North Pontic crossroads: Mobility in Ukraine from the Bronze Age to the early modern period.

The North Pontic region, which encompasses present-day Ukraine, was a crossroads of migration, connecting the vast Eurasian Steppe with Central Europe. We generated shotgun-sequenced genomic data for 91 individuals dating from around 7000 BCE to 1800 CE to study migration and mobility history in the region, with a particular focus on historically attested migrating groups during the Iron Age and the medieval period. We infer a high degree of temporal heterogeneity in ancestry, with fluctuating genetic affinities to different present-day Eurasian groups.

100 ancient genomes show repeated population turnovers in Neolithic Denmark.

Major migration events in Holocene Eurasia have been characterized genetically at broad regional scales. However, insights into the population dynamics in the contact zones are hampered by a lack of ancient genomic data sampled at high spatiotemporal resolution. Here, to address this, we analysed shotgun-sequenced genomes from 100 skeletons spanning 7,300 years of the Mesolithic period, Neolithic period and Early Bronze Age in Denmark and integrated these with proxies for diet (C and N content), mobility (Sr/Sr ratio) and vegetation cover (pollen).

The selection landscape and genetic legacy of ancient Eurasians.

The Holocene (beginning around 12,000 years ago) encompassed some of the most significant changes in human evolution, with far-reaching consequences for the dietary, physical and mental health of present-day populations. Using a dataset of more than 1,600 imputed ancient genomes, we modelled the selection landscape during the transition from hunting and gathering, to farming and pastoralism across West Eurasia. We identify key selection signals related to metabolism, including that selection at the FADS cluster began earlier than previously reported and that selection near the LCT locus predates the emergence of the lactase persistence allele by thousands of years.

The Scottish Medical Imaging Archive: 57.3 Million Radiology Studies Linked to Their Medical Records.

MRI, Imaging Sequences, Ultrasound, Mammography, CT, Angiography, Conventional Radiography Published under a CC BY 4.0 license. See also the commentary by Whitman and Vining in this issue.

Patient emergency health-care use before hospital admission for COVID-19 and long-term outcomes in Scotland: a national cohort study.

Background: It is unclear what effect the pattern of health-care use before admission to hospital with COVID-19 (index admission) has on the long-term outcomes for patients. We sought to describe mortality and emergency readmission to hospital after discharge following the index admission (index discharge), and to assess associations between these outcomes and patterns of health-care use before such admissions.

Methods: We did a national, retrospective, complete cohort study by extracting data from several national databases and linking the databases for all adult patients admitted to hospital in Scotland with COVID-19.

Genomes from a medieval mass burial show Ashkenazi-associated hereditary diseases pre-date the 12th century.

We report genome sequence data from six individuals excavated from the base of a medieval well at a site in Norwich, UK. A revised radiocarbon analysis of the assemblage is consistent with these individuals being part of a historically attested episode of antisemitic violence on 6 February 1190 CE. We find that four of these individuals were closely related and all six have strong genetic affinities with modern Ashkenazi Jews.

An extensible big data software architecture managing a research resource of real-world clinical radiology data linked to other health data from the whole Scottish population.

Aim: To enable a world-leading research dataset of routinely collected clinical images linked to other routinely collected data from the whole Scottish national population. This includes more than 30 million different radiological examinations from a population of 5.4 million and >2 PB of data collected since 2010.

DNA preserved in jetsam whale ambergris.

Jetsam ambergris, found on beaches worldwide, has always been assumed to originate as a natural product of sperm whales (Physeteroidea). However, only indirect evidence has ever been produced for this, such as the presence of whale prey remains in ambergris. Here, we extracted and analysed DNA sequences from jetsam ambergris from beaches in New Zealand and Sri Lanka, and sequences from ambergris of a sperm whale beached in The Netherlands.