Volume 534 Issue 7609, 30 June 2016

Problems of modern society demand collaborative research.

The perils of the past must not be allowed to happen again

Major reform of education in India should encourage original thinking to boost the nation's research, argues Anurag Chaurasia.

Ill workers rescued from Antarctic station; controversial surgeon Paolo Macchiarini faces manslaughter charges; and China dominates list of fastest supercomputers.

Researchers organize to lobby for science as country prepares for life outside the EU.

The mission will peek through the gas giant’s swirling clouds in search of a planetary core.

Cooler, cloudier summers slow snowmelt in Himalayas

Users urge caution in revamp of service at the heart of physics.

From incubation in a bra to an afterlife under glass, how a cloned sheep attained celebrity status.

Strange signals are bombarding Earth. But where are they coming from?

Stéphane Hallegatte, Katharine J. Mach and colleagues urge researchers to gear their studies, and the way they present their results, to the needs of policymakers.

Marc Fleurbaey and colleagues explain why and how 300 scholars in the social sciences and humanities are collaborating to synthesize knowledge for policymakers.

Ann Finkbeiner examines a study that probes how drones have 'remixed' warfare.

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

Colin Macilwain talks to the curators of the National Museum of Scotland on the eve of a grand expansion.

Theoretical physicist and Higgs-boson pioneer.

Interactions in the gut between host cells and bacteria can determine a state of health or disease. A study investigates how antibiotic treatment can affect host cells in a way that drives growth of pathogenic bacteria. See Letter p.697

Two studies reveal that early-life malfunction in organelles called mitochondria brings about lasting changes in how DNA is packaged. These alterations have consequences for cellular stress responses and organismal longevity.

Decoded and precisely dated information encrypted in stalagmites from a cave in China reveal past climatic changes and provide insight into the complex interactions in today's climate system. See Letter p.640

In some species, cancer cells can be directly transmitted between individuals. An analysis in shellfish now shows that some transmissible cancers can even cross the species barrier. See Letter p.705

The objective of the Paris climate agreement is to limit global-average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to further pursue limiting it to 1.5 degrees Celsius; here, the adequacy of the national plans submitted in preparation for this agreement is assessed, and it is concluded that substantial enhancement or over-delivery on these plans is required to have a reasonable chance of achieving the Paris climate objective.

Records of the Asian monsoon have been extended to 640,000 years ago, and confirm both that the 100,000-year ice age cycle results from integral numbers of precessional cycles and that insolation influences the pacing of major millennial-scale climate events.

A systematic screen identifies FGFR1 signalling reactivation as an adaptive resistance mechanism after MEK inhibition specific for KRAS tumours, which can be targeted by combined inhibition with the clinically approved drugs trametinib and ponatinib.

An improved ATAC-seq approach is used to describe a genome-wide view of accessible chromatin and cis-regulatory elements in mouse preimplantation embryos, allowing construction of a regulatory network of early development that helps to identify key modulators of lineage specification.

A fully formed, Neptune-sized planet is observed orbiting a young star, demonstrating that planets can form in less than 10 million years and may also experience inward migration on these timescales.

The radial velocities of a young star are measured, revealing the presence of a planet of mass about three-quarters that of Jupiter, orbiting its host star very closely, and thus demonstrating that ‘hot Jupiters’ can migrate inwards in less than two million years.

Many proof-of-principle platforms for quantum simulation of spin models have been implemented, but it is difficult to produce a design with sufficient flexibility to realize arbitrary geometries and variable distance; here a platform based on arrays of optical microtraps achieves this flexibility with large atom numbers.

It is an long-standing goal to produce a photonic quantum Hall effect, analogous to the well-known quantum Hall effect for electrons; now an artificial magnetic field for a continuum of photons has been produced, making it possible to observe photonic Landau levels in a photonic quantum Hall material.

Switching of static friction and adhesion of a liquid drop on a corrugated solid boron nitride surface is linked to the intercalation of hydrogen, which changes the electric field of in-plane dipole rings and thus reduces the adsorption energy.

Climate models require an understanding of ecosystem-scale respiration and photosynthesis, yet there is no way of measuring these two fluxes directly; here, new instrumentation is used to determine these fluxes in a temperate forest, showing, for instance, that respiration is less during the day than at night.

The degree of interdisciplinarity in research proposals negatively correlates with funding success across a wide range of research fields.

Here, the circuits underlying the motivational or rewarding component to aggression are deconstructed, showing that an inhibitory projection from the basal forebrain to the lateral habenula bi-directionally controls this aspect of aggression.

Maximum-depth sequencing (MDS), a new method of detecting extremely rare variants within a bacterial population, is used to show that mutation rates in Escherichia coli vary across the genome by at least an order of magnitude, and also to uncover mechanisms of antibiotic-induced mutagenesis.

Antibiotic usage in humans can increase the risk of Salmonella infection by an unknown mechanism; this paper reveals that the antibiotic streptomycin increases the activity of the host-encoded enzyme inducible nitric oxide synthase, this then drives Salmonella expansion by the generation of galactarate — a metabolite normally absent from the gut.

A complex interplay involving Notch- and Erbb2-mediated signalling between cardiomyocytes guides the morphogenesis of the ventricular wall.

Disseminated neoplasias in three species of bivalve mollusc are attributed to transmissible clonal lines, and neoplasias in one species are caused by cross-species transmission of cancer, suggesting that transmissible neoplasia is common in marine species.

Acute protein folding stress in the mitochondrial matrix activates both increased chaperone availability within the matrix and reduced matrix-localized protein synthesis through translational inhibition.

We have a limited understanding of how cells mark and identify newly replicated genomic loci that have a sister chromatid; here, unmethylated K20 in the tail of new histone H4 is shown to serve as a signature of post-replicative chromatin, which is specifically recognized by the homologous recombination complex TONSL–MMS22L.

Translation termination sequences are occasionally bypassed by the ribosome and the resulting proteins can be detrimental to the cell; here it is shown that cells can prevent such proteins from accumulating through peptides that are encoded within the 3' UTR of genes in both humans and C. elegans.

The first high-resolution structure of a human actomyosin complex reveals the interface between F-actin and myosin in near-atomic detail.

Looking for funding? Here's a smart guide for sources off the beaten track, says Ingrid Eisenstadter.

Time to take stock.