessitates novel clinical trial design and biomarker-driven trials to allow delivery of the right drug to the right patient at the right time—personalized cancer medicine. The WIN Consortium promotes collaboration between critical stakeholders and offers diverse populations of cancer patients the opportunity to participate in clinical trials with new drugs and biologics that target their tumor.

A genome-wide association study of critically ill patients with COVID-19 identifies genetic signals that relate to important host antiviral defence mechanisms and mediators of inflammatory organ damage that may be targeted by repurposing drug treatments.

Ordinary baryonic particles account for only one-sixth of the total matter in the Universe, the rest being the mysterious 'dark matter'. This paper presents high-fidelity maps of the large-scale distribution of dark matter, resolved in both angle and depth. The results are consistent with predictions of gravitationally induced structure formation.

Spatiotemporal characterization of microbial diversity and antibiotic resistance in a tertiary-care hospital reveals broad distribution and persistence of antibiotic-resistant organisms that could cause opportunistic infections in a healthcare setting.