Volume 558 Issue 7710, 21 June 2018

Women continue to form too small a proportion of this journal’s authors and referees.

Enlarge and better reward efforts that examine past discoveries to set policy and agendas.

Stop saying that publication metrics don’t matter, and tell early-career researchers what does, says John Tregoning.

Loss of reefs would send flood-damage costs soaring.

Chemical analysis shows that mineral grains predate the Solar System.

Humans place a high premium on foods that contain both fats and sugars.

Scientists pinpoint the stem cells that bestow the power of regeneration on planaria.

Lasers offer insight into the heaviest elements.

Large arachnids poke out a leg to test which way the wind blows.

The virus is vulnerable to moderate humidity without the protection of host secretions.

Customized changes to an existing drug could help smokers to quit.

A trove of data offers insights into the the bright jet unleashed by a star’s consumption.

The week in science: 15–21 June 2018.

The restrictions exacerbate what is already a difficult situation for Russian biochemists.

Existing policies to address the issue are ineffective, concludes a long-awaited report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

They fear the online platform will become less open, but other researchers say the buyout could make GitHub more useful.

Some fifteen years after the human genome was sequenced, researchers still can’t agree on how many genes it contains.

Different approach to treatment zeroes in on the silent cells that break off of tumours — and aims to keep them asleep.

As machine learning infiltrates society, scientists are trying to help ward off injustice.

Reward the creation of analyses for policymakers that are inclusive, rigorous, transparent and accessible, urge Christl A. Donnelly and colleagues.

Systematic reviews have transformed medicine, but a more cost-effective means of appraisal is needed for fields in which data are sparse and patchy, argue William J. Sutherland and Claire F. R. Wordley.

Researchers must improve ways to verify weapons declarations and collaborate on nuclear power, argues R. Scott Kemp.

Richard Holmes celebrates Mitchell’s pedagogic fire and salty opinions on the bicentenary of her birth.

A regular pastime can ease mental stress, improve work–life balance and help scientists to reach innovative solutions in their work.

How validating and confirming big data can entirely change your point of view.

Adult stem cells reside in niches that maintain, regulate and protect them. Fresh light has now been shed on how the need for protection has driven changes in the locations of these niches during evolution.

The location of nearly half of the ordinary matter in the Universe is unknown. X-ray observations suggest that this elusive ‘baryonic’ matter is hidden in the filamentary structure of the cosmic web.

Activating immune cells to destroy tumours is an effective strategy for treating an advanced lung cancer — but only for some people. Evidence that this approach has potential in early disease and as a combination therapy has now emerged.

An assessment of the capacity of coral reefs to grow fast enough to keep up with projected rises in sea level finds that most reefs will fall behind if nothing is done to restore them.

Gas transport in nanoscale channels that have perfectly flat walls has been found to be frictionless, challenging the classical theory of gas flow. The findings might enable new devices for gas separation and flow control.

The cellular microenvironment required to sustain adult intestinal stem cells has long been controversial. Cells that release proteins needed for intestinal-tissue renewal have now been defined.

Less sea ice allowed ocean swells to flex weakened ice shelves in Antarctica, contributing to their collapse.

Morphological studies and phylogenetic analyses based on the newly discovered Early Cretaceous eutherian mammal Ambolestes zhoui show that the oldest purported metatherian Sinodelphys is instead a eutherian.

Analyses of current coral reef growth rates in the tropical western Atlantic and Indian Ocean show that few reefs will have the capacity to track sea-level rise projections under Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios without sustained ecological recovery.

Cryo-electron microscopy is used to resolve the structure of human dynamin-related protein 1 co-assembled with its receptor mitochondrial dynamics protein of 49 kDa, along with an analysis of structure- and disease-based mutations.

Observations of two absorbers of highly ionized oxygen in the X-ray spectrum of a quasar account for the missing baryons in the Universe.

Coupling graphene sheets with a silicon nitride ring microresonator allows the nonlinear cavity dynamics to be altered by a gate voltage, resulting in tunable, chip-scale, optical frequency combs.

Highly insulating silicon-based molecules, engineered so that conduction is fully suppressed by σ quantum interference even for molecules less than a nanometre long, could prove useful in molecular-scale electronic circuitry.

Specular scattering of atoms of helium gas flowing through atomically flat, two-dimensional channels results in frictionless gas flow, which is much faster than expected assuming purely diffusive scattering.

The electrointercalation of lithium into van der Waals heterostructures of graphene, hexagonal boron nitride and molybdenum dichalcogenides is studied at the level of individual atomic interfaces.

Radiocarbon dating of sediment cores and ice-penetrating radar observations are used to demonstrate that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has not retreated progressively during the Holocene epoch, but has instead showed periods of retreat and re-advance.

A subset of synaptic proteins are cumulatively phosphorylated during wakefulness and dephosphorylated during sleep, in accordance with sleep need; this may represent a common mechanism underlying regulation of both synaptic homeostasis and sleep–wake homeostasis.

Metagenomic and soil microcosm analyses identify abundant biosynthetic gene clusters in genomes of microorganisms from a northern Californian grassland ecosystem that provide a potential source for the future development of bacterial natural products.

Melanocytes above the haematopoietic niche protect haematopoietic stem cells from ultraviolet-light-induced DNA damage in aquatic vertebrates throughout evolution; this niche moved to the bone marrow during the transition to terrestrial life.

GLI1-positive cells in the colon secrete Wnt ligands and thereby support homeostasis of intestinal stem cells.

A module of co-inhibitory T cell receptors, driven by the cytokine IL-27, is identified in mice that is regulated by the transcription factors PRDM1 and c-MAF.

The kinase Cdk9 and the phosphatase Dis2 regulate the termination of transcription in fission yeast in part by controlling the phosphorylation state of the elongation factor Spt5.

A mechanism for the unfolding of guanine-rich DNA ‘quadruplexes’ by helicases is suggested, based on the structure of a DNA-bound helicase.

Cryo-electron microscopy studies of distinct, catalytically active and inactive filaments of human acetyl-CoA carboxylase 1 reveal the structural basis of its regulation.