Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 12 October 2026 · From issue 51

Multidimensional vulnerabilities of informal settlements in the Urban South

Slums cover 13% of urban land across 1,914 cities, with Africa hit hardest.

Mingxing Chen, Wenming Song et al.

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Also in issue 51 15 papers

Clinical trials of AI chatbots often fail to report key safety and method details.
BMJ
Soil depth, not warming, mainly decided which food sources soil microbes used to break down carbon.
Nature Communications
In mice, joint lining cells train immune cells to calm inflammation, and blocking this made arthritis worse.
Nature Communications
In lab tests, a robot using trial-and-error learning found four new mirror-shaped chemical reactions on its own.
Nature Communications
A far away young galaxy's radio light flickered fast because a narrow jet points almost at Earth.
The Astrophysical Journal
In mice, low activity in a memory brain region weakened recall of linked events over time.
eLife
Tiny teeth and a strong pulling motion let tsetse flies bite almost any animal's skin.
eLife
One signaling pathway helps cancer grow but also helps immune cells fight it better.
eLife
In a lab, four trapped particles stayed linked together for about 10 seconds.
Physical Review Letters
In lab membranes, a gut virus switches from steady gliding to being trapped as it invades.
PNAS Nexus
Tropical Atlantic ocean patterns affect U.S. East Coast sea level as much as northern patterns do.
Geophysical Research Letters
In a wave model, missing shoreline ice made predicted wave energy up to 48% too strong.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Blacklisted Brazilian ranchers dodged penalties by routing cattle sales through other buyers.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
In a lab enzyme, oxygen helped build one exact shape of a carbon-phosphorus molecule.
Science

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