Volume 529 Issue 7585, 14 January 2016

Research advances mean that the time is ripe to ratify the ban on testing nuclear weapons.

The periodic table is a public symbol of chemistry. But as it grows larger, we must stress that science is not just about producing lists, says Philip Ball.

A spoof paper about mothers kissing their children’s ‘boo-boos’ draws attention on social media.

Hydrogen bomb debunked; science passport required; and quantum physicist bags award in China.

World’s largest systematic identification project will use smart DNA-testing technology.

Epidemiologist who spearheaded response to outbreak is a popular choice.

Researchers aim to prevent recurrences by finding the virus’s natural host.

Fresh worlds found by K2 mission push beyond original discoveries.

Rumours frustrate physicists in a global competition to understand elusive particles.

Rapid changes in Tibetan grasslands are threatening Asia's main water supply and the livelihood of nomads.

Implicated in everything from traumatic brain injury to learning ability, boredom has become extremely interesting to scientists.

Proposals to bury plutonium from nuclear weapons must address chemical interactions and intrusion risks, say Cameron L. Tracy, Megan K. Dustin and Rodney C. Ewing.

Professional feuds and private oddities abound in a biography of Harrison Dyar, finds William Foster.

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

Linda Partridge examines studies on preventative medicine for the ageing.

A chronic lack of dietary fibre has been found to reduce the diversity of bacteria in the guts of mice. This effect is not fully reversed when fibre is reintroduced, and increases in severity over multiple generations. See Letter p.212

The detection of photons sufficiently energetic to ionize neutral hydrogen, coming from a compact, star-forming galaxy, offers clues to how the first generation of galaxies may have reionized hydrogen gas in the early Universe. See Letter p.178

The formation of blood vessels requires rapid proliferation of endothelial cells. The transcription factors FOXO1 and MYC have been found to regulate the metabolism and proliferation of vascular endothelial cells. See Letter p.216

An equation has been derived that allows the timing of the onset of glaciations to be predicted. This confirms that Earth has just missed entering a new glacial period, and is unlikely to enter one for another 50,000 years. See Letter p.200

Global assessments of variation in plant functional traits and the way that these traits influence competitive interactions provide a launching pad for future ecological studies. See Article p.167 & Letter p.204

The strength of synaptic connections between neurons needs to be variable, but not too much so. Evidence now indicates that regulation of such synaptic plasticity involves a complex cascade of feedback loops.

The authors found that the key elements of plant form and function, analysed at global scale, are largely concentrated into a two-dimensional plane indexed by the size of whole plants and organs on the one hand, and the construction costs for photosynthetic leaf area, on the other.

HIFα transcription factors are highly expressed in cancer stem cells from glioma; DYRK1 kinases inhibit the protein ID2 to modulate the level of HIF2α and the tumorigenic properties of glioblastoma-associated cancer stem cells.

Far-ultraviolet observations of the nearby low-mass star-forming galaxy J0925+1403 show that the galaxy is leaking ionizing radiation with an escape fraction of about 8 per cent, which is sufficient to ionize intergalactic medium material that is about 40 times as massive as the stellar mass of the galaxy.

The age of a young to middle-aged star can be determined from how quickly or slowly it rotates, but the relationship breaks down for old stars; models now show that old stars are rotating much more quickly than expected, perhaps because magnetic winds are weaker and therefore brake the rotation less effectively.

To be able to control the properties of a system that has strong electron–electron interactions using only an external electric field would be ideal, but the material must be thin enough to avoid shielding of the electric field in the bulk material; here pure electric-field control of the charge-density wave and superconductivity transition temperatures is achieved by electrolyte gating through an electric-field double layer transistor in the two-dimensional material 1T-TiSe₂.

An alternative material to activated carbon for water remediation is reported: a porous material based on crosslinked cyclodextrins that is better than activated carbons at adsorbing a range of pharmaceuticals, pesticides and other anthropogenic pollutants.

An iron-catalysed method for the direct ³H labelling of pharmaceuticals by hydrogen isotope exchange using tritium gas is reported; the site selectivity of the iron catalyst is orthogonal to currently used iridium catalysts and allows isotopic labelling of complementary positions in drug molecules.

A critical functional relationship between boreal summer insolation and global carbon dioxide concentration is proposed and tested with simulations; it accounts for the beginning of the past eight glacial cycles and predicts that the next one is unusually far off, even without the effect of anthropogenic emissions.

Data from millions of trees in thousands of locations are used to show that certain key traits affect competitive ability in predictable ways, and that there are trade-offs between traits that favour growth with and without competition.

New excavations in Sulawesi, where in situ stone artefacts associated with fossil remains of megafauna have been recovered from stratified deposits between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, suggest that Sulawesi was host to a long-established population of archaic hominins.

In mice on a low microbiota-accessible carbohydrate (MAC) diet, the diversity of the gut microbiota is depleted, and the effect is transferred and compounded over generations; this phenotype is only reversed after supplementation of the missing taxa via faecal microbiota transplantation, suggesting dietary intervention alone may by insufficient at managing diseases characterized by a dysbiotic microbiota.

The transcription factor FOXO1 is identified as a crucial checkpoint of vascular growth, coupling the metabolic and proliferative activities of endothelial cells.

Epithelial tuft cells are shown to be the source of intestinal interleukin (IL)-25 that is required for activation of type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s), ILC2-regulated tuft and goblet cell expansion, and control of parasite infection.

Epithelial tuft cells secretion of IL-25 is shown to regulate type 2 epithelial responses to helminth parasite infection via an IL-13/IL-4Rα-dependent feedback loop.

Both DNA and RNA molecules have been shown to exhibit catalytic activity, but only the structure of catalytic RNAs has previously been determined; here the structure of an RNA-ligating DNA in the post-catalytic state is solved.

X-ray crystal structures of two distinct steps in the catalytic cycle of non-ribosomal peptide synthetases are described, offering the potential to generate novel products through engineering enzyme activity.

WebX-ray crystal structures are presented of each major step of the assembly-line synthesis by the initiation module of the nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) LgrA; the structures reveal large conformational changes, demonstrating a requirement for NRPSs to be very dynamic.

Cavers, divers and climbers take their science to strange and wonderful places.

Lana Gent manages volunteers, scientists and videographers to bring out the best in emergency medicine.

Hothouse flowers.