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To mark the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, Nature Climate Change asked experts to reflect on the progress of and barriers to several of its key Articles. They share their thoughts on important policy implications, what has been achieved and missed, as well as future directions.

Even though geologists have rejected the designation of an Anthropocene epoch, the idea of a major planetary transition in the mid-twentieth century remains useful across physical and social sciences, the humanities and policy.

Tiny plastic particles are being found everywhere, including in the human brain. But it is not yet clear which findings can be trusted and what they might mean.

Integrating computational methods with brain-based data presents a path to precision psychiatry by capturing individual neurobiological variation, improving diagnosis, prognosis, and personalized care. This Viewpoint highlights advances in normative and foundation models, the importance of clinically grounded principles, and the role of robust measurement and interpretability in progressing mental health care.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Global Ecosystem Typology has been developed to provide a systematic framework for data on all of Earth’s ecosystems in a unified theoretical context to support biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services.

Whether specialized neuronal firing in the human MTL predicts successful memory encoding remains unknown. Here, the authors find this to be the case for two distinct populations of single neurons responding to items and locations, respectively.

The Red List of Ecosystems is a headline indicator in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This Progress illustrates how the Red List of Ecosystems can be used by Parties to the Framework to contribute to its implementation and monitoring.

Artificial intelligence can help to reduce the impacts of natural hazards, but robust international standards are needed to ensure best practice.

Incoming policies will cause the European Union to harvest more wood, shift one-fifth of cropland to bioenergy and outsource deforestation, analysis shows.

Enough of silos: develop a joint scientific agenda to understand the intertwined global crises of the Earth system.

A group of older women in Switzerland has taken the government to court over its inaction on climate change. Our experience of preparing evidence for the case offers six lessons for researchers.

An article in Molecular Ecology describes the factors shaping microbial eukaryotic populations and their role in the carbon cycle at deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

Analysis of the ranges of nearly 15,000 plant and vertebrate species in the Amazon basin reveals that, from 2001 to 2019, a majority were affected by fire. Drought and forest policy were the best predictors of fire outcomes.

Classical light is as good as quantum light to characterize a quantum channel. This unexpected result has practical consequences that make an experimentalist’s life easier in some situations.

An opportunity to do a visiting fellowship in New Zealand meant Thomas Bennett had to manage his UK research group from afar — and so change his leadership approach.

A meta-analysis of 21 carbon-pricing schemes suggests that the strategy reduces greenhouse-gas emissions. Deciding how high to set prices is the next step — and one that might benefit from the insights of less-aggregated studies in various sectors.

DNA-based logic circuits that function in vitro are constructed according to the principles of digital design

Record-high ocean temperatures, combined with a confluence of extreme climate and weather patterns, are pushing the world into uncharted waters. Researchers must help communities to plan how best to reduce the risks.

An individual focus is needed to assess interconnected threats and build resilience worldwide, urge Jan Willem Erisman and colleagues.

Thomas R. Insel lauds a call for artificial intelligence to give doctors back the freedom to focus on their patients.

Social context affects how we act on issues such as climate change. Policymakers ignore it at their peril, a book argues. By Thomas Dietz.

It is time to weigh up the pros and cons of using genetic engineering to rescue species from extinction, say Michael A. Thomas and colleagues.

Speeding up development of new vaccines won’t help much in the next pandemic, unless world leaders work faster to roll out vaccination globally.

The parasite causing toxoplasmosis can manipulate prey to behave in ways that promote transmission to the parasite’s definitive feline hosts. The first study consistent with this extended phenotype in the wild finds that infected hyena cubs approach lions more closely than uninfected peers and have higher rates of lion mortality.

Stalling the fastest flows of ice into the oceans would buy us a few centuries to deal with climate change and protect coasts, argue John C. Moore and colleagues.

A growing body of literature deals with the application of theories developed in other disciplines to financial institutions, to which a paper in this issue now adds. As outlined here, however, views differ as to its relevance. See Perspective p.351

Thomas Homer-Dixon argues that opinion-makers must demonstrate a better grasp of how societies rise and fall if they are to steer nations successfully through many of this century's major crises.

Thomas Misa ponders a history of computing that focuses firmly on John von Neumann and the 'Princeton crowd'.

Identifying and estimating operative timescales can help win over a skeptical referee, as Tom Dursch recounts.

J. S. Chandan and T. Thomas summarise the treatments for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and how anti-inflammatory medications can have side effects that affect the oral cavity.

Debates over oil-sands infrastructure obscure a broken policy process that overlooks broad climate, energy and environment issues, warn Wendy J. Palen and colleagues.

Analysis of a unique global data set reveals how the species diversity of birds is affected by the properties of archipelagos and offers a way to test an influential theory. Has this improved our understanding of island biodiversity patterns?

A female research group adapted the matchmaking format to make meetings more inclusive.

Working conditions in food systems remain precarious across the globe. Little scientific guidance exists on what works where when it comes to initiatives aimed at addressing this issue. Investments in large-scale, nationally representative agricultural worker data are needed to properly document the scale and nature of working conditions and better guide policy design and implementation.

Nature Biotechnology asks a selection of leaders from across biotech to look at the future of the sector and make some predictions for the coming years.

Thomas R. Insel's biggest lesson from his shift from NIMH director to Silicon Valley entrepreneur: academic and technology company researchers should partner up.

Too much fertiliser in agriculture affects rivers and oceans at large scale. But it turns out that a surprising variety of non-food products is also to blame for impacts on water bodies worldwide.

Today's take on the stem-cell field could recede rapidly in tomorrow's rear-view mirror.

The dynamics of chaotic lasers can be harnessed to create a random-number generator that works at an astonishing rate. Such a generator could be implemented to make storage and transfer of data more secure at very high speeds.