Robust appraisals of climate impacts at different levels of global-mean temperature increase are vital to guide assessments of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The 2015 Paris Agreement includes a two-headed temperature goal: “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 ◦C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 ◦C”. Despite the prominence of these two temperature limits, a comprehensive overview of the differences in climate impacts at these levels is still missing.

New excavations in Liang Bua, where the remains of the ‘Hobbit’ (Homo floresiensis) were discovered, show that this diminutive human species used this cave between 190,000 and 50,000 years ago, and not until as recently as 12,000 years ago as previously interpreted; modern humans have been present in Australia since around 50,000 years ago, so whether Homo floresiensis survived long enough to witness the arrival of modern humans is still an open question.

A tremor source on the San Andreas Fault produced an unusual sequence of low-frequency earthquakes until it was disrupted by the 2004 Parkfield earthquake; the peculiar recurrence pattern has now been modelled, showing that such slip behaviour occurs when the tremor asperity size is close to the critical nucleation size of earthquakes.

Three studies investigate the bacteria in the guts of malnourished children and find that, when this microbiota is transferred into mice, supplements of certain microbes or sugars from human breast milk can restore normal growth.

Data transparency is key to accounting for how local governments and the private sector are contributing to global emissions reduction, say Angel Hsu and colleagues.

By endorsing a limit of 1.5 °C, the climate negotiations have effectively defined what society considers dangerous, says Simon L. Lewis.

As climate change unfolds, weather systems in the United States have been shifting in patterns that vary across regions and seasons. Climate science research typically assesses these changes by examining individual weather indicators, such as temperature or precipitation, in isolation, and averaging their values across the spatial surface. As a result, little is known about population exposure to changes in weather and how people experience and evaluate these changes considered together.

Use of robotic systems for minimally invasive surgery has rapidly increased during the last decade. Understanding the causes of adverse events and their impact on patients in robot-assisted surgery will help improve systems and operational practices to avoid incidents in the future. By developing an automated natural language processing tool, we performed a comprehensive analysis of the adverse events reported to the publicly available MAUDE database (maintained by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) from 2000 to 2013.

Given the continued successes of the world’s lymphatic filariasis (LF) elimination programs and the growing successes of many malaria elimination efforts, the necessity of low cost tools and methodologies applicable to long-term disease surveillance is greater than ever before.

International studies of the health of Indigenous and tribal peoples provide important public health insights. Reliable data are required for the development of policy and health services. Previous studies document poorer outcomes for Indigenous peoples compared with benchmark populations, but have been restricted in their coverage of countries or the range of health indicators. Our objective is to describe the health and social status of Indigenous and tribal peoples relative to benchmark populations from a sample of countries.