Volume 531 Issue 7592, 3 March 2016

A young global-sustainability platform deserves time to find its feet.

As brain stimulation finds non-medical uses, now is the time to consider its implications.

Primers on various scientific topics could be used across trials to avoid wasting time on debating basic points, argues David Neuberger.

Researchers on social media ask at what point replication efforts go from useful to wasteful.

Italian researchers protest over government support; Illumina launches lawsuit over nanopores; and report published on women in academia.

Scientists push for better monitoring of what remains.

Biotechnology agency wants to upgrade capabilities to kick-start economic growth.

Country’s austerity budget stands in way of law to modernize Soviet-era academy.

Agencies rush to show that outbreak tactics have improved.

Waning warming event studied in unprecedented detail.

Several countries hope to unleash vast natural-gas reserves through fracking, but drilling attempts have been disappointing.

Virus-sized particles that fluoresce in every colour could revolutionize applications from television displays to cancer treatment.

To build sustainability and trust, energy and environment research in Japan must become more interdisciplinary and global, say Masahiro Sugiyama and colleagues.

Mission paves the way for planned €1-billion space observatory.

Andrew Steptoe applauds a cogent exploration of Britain's groundbreaking longitudinal birth-cohort studies.

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

Brian J. Enquist reflects on a blueprint to guide the recovery of life on Earth.

Single-molecule experiments have revealed that chemical reactions can be controlled using electric fields — and that the reaction rate is sensitive to both the direction and the strength of the applied field. See Letter p.88

A large phylogenomics study reveals that the symbiotic event that led to the emergence of organelles known as mitochondria may have occurred later in the evolution of complex cells than was thought. See Letter p.101

The discovery of gravitational waves from a merging black-hole system opens a window on the Universe that promises to test gravity at its strongest, and to reveal many surprises about black holes and other astrophysical systems.

In mice, a high-fat diet has now been found to induce intestinal progenitor cells to adopt a more stem-cell-like fate, altering the size of the gut and increasing tumour incidence. See Article p.53

The development of a radio technique for detecting cosmic rays casts fresh light on the origins of some of these accelerated particles, and suggests that they might have travelled much farther than was previously thought. See Letter p.70

In Hirschsprung disease, the enteric nervous system (ENS) is missing from the distal bowel. It emerges that postnatal transplantation of stem-cell-derived ENS precursors can prevent death in a mouse model of the disease. See Letter p.105

An integrated genomic analysis of 456 human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas identifies four subtypes defined by transcriptional expression profiles and show that these are associated with distinct histopathological characteristics and differential prognosis.

A high-fat diet increases the number of intestinal stem cells in mammals, both in vivo and in intestinal organoids; a pathway that involves PPAR-δ confers organoid-initiating capacity to non-stem cells and induces them to form in vivo tumours after loss of the Apc tumour suppressor.

A combination of X-ray crystallography, electron microscopy, functional assays and time-lapse fluorescence microscopy shows that a protein of previously unknown function, TssA, forms a dodecameric complex that interacts with components of the tube and sheath of the type VI secretion system of bacteria, and that it primes and coordinates biogenesis of both the tail tube and the sheath.

Two crystal structures of the Escherichia coli β-barrel assembly machinery (BAM complex) are presented, one of which includes all five subunits (BamA–BamE), in two distinct conformational states; together with functional assays and molecular dynamics stimulations, these structures help to generate a model for outer membrane protein insertion.

High-resolution radio measurements of air showers—cascades of secondary particles in the atmosphere initiated by cosmic rays—reveal that cosmic rays with energies of 10¹⁷–10^17.5 electronvolts have a mixed composition, with light elements (protons and helium nuclei) making up 80 per cent of their mass.

By coupling donor spins in silicon to a superconducting microwave cavity and tuning the spins to the cavity resonance, the rate of spin relaxation is increased by three orders of magnitude compared to that of detuned spins; in such a regime, spontaneous emission of radiation is the dominant mechanism of spin relaxation.

A surface engineering approach is described that is inspired by the water-condensation capability of the bumps on desert beetles, the droplet transportation facilitated by cactus spines and the slippery coating of the pitcher plant, to produce a structure with many water-harvesting applications.

Hydroxycarbonate minerals such as zincian malachite and aurichalcite are well known precursors to catalysts for methanol-synthesis and low-temperature water–gas shift reactions; here, a supercritical antisolvent method is used to prepare highly stable georgeite—a hydroxycarbonate mineral that has hitherto been ignored because of its rarity, but which is found to be a superior catalyst precursor.

Theory suggests that many chemical reactions (not simply, as is often thought, redox reactions) might be catalysed by an applied electric field; experimental evidence for this is now provided from single-molecule studies of the formation of carbon–carbon bonds in a Diels–Alder reaction.

Residual topography and gravity anomalies reveal a tectonic boundary in northeast Japan, which is proposed to represent the offshore continuation of the Median Tectonic Line; the contrast in frictional properties across this structure may control earthquake behaviour there, as recently demonstrated by the giant 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake.

The brain of the hagfish, a cyclostome related to the lamprey, develops domains equivalent to the median ganglionic eminence and the rhombic lip, resembling the brains of gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates), suggesting that brain regionalization in jawed vertebrates occurred before the divergence of cyclostomes and gnathostomes more than 500 million years ago.

Evidence that among the eukaryotic ancestor genes, those derived from the proto-mitochondrion have the closest evolutionary distances to their bacterial relatives.

A differentiation protocol to obtain enteric nervous system (ENS) progenitors and a range of neurons from human pluripotent stem cells is developed; the cells can migrate and graft to the colon of a chick embryo and an adult mouse colon, including in a mouse model of Hirschsprung disease, in which a functional rescue is observed.

Mutant Kras lung tumours are not a single disease but comprise two classes of tumours with distinct metabolic profiles, prognosis and therapeutic susceptibility, which can be discriminated by their relative mutant Kras allelic content.

The high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy structure of a pre-fusion coronavirus spike trimer from mouse hepatitis virus is presented; the structure reveals architectural similarities to paramyxovirus F proteins, suggesting that these fusion proteins may have evolved from a distant common ancestor.

A 4.0 Å resolution cryo-electron microscopy structure of the pre-fusion form of the trimeric spike from the human coronavirus HKU1 provides insight into how the spike protein mediates host-cell attachment and membrane fusion.

The crystal structure of Schizosaccharomyces pombe guanine nucleotide exchange factor eIF2B, providing a structural framework for the eIF2B-mediated mechanism of stress-induced translational control.

A peer-to-peer website aims to disrupt the author-services industry.

‘Experimental Design Assistant’ helps to give feedback on research plans.

Limited institutional resources mean that single parents often need a network of support to further their scientific careers.

Garen Wintemute has spent his career — and more than US$1 million of his own funds — studying firearm violence.

Let there be sunlight.

As mind sports becomes the new frontier for doping concerns, research is exploring whether users really get any value from 'smart drugs'.

Future generations may have less to fear from cognitive decline thanks to microscopic insights into the ageing brain, and interventions from unexpected quarters.

As neuroscientists explore the therapeutic prospects of brain stimulation, the amateur community are hoping the technology will enhance their mental faculties or well-being.

Thoughtful use of ubiquitous technology can improve mental ability more than drugs and devices, say Nicholas S. Fitz and Peter B. Reiner.

Conflicting results are expected in a young field, but what do you do when even the meta-analyses do not agree?

Consumption of animals helped hominins to grow bigger brains. But in a world rich with food, how necessary is meat?

Social ties go hand-in-hand with cognitive health. Now researchers are trying to determine why engaging with others helps to keep the brain healthy.

Before data were so abundant, computer models of the brain were simple. Information is now much more plentiful — but some argue that models should remain uncomplicated.

Stress can have a negative influence on the human brain, but increasingly it is the ability to withstand severe stress that is the focus of research.