COVER Tongues are thought to have evolved when vertebrates first moved onto land and could no longer rely on suction to ingest food. Since then, they have helped drive animal diversification by adopting functions as varied as pumping nectar, snagging prey, shaping speech, and, in the case of Australia’s northern blue-tongued skink (Tiliqua scincoides intermedia), startling enemies. See page 786.

Photo: Matthijs Kuijpers/Biosphoto/Minden Pictures

ONLINE COVER A pregnant person checks the pocket watch that tracks the chronicity of their pregnancy while many factors that impact pregnancy progression surround them. Preterm birth is the single largest cause of death in children under 5. While many factors are associated with preterm birth, the biological mechanisms of the disease remain unknown. Espinosa et al. use a machine learning approach to reveal insights into the interplay between biological, phenotypical, and environmental factors contributing to premature and healthy pregnancies. This conceptual contribution paves the way to a comprehensive understanding of pregnancy and therapeutic interventions for its complications.

ONLINE COVER Advances in Understanding Allergic Asthma. This month’s cover features a photograph of a young man using an inhaler. Inhaled drugs are widely used by patients with allergic asthma to treat disease exacerbations after aeroallergen exposure. Alladina and Smith et al. used segmental allergen challenge of volunteers with either allergic asthma or just allergy to compare the responses of airway cells collected 24 hours after intrapulmonary allergen challenge. Single-cell profiling identified distinct cellular circuits in the allergic controls without asthma group that provide clues as to how these individuals can tolerate allergen exposure, avoiding activation of pathogenic T_H2 cells and progression to impaired airway function. The potential application of these findings to the design of therapeutic interventions for asthma patients is discussed in an accompanying Focus by Gay and Nawijn.

ONLINE COVER Special issue on brain-inspired and brain-interfacing robots. The ability of robots to recognize places is crucial for interacting with their environment. Inspired by the multimodal sensory processing by the brain, Fangwen Yu et al. have developed a general place recognition system that relies on multiple sensors, in combination with multimodal hybrid neural network, and neuromorphic computing. The system was deployed on a legged robot and shown to be capable of accurately recognizing places indoors and outdoors. This month’s cover is an image of the place recognition system onboard a legged robot in a forest.

ONLINE COVER This week, Bosseboeuf et al. report that the barrier function and quiescent state of the endothelium are supported by the transmembrane protein NRP1. The image shows rolling leukocytes (cyan) on mesenteric, postcapillary venules from mice with an endothelial cell–specific knockout of NRP1.

ONLINE COVER Combating Glioblastoma. Shown is immunofluorescence of a glioma tumor from a mouse treated with an antibody-cytokine fusion protein, L19TNF, and the alkylating agent chloroethylcyclohexyl-nitrosourea (CCNU). The section was stained for blood vessels (red) and extra domain-B (EDB)-fibronectin (green). Look et al. report both preclinical and clinical treatment of gliomas with combination therapy of CCNU and L19TNF, which targets tumor necrosis factor (TNF) to glioma cells. This combination was able to cure the majority of tumor-bearing mice by increasing immune cell infiltration and necrosis of tumors. In addition, the authors report the outcomes of their first cohort of patients in their Phase 1/2 clinical trial for recurrent glioblastoma (NCT04573192) where three out of five patients have shown a response, supporting continuation of the trial.