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Natural disasters trigger complex chains of events within human societies 1 . Immediate deaths and damage are directly observed after a disaster and are widely studied, but delayed downstream outcomes, indirectly caused by the disaster, are difficult to trace back to the initial event 1,2 . Tropical cyclones (TCs)-that is, hurricanes and tropical storms-are widespread globally and have lasting economic impacts 3-5 , but their full health impact remains unknown. Here we conduct a large-scale evaluation of long-term effects of TCs on human mortality in the contiguous United States (CONUS) for all TCs between 1930 and 2015. We observe a robust increase in excess mortality that persists for 15 years after each geophysical event. We estimate that the average TC generates 7,000-11,000 excess deaths, exceeding the average of 24 immediate deaths reported in government statistics 6,7 . Tracking the effects of 501 historical storms, we compute that the TC climate of CONUS imposes an undocumented mortality burden that explains a substantial fraction of the higher mortality rates along the Atlantic coast and is equal to roughly 3.2-5.1% of all deaths. These findings suggest that the TC climate, previously thought to be unimportant for broader public health outcomes, is a meaningful underlying driver for the distribution of mortality risk in CONUS, especially among infants (less than 1 year of age), people 1-44 years of age, and the Black population. Understanding why TCs induce this excess mortality is likely to yield substantial health benefits., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Twenty genetic therapies have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to date, a number that now includes the first CRISPR genome-editing therapy for sickle cell disease-CASGEVY (exagamglogene autotemcel, Vertex Pharmaceuticals). This extraordinary milestone is widely celebrated owing to the promise for future genome-editing treatments of previously intractable genetic disorders and cancers. At the same time, such genetic therapies are the most expensive drugs on the market, with list prices exceeding US$4 million per patient. Although all approved cell and gene therapies trace their origins to academic or government research institutions, reliance on for-profit pharmaceutical companies for subsequent development and commercialization results in prices that prioritize recouping investments, paying for candidate product failures and meeting investor and shareholder expectations. To increase affordability and access, sustainable discovery-to-market alternatives are needed that address system-wide deficiencies. Here we present recommendations of a multidisciplinary task force assembled to chart such a path. We describe a pricing structure that, once implemented, could reduce per-patient cost tenfold and propose a business model that distributes responsibilities while leveraging diverse funding sources. We also outline how academic licensing provisions, manufacturing innovation and supportive regulations can reduce cost and enable broader patient treatment., (© 2024. Springer Nature Limited.)

The sea level along the US coastlines is projected to rise by 0.25-0.3 m by 2050, increasing the probability of more destructive flooding and inundation in major cities 1-3 . However, these impacts may be exacerbated by coastal subsidence-the sinking of coastal land areas 4 -a factor that is often underrepresented in coastal-management policies and long-term urban planning 2,5 . In this study, we combine high-resolution vertical land motion (that is, raising or lowering of land) and elevation datasets with projections of sea-level rise to quantify the potential inundated areas in 32 major US coastal cities. Here we show that, even when considering the current coastal-defence structures, further land area of between 1,006 and 1,389 km 2 is threatened by relative sea-level rise by 2050, posing a threat to a population of 55,000-273,000 people and 31,000-171,000 properties. Our analysis shows that not accounting for spatially variable land subsidence within the cities may lead to inaccurate projections of expected exposure. These potential consequences show the scale of the adaptation challenge, which is not appreciated in most US coastal cities., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The article discusses about the research in science done by North American countries. Topics include the researchers and budget allocated for nature science and life science in the U.S. and Canada, National Institutes of Health of the countries, and the research profiles of Harvard University in Massachusetts and University of Toronto in Canada. Several charts of the research efficiency and strengths of U.S. and Canada, and articles published in journals of the universities.

Social capital-the strength of an individual's social network and community-has been identified as a potential determinant of outcomes ranging from education to health 1-8 . However, efforts to understand what types of social capital matter for these outcomes have been hindered by a lack of social network data. Here, in the first of a pair of papers 9 , we use data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook to study social capital. We measure and analyse three types of social capital by ZIP (postal) code in the United States: (1) connectedness between different types of people, such as those with low versus high socioeconomic status (SES); (2) social cohesion, such as the extent of cliques in friendship networks; and (3) civic engagement, such as rates of volunteering. These measures vary substantially across areas, but are not highly correlated with each other. We demonstrate the importance of distinguishing these forms of social capital by analysing their associations with economic mobility across areas. The share of high-SES friends among individuals with low SES-which we term economic connectedness-is among the strongest predictors of upward income mobility identified to date 10,11 . Other social capital measures are not strongly associated with economic mobility. If children with low-SES parents were to grow up in counties with economic connectedness comparable to that of the average child with high-SES parents, their incomes in adulthood would increase by 20% on average. Differences in economic connectedness can explain well-known relationships between upward income mobility and racial segregation, poverty rates, and inequality 12-14 . To support further research and policy interventions, we publicly release privacy-protected statistics on social capital by ZIP code at https://www.socialcapital.org ., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Low levels of social interaction across class lines have generated widespread concern 1-4 and are associated with worse outcomes, such as lower rates of upward income mobility 4-7 . Here we analyse the determinants of cross-class interaction using data from Facebook, building on the analysis in our companion paper 7 . We show that about half of the social disconnection across socioeconomic lines-measured as the difference in the share of high-socioeconomic status (SES) friends between people with low and high SES-is explained by differences in exposure to people with high SES in groups such as schools and religious organizations. The other half is explained by friending bias-the tendency for people with low SES to befriend people with high SES at lower rates even conditional on exposure. Friending bias is shaped by the structure of the groups in which people interact. For example, friending bias is higher in larger and more diverse groups and lower in religious organizations than in schools and workplaces. Distinguishing exposure from friending bias is helpful for identifying interventions to increase cross-SES friendships (economic connectedness). Using fluctuations in the share of students with high SES across high school cohorts, we show that increases in high-SES exposure lead low-SES people to form more friendships with high-SES people in schools that exhibit low levels of friending bias. Thus, socioeconomic integration can increase economic connectedness in communities in which friending bias is low. By contrast, when friending bias is high, increasing cross-SES interactions among existing members may be necessary to increase economic connectedness. To support such efforts, we release privacy-protected statistics on economic connectedness, exposure and friending bias for each ZIP (postal) code, high school and college in the United States at https://www.socialcapital.org ., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

The move from reading to writing the human genome offers new opportunities to improve human health. The United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) Somatic Cell Genome Editing (SCGE) Consortium aims to accelerate the development of safer and more-effective methods to edit the genomes of disease-relevant somatic cells in patients, even in tissues that are difficult to reach. Here we discuss the consortium's plans to develop and benchmark approaches to induce and measure genome modifications, and to define downstream functional consequences of genome editing within human cells. Central to this effort is a rigorous and innovative approach that requires validation of the technology through third-party testing in small and large animals. New genome editors, delivery technologies and methods for tracking edited cells in vivo, as well as newly developed animal models and human biological systems, will be assembled-along with validated datasets-into an SCGE Toolkit, which will be disseminated widely to the biomedical research community. We visualize this toolkit-and the knowledge generated by its applications-as a means to accelerate the clinical development of new therapies for a wide range of conditions.

The social cost of methane (SC-CH 4 ) measures the economic loss of welfare caused by emitting one tonne of methane into the atmosphere. This valuation may in turn be used in cost-benefit analyses or to inform climate policies 1-3 . However, current SC-CH 4 estimates have not included key scientific findings and observational constraints. Here we estimate the SC-CH 4 by incorporating the recent upward revision of 25 per cent to calculations of the radiative forcing of methane 4 , combined with calibrated reduced-form global climate models and an ensemble of integrated assessment models (IAMs). Our multi-model mean estimate for the SC-CH 4 is US$933 per tonne of CH 4 (5-95 per cent range, US$471-1,570 per tonne of CH 4 ) under a high-emissions scenario (Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5), a 22 per cent decrease compared to estimates based on the climate uncertainty framework used by the US federal government 5 . Our ninety-fifth percentile estimate is 51 per cent lower than the corresponding figure from the US framework. Under a low-emissions scenario (RCP 2.6), our multi-model mean decreases to US$710 per tonne of CH 4 . Tightened equilibrium climate sensitivity estimates paired with the effect of previously neglected relationships between uncertain parameters of the climate model lower these estimates. We also show that our SC-CH 4 estimates are sensitive to model combinations; for example, within one IAM, different methane cycle sub-models can induce variations of approximately 20 per cent in the estimated SC-CH 4 . But switching IAMs can more than double the estimated SC-CH 4 . Extending our results to account for societal concerns about equity produces SC-CH 4 estimates that differ by more than an order of magnitude between low- and high-income regions. Our central equity-weighted estimate for the USA increases to US$8,290 per tonne of CH 4 whereas our estimate for sub-Saharan Africa decreases to US$134 per tonne of CH 4 .

Steady improvements in ambient air quality in the USA over the past several decades, in part a result of public policy 1,2 , have led to public health benefits 1-4 . However, recent trends in ambient concentrations of particulate matter with diameters less than 2.5 μm (PM 2.5 ), a pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act 1 , have stagnated or begun to reverse throughout much of the USA 5 . Here we use a combination of ground- and satellite-based air pollution data from 2000 to 2022 to quantify the contribution of wildfire smoke to these PM 2.5 trends. We find that since at least 2016, wildfire smoke has influenced trends in average annual PM 2.5 concentrations in nearly three-quarters of states in the contiguous USA, eroding about 25% of previous multi-decadal progress in reducing PM 2.5 concentrations on average in those states, equivalent to 4 years of air quality progress, and more than 50% in many western states. Smoke influence on trends in the number of days with extreme PM 2.5 concentrations is detectable by 2011, but the influence can be detected primarily in western and mid-western states. Wildfire-driven increases in ambient PM 2.5 concentrations are unregulated under current air pollution law 6 and, in the absence of further interventions, we show that the contribution of wildfire to regional and national air quality trends is likely to grow as the climate continues to warm., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

The article reports on the success of the start-up biotechnology company Moderna Therapeutics of Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2015. Topics discussed include the attraction of investors to the company's mRNA technology, total spendings of the company on research and development, and details of its fundraising efforts. The history of the company is also explored.

Faculty hiring and retention determine the composition of the US academic workforce and directly shape educational outcomes 1 , careers 2 , the development and spread of ideas 3 and research priorities 4,5 . However, hiring and retention are dynamic, reflecting societal and academic priorities, generational turnover and efforts to diversify the professoriate along gender 6-8 , racial 9 and socioeconomic 10 lines. A comprehensive study of the structure and dynamics of the US professoriate would elucidate the effects of these efforts and the processes that shape scholarship more broadly. Here we analyse the academic employment and doctoral education of tenure-track faculty at all PhD-granting US universities over the decade 2011-2020, quantifying stark inequalities in faculty production, prestige, retention and gender. Our analyses show universal inequalities in which a small minority of universities supply a large majority of faculty across fields, exacerbated by patterns of attrition and reflecting steep hierarchies of prestige. We identify markedly higher attrition rates among faculty trained outside the United States or employed by their doctoral university. Our results indicate that gains in women's representation over this decade result from demographic turnover and earlier changes made to hiring, and are unlikely to lead to long-term gender parity in most fields. These analyses quantify the dynamics of US faculty hiring and retention, and will support efforts to improve the organization, composition and scholarship of the US academic workforce., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

The article reports on the statement issued by U.S. President Barack Obama regarding the role of user negligence in the success of a cyberattack, during a visit to Stanford University in California on February 13, 2015. Topics covered include the 2014 hack on the corporate network of Sony Pictures Entertainment, cybersecurity efforts made by the financial services industry, and efforts made by Internet company Google to improve user experience.

The article offers news briefs of events during November 7 to November 13, 2014. On November 7, 2014, Japan resumed nuclear power generation by restarting two reactors on the island of Kyushu. The US Department of Agriculture has decided on November 10 not to regulate the transgenic variety of potato. The US National Institutes of Health has sponsored a trial to research if babies infected by HIV in the womb can be treated with the antiretroviral therapy offered immediately after birth.

The acute clinical manifestations of COVID-19 have been well characterized 1,2 , but the post-acute sequelae of this disease have not been comprehensively described. Here we use the national healthcare databases of the US Department of Veterans Affairs to systematically and comprehensively identify 6-month incident sequelae-including diagnoses, medication use and laboratory abnormalities-in patients with COVID-19 who survived for at least 30 days after diagnosis. We show that beyond the first 30 days of illness, people with COVID-19 exhibit a higher risk of death and use of health resources. Our high-dimensional approach identifies incident sequelae in the respiratory system, as well as several other sequelae that include nervous system and neurocognitive disorders, mental health disorders, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, malaise, fatigue, musculoskeletal pain and anaemia. We show increased incident use of several therapeutic agents-including pain medications (opioids and non-opioids) as well as antidepressant, anxiolytic, antihypertensive and oral hypoglycaemic agents-as well as evidence of laboratory abnormalities in several organ systems. Our analysis of an array of prespecified outcomes reveals a risk gradient that increases according to the severity of the acute COVID-19 infection (that is, whether patients were not hospitalized, hospitalized or admitted to intensive care). Our findings show that a substantial burden of health loss that spans pulmonary and several extrapulmonary organ systems is experienced by patients who survive after the acute phase of COVID-19. These results will help to inform health system planning and the development of multidisciplinary care strategies to reduce chronic health loss among individuals with COVID-19.

An obituary is presented for the organic chemist and Nobel laureate Richard F. Heck.

The article focuses on information on racial bias in U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants. It states that data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act to the NIH extended prior findings revealing racial disparities in NIH grants from 2000 to 2006. It mentions the study found black grant applicants were less likely to be funded during that period, while initial disparities between Asians and whites vanished when controlled for nativity.

The article reports on agricultural research conducted by Sangwon Suh and Yi Yang at the University of California in Santa Barbara which assessed the environmental impact of maize and cotton crops on freshwater ecosystems in the United States.

The article mentions that the U.S. I-Corps, a boot camp for technology-based biomedical start-up firms, has been set up by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to help the biomedical firms face the challenges of drug development. It questions the effectiveness of the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programme, which converts the scientific discoveries into the marketplace products and offers views of I-Corps creator Steve Blank on the same.

Screening mammography aims to identify breast cancer at earlier stages of the disease, when treatment can be more successful 1 . Despite the existence of screening programmes worldwide, the interpretation of mammograms is affected by high rates of false positives and false negatives 2 . Here we present an artificial intelligence (AI) system that is capable of surpassing human experts in breast cancer prediction. To assess its performance in the clinical setting, we curated a large representative dataset from the UK and a large enriched dataset from the USA. We show an absolute reduction of 5.7% and 1.2% (USA and UK) in false positives and 9.4% and 2.7% in false negatives. We provide evidence of the ability of the system to generalize from the UK to the USA. In an independent study of six radiologists, the AI system outperformed all of the human readers: the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC) for the AI system was greater than the AUC-ROC for the average radiologist by an absolute margin of 11.5%. We ran a simulation in which the AI system participated in the double-reading process that is used in the UK, and found that the AI system maintained non-inferior performance and reduced the workload of the second reader by 88%. This robust assessment of the AI system paves the way for clinical trials to improve the accuracy and efficiency of breast cancer screening.

Human achievements are often preceded by repeated attempts that fail, but little is known about the mechanisms that govern the dynamics of failure. Here, building on previous research relating to innovation 1-7 , human dynamics 8-11 and learning 12-17 , we develop a simple one-parameter model that mimics how successful future attempts build on past efforts. Solving this model analytically suggests that a phase transition separates the dynamics of failure into regions of progression or stagnation and predicts that, near the critical threshold, agents who share similar characteristics and learning strategies may experience fundamentally different outcomes following failures. Above the critical point, agents exploit incremental refinements to systematically advance towards success, whereas below it, they explore disjoint opportunities without a pattern of improvement. The model makes several empirically testable predictions, demonstrating that those who eventually succeed and those who do not may initially appear similar, but can be characterized by fundamentally distinct failure dynamics in terms of the efficiency and quality associated with each subsequent attempt. We collected large-scale data from three disparate domains and traced repeated attempts by investigators to obtain National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants to fund their research, innovators to successfully exit their startup ventures, and terrorist organizations to claim casualties in violent attacks. We find broadly consistent empirical support across all three domains, which systematically verifies each prediction of our model. Together, our findings unveil detectable yet previously unknown early signals that enable us to identify failure dynamics that will lead to ultimate success or failure. Given the ubiquitous nature of failure and the paucity of quantitative approaches to understand it, these results represent an initial step towards the deeper understanding of the complex dynamics underlying failure.

The article discusses the uncertainty surrounding the abundance of natural gas to power U.S. economic resurgence. Topics include studies conducted on the supply of gas from shale formations and how much they will last including studies conducted by a team of scientists from the University of Texas, forecasts on gas production from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and graphs showing information on shale gas production levels from regions throughout the U.S.

The article focuses on the resignation of astronomer Geoffrey Marcy following allegations of sexual harassment and the response of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). It states he resigned from the University of California, Berkeley on October 14, 2015 due to a sexual harassment scandal involving multiple students from 2001 to 2010. It mentions only 14 percent of full-time professors at U.S. universities are female and reports after he resigned the AAS issued a statement and is revising its code of ethics.

The article states that Oakland, California, anti-genetically modified (GM) organisms group US Right to Know was seeking the public release of records of 40 researchers affiliated with U.S. public universities under freedom of information laws. According to the article, the group was investigating alleged collusion between science, economics, and communication scholars and the agricultural biotechnology industry. It discusses the release of communications between University of Florida plant scientist Kevin Folta and the St. Louis, Missouri, agricultural firm Monsanto,

The article focuses on the popularity of cloud computing among U.S. scientists. Topics discussed include the benefits posed by the technology to scientists, ways on how scientists can build a cloud environment for their own research group or laboratory, and security concerns about cloud computing. Platforms recommended for scientists are cited.

The article reports on the pressure being faced by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) from lawmakers to revise its agenda as of March 2015. Topics discussed include the agency's spending and efforts by NSF head France Córdova to improve lawmakers' view of the agency. Also cited are the agency's internal challenges such as workload increase that affected staff morale.

The article reports that several Republicans have supported for climate change research in the U.S. Topics noted include the amendment of the idea regarding the link between human activity and climate change, criticism of President Barack Obama's regulations on carbon dioxide and methane emission mitigation, call for a transition to natural gas and renewable resources such as wind and solar, and need to enact climate legislation clarifying the cost of carbon for all energy investments.

The article discusses the pressure on laboratories and scientists to win funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), including laboratory chief Ronald Germain's suggestion for the NIH to make funding decisions based on researchers' past accomplishments versus their future projects.

The article highlights the important role played by scientists in clarifying the impacts of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a proposed trade treaty between the U.S. and Europe. It examines the link between free-trade agreements and economic growth. It also explores the advantages and disadvantages of the TTIP and cites views from TTIP opponents including globalization advocate Jeffrey Sachs and economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

An interview is presented with the Chinese virologist Jin Dong-Yan of the University of Hong Kong, discussing his experiences working in several different national research systems. Questions address topics such as his work in the United States, Hong Kong, and mainland China; the tenure and recruitment policies of the University of Hong Kong; and changes occurring in the Chinese research system.

The article discusses research done by a team led by Craig Jones at the University of Colorado Boulder published in the 2015 issue of "Geology," which reanalysed data on the geology and seismology of the western U.S. concuding that the high elevation of the region could be a result of water percolating up from deep in Earth's crust.