Volume 527 Issue 7577, 12 November 2015

Proposals for UK higher education contain some positive points amid the financial gloom.

Conflict at the Arecibo Observatory highlights the need for funders to become more flexible.

The continued existence of large stockpiles of legal raw ivory in the country is hampering China’s promises to save the elephant, says Li Zhang.

Research standards will advance the field, proponents say, but critics counter that they will stifle creativity.

Canadian scientists unmuzzled; Manhattan project national park; Google heart-disease boost.

US President Barack Obama rejects pipeline to transport oil from Canada's tar sands to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.

Departure of long-term advocate adds to woes of the financially troubled radio telescope.

A flat budget is one of several possible outcomes that worry researchers.

Multimillion-dollar Breakthrough awards announce winners in physics, life sciences and mathematics.

New prime minister Justin Trudeau gives research a higher profile.

One-year-old girl treated as plans to inject DNA-cutting technology directly into patients' bodies take shape.

Social media is shaking up how scientists talk about gender issues.

Gene-editing technologies have breathed life into the languishing field of xenotransplantation.

Tim Trevan calls on those working with organisms that are hazardous, or could be so, to take lessons from the nuclear industries, hospitals and other sectors that have established a safety culture.

As various advisory bodies, scientific organizations and funding agencies deliberate on genome editing in humans, Debra J. H. Mathews, Robin Lovell-Badge and colleagues lay out some key points for consideration.

Gerard Evan reviews an inspiring, at times frustrating, chronicle of the war on cancer by one of its generals.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

Jennifer Rampling applauds an account of how Johannes Kepler saved his mother from being burned as a witch.

Time-resolved molecular snapshots of the bacterial enzyme AlkD reveal an unprecedented mechanism for the recognition and removal of damaged bases in DNA, with implications for cell biology and cancer therapy. See Letter p.254

A rocky planet close in size to Earth has been discovered in the cosmic vicinity of our Sun. The small size and proximity of the associated star bode well for studies of the planet's atmosphere. See Letter p.204

Reactive oxygen species have been viewed as stress-inducing molecules that promote cancer initiation. But new evidence indicates that oxidative stress can be beneficial — inhibiting the spread of a cancer to other sites. See Article p.186

New evidence suggests that seismic waves from the Chicxulub meteorite impact doubled the eruption rate of lavas on the opposite side of the planet — a combination that led to the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.

Climate change is causing large fish species to move into arctic marine environments. A network analysis finds that these fishes, with their generalist diets, add links to the existing food web that may alter biodiversity and web stability.

Porous solids have many uses in the chemical industry, which has stimulated the development of several generations of such materials. A new generation has now arrived, with the report of permanently porous liquids. See Letter p.216

A quantitative study of sleep patterns in three pre-industrial societies implies that our natural sleep duration is close to seven hours, and that sleep cycles are determined by environmental temperature as well as the light–dark cycle.

An attempt to reconcile the effects of temperature on economic productivity at the micro and macro levels produces predictions of global economic losses due to climate change that are much higher than previous estimates. See Letter p.235

Activation of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex–basomedial amygdala pathway is shown to suppress anxiety and fear-related freezing in mice, thus identifying the basomedial amygdala (and not intercalated cells, as posited by earlier models) as a novel target of top-down control.

Human melanoma cells grown in mice experience high levels of oxidative stress in the bloodstream such that few metastasizing cells survive to form tumours; the rare melanoma cells that successfully metastasize undergo metabolic changes that increase their capacity to withstand this stress, and antioxidant treatments increase metastasis formation by human melanoma cells, while inhibiting antioxidant pathways had the reverse effect.

A CRISPR-Cas9 approach is used to perform saturating mutagenesis of the human and mouse BCL11A enhancers, producing a map that reveals critical regions and specific vulnerabilities; BCL11A enhancer disruption is validated by CRISPR-Cas9 as a therapeutic strategy for inducing fetal haemoglobin by applying it in both mice and primary human erythroblast cells.

The structure of the full-length Slo2.2 Na⁺-activated K⁺ channel is determined by cryo-electron microscopy, revealing features that explain the high conductance and gating mechanism of the Slo K⁺ channel family.

A low-mass star that is just 12 parsecs away from Earth is shown to be transited by an Earth-sized planet, GJ 1132b, which probably has a rock/iron composition and might support a substantial atmosphere.

Spin-entangled states between two neutral atoms in different optical tweezers are prepared by combining them in the same optical tweezer and allowing for controlled interactions, after which the particles are dynamically separated in space and their entanglement is maintained.

Porous materials find use in applications such as gas separation, drug delivery and energy storage, but have hitherto been solid rather than liquid; now a combination of cage molecules and a crown-ether solvent that cannot enter the cage molecules is used to create a porous liquid that can solubilize methane gas better than non-porous liquids.

High-resolution three-dimensional thermomechanical simulations of Earth's lithosphere indicate that mantle plumes could have initiated the first subduction zones, but only in the hotter early Earth for old oceanic plates.

Detection of molecular biomarkers characteristic of beeswax in pottery vessels at archaeological sites reveals that humans have exploited bee products (such as beeswax and honey) at least 9,000 years ago since the beginnings of agriculture.

Salamanders are the only tetrapod that can fully regenerate their limbs and tail, a capacity that might be linked to their unique preaxial mode of limb development; here, data from fossils reveal the existence of preaxial polarity in various amphibians from the Carboniferous and Permian periods, suggesting that salamander-like regeneration is an ancient feature of tetrapods that was subsequently lost at least once in the lineage leading to amniotes.

Economic productivity is shown to peak at an annual average temperature of 13 °C and decline at high temperatures, indicating that climate change is expected to lower global incomes more than 20% by 2100.

In addition to its role in olfaction, Olfr78 is involved in sensing hypoxia.

The drug daclatasvir (DCV), which inhibits the hepatitis C virus (HCV) non-structural protein 5A (NS5A), can successfully reduce viral load in patients; here, a combination of DCV and an NS5A analogue is shown to enhance DCV potency on multiple genotypes and overcome resistance in vitro and in a mouse model.

Treating ovarian cancer in mouse models with inhibitors for the epigenetic regulators EZH2 and DNMT1 increases the expression of the inflammatory chemokines CXCL9 and CXCL10, resulting in enhanced tumour infiltration by effector T cells, and slowed tumour progression.

Crystal structures of the DNA glycosylase AlkD with DNA containing various modified bases show that neither substrate recognition nor catalysis use a base-flipping mechanism; instead, AlkD scans the phosphodeoxyribose backbone for increased cationic charge imparted by the alkylated base, and then uses the positive charge to facilitate cleavage of the glycosidic bond, thus explaining the specificity of AlkD for cationic lesions.

The X-ray crystal structure is presented of a seven-transmembrane eukaryotic SWEET glucose transporter, revealing the link between seven-transmembrane eukaryotic SWEETs and their three-transmembrane bacterial homologues and providing insight into eukaryotic sugar transport mechanisms.

Opportunities abound in the non-profit sector for researchers who seek to follow their passions.

Her job is to get scientific expertise into the heads of decision-makers.

Memory gains.

Shown here are all the countries in the Nature Index that collaborate internationally. They are sized by weighted collaboration score, which is the sum of the weighted fractional counts for each partnership the country has. The top 20 inter-regional collaborations are highlighted, with the thickness of the arrows scaled to show relative strength. Intra-regional partnerships are also coloured. Analysis by Larissa Kogleck 
Visualization by Small Multiples

The small but focused snapshot of research afforded by the Nature Index helps fine-tune analysis of global scientific collaboration, say Jonathan Adams and Tamar Loach.

How high-quality research collaborations are helping countries improve their nascent science infrastructure in different ways.

Links formed by mainland China's large scientific diaspora and its increasing output of high-quality research make it an emerging centre of international collaboration.

Though industry collaboration with academia often happens between neighbours, communication and shared goals outweigh proximity in driving success.

Collaboration may result in higher impact science, but are government initiatives the best way to promote such international and interdisciplinary connections?

A description of the terminology and methodology used in this supplement, and a guide to the functionality available free online at natureindex.com.

Tables are calculated based on collaboration score, which is the sum of the fractional count (FC) for collaborative papers involving the named country and each of its partner countries.

This supplement subscribes to the view that scientific collaborations play an increasingly important role in driving world-leading research. The Nature Index database — with its focus on high-quality science articles — lends itself well to the analysis of collaboration patterns both between institutions and among countries. Nature Index 2015 Collaborationspaints a rich picture of the global research ecosystem, and yields Insights into the power and impact of joint research.