Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 24 August 2026 · From issue 26

Shifting gears to power human walking

Small ankle muscles power a bigger share of human walking than scientists thought.

Jack A. Martin, Lauren Welte et al.

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Also in issue 26 15 papers

About 63% of river fish will face more lasting heat barriers under high pollution levels.
Nature Climate Change
Stillbirth and newborn death rates fell over time, but poorer families still face higher risks.
PLOS Medicine
Cause-and-effect wording in social science studies tripled from 2000 to 2024, even without proof of causation.
Nature Human Behaviour
A bacterial DNA-cutting tool's exact shape reveals how it grabs and inserts new DNA.
Nature Communications
In a lab, atoms near a tipping point predicted future data values more accurately.
Nature Communications
A broken cleanup system lets cell "power plant" signals trigger false virus alarms and inflammation.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Warmer water did not hurt baby tuna. They grew faster after switching food sources.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
In a computer model, random noise alone explains how solar quiet spells start and stop.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
A heat-to-electricity material aged on its own after two years in sealed, room-temperature storage.
Physical Review X
Ocean heat storage and ice sheet growth explain Earth's ancient energy imbalance, over 150,000 years.
Science Advances
A pooling method cuts needed lab tests by 60 to 93 percent across several experiment types.
Nature Communications
In frozen cell samples, a 3 degree tilt step gave the sharpest 3D images with the least wasted effort.
eLife
One wrong letter in a target RNA freezes a gene-cutting tool without stopping it from grabbing on.
Science Advances
In mice, a pill blocked fat production and burned more energy to fight obesity.
Science Advances

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