Volume 572 Issue 7770, 22 August 2019

India’s doctors and its government are at loggerheads over much-needed changes to medical education. Differences must be settled and cool heads must prevail.

Taking a well-earned break will benefit your productivity in the long run, says Jennifer Rohn.

People in many countries generally think their homeland did the most in the Second World War.

Immune cell extrudes a webbing that can encourage the growth of gallstones, a common and painful malady.

A microscope observes a single molecule as it ‘relaxes’ after gaining an electron.

Archaeologists have turned up inscribed bones from a site in northern China previously linked to the ancient hominins.

Cubes made from colourful ‘hydrogels’ are joined together to make a miniature model of the classic puzzle.

Huge amphibians’ engineering works protect their offspring from predators and swift currents.

For a small carbon footprint, a bicycle might be a better choice than one of the battery-powered scooters littering many cities.

The week in science: 16–22 August 2019.

Swabbing infants with mothers’ vaginal bacteria could affect the children’s health, but critics warn of sparse data and high risk.

Alan Cooper, who leads of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, has been stood down pending an investigation.

Canadian telescope finds another eight repeating blasts — energetic events from deep in the cosmos.

Elusive 18-atom ‘cyclocarbon’ could be a step towards molecule-scale transistors.

The country’s artificial-intelligence research is growing in quality, but the field still plays catch up to the United States in terms of high-impact papers, people and ethics.

Two Japanese scientists supply hundreds of laboratories with a prized gem — and are now among the world’s most published researchers.

Better regulation, flight control, batteries and software would improve the range of craft and data quality, argue Nicholas C. Coops, Tristan R. H. Goodbody and Lin Cao.

Anne Harrington finds that a chronicle of syphilis and hysteria blurs body and mind.

Lisa Feldman Barrett ponders Joseph LeDoux’s study on how conscious brains evolved.

Combining the data-analysis tool Starfish with technologies to pinpoint RNA’s cellular locations can add spatial detail to in situ transcriptomics.

Six limiting maxims PhD students should avoid.

Overcoming my initial struggles after leaving China to start my PhD has been like riding a bike.

Carbon has been stored in the organic layers of boreal-forest soils for hundreds of years. An analysis reveals that this carbon might be released into the atmosphere as global warming increases the frequency of wildfires.

A type of immune cell called a CD8 T cell, which usually kills disease-causing agents, has been found instead to suppress self-reactive immune cells, thereby offering protection against an autoimmune disease in mice.

The movement of small droplets on a substrate is governed by surface-tension forces. A technique that can tune the surface tension of robust oxide substrates for droplet manipulation could open up many applications.

An analysis of gut formation in the fruit fly has revealed how gene expression and mechanical forces are coordinated in adjacent populations of cells. The findings highlight the tissue-level control of embryonic development.

How Nature reported early experiments on magnetic data storage in 1969, and an alternative stuffing for lifebelts in 1919.

The tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope has been used to convert a molecular assembly into a 2D polymer and back, at room temperature — revealing how extreme environmental conditions can alter the progress of reactions.

Global satellite tracking of the oceans has revealed a high degree of spatial overlap between where sharks and industrial fishing vessels are found. This finding underscores the need for shark-conservation efforts.

Abiotic processes can mimic or alter the biogenic traces of early life but advances in micro- and nanoscale analyses provide evidence that—with geological contextualization—improves our ability to address this issue.

A global dataset of the satellite-tracked movements of pelagic sharks and fishing fleets show that sharks—and, in particular, commercially important species—have limited spatial refuge from fishing effort.

Tissue shape changes in the posterior endoderm of the early Drosophila embryo are driven by actomyosin contractions emerging from a transcriptional induction followed by a mechanically-driven propagation of RhoI–myosin II activation.

A study of the functional microbiome in a mouse model of ALS shows that several gut bacteria may modulate the severity of the disease.

Activated clonally expanded CD4⁺ T cells display specificity to the myelin peptide MOG, whereas clonally expanded CD8⁺ T cells depend on T cell receptor recognition of unrelated surrogate peptides and have a regulatory function.

The cryo-EM structure of the zebrafish cation–chloride cotransporter NKCC1 reveals the domain organization, ion translocation pathway, ion-binding sites and key residues for binding activity, providing insights into the activity of this family of transporter proteins with key roles in physiology.

Shot-noise measurements in copper oxides reveal paired charge carriers existing in the pseudogap above the superconducting critical temperature, shedding light on the properties of high-temperature superconductivity in these materials.

Large second-harmonic generation is observed in antiferromagnetic bilayers of CrI₃, providing information about the microscopic origin of layered antiferromagnetism and motivating the use of two-dimensional magnets in nonlinear optical devices.

Extraordinarily thick organic light-emitting diodes can be fabricated using hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites as the transport layers, thus relaxing fabrication constraints without affecting their efficiency, voltage requirement or durability.

A method of droplet manipulation is described that uses electrical signals to induce the liquid to dewet, rather than wet, a hydrophilic conductive surface.

Titration gas chromatography is developed as an analytical method of distinguishing between lithium metal and lithium compounds within a cycled battery and assessing the amount of unreacted metallic lithium available.

A stretchable polymer pump that uses electric fields to accelerate ions in dielectric liquids can generate flow even when bent into different conformations, offering applications in soft robotics.

Soil radiocarbon dating reveals that combusted ‘legacy carbon’—soil carbon that escaped burning during previous fires—could shift the carbon balance of boreal ecosystems, resulting in a positive climate feedback.

A framework that includes inequality shows that extreme inequality prevents cooperation, but overall welfare is maximized when endowments and productivities are aligned such that more-productive individuals receive higher endowments.

Spatially resolved transcriptomes of cell populations at defined positions in the early mouse embryo reveal molecular bases of lineage specification and tissue patterning.

Enzymatic cleavage within ubiquitin molecules followed by quantitative mass-spectrometry simplifies complex ubiquitin chains and enables mapping of polyubiquitin architectures.

Loss of p53 in mouse models of breast cancer leads to activation of WNT signalling, which promotes metastatic spread by inducing systemic neutrophilic inflammation.

RNA polymerase II with a hypophosphorylated C-terminal domain preferentially incorporates into mediator condensates, and with a hyperphosphorylated C-terminal domain into splicing-factor condensates, revealing phosphorylation as a regulatory mechanism in condensate preference.