Volume 579 Issue 7799, 19 March 2020

Vladimir Putin’s government is strengthening research ties with China. That should not be at the expense of other global links.

We must urgently develop measures to tackle the new coronavirus — but safety always comes first, says Shibo Jiang.

High-speed link in the brain inhibits movement.

Parents who refused to vaccinate their children fostered the spread of a once-vanquished disease.

Hydrogel’s porous structure allows it to blot dirt without eroding paint.

Multiple cavities pit the teeth excavated from a Viking settlement found in modern-day Sweden.

Migrating wildebeest that drown in an African river enrich its waters.

Permanent magnets could help to optimize the geometry of a future fusion reactor.

A study suggests possible ways to prevent drug resistance in ovarian tumour cells.

The latest science news, in brief.

As scientific meetings are cancelled worldwide, researchers are rethinking how they network — a move that some say is long overdue.

The launch is on track for July, as Europe and Russia announce a two-year delay in their journey to the red planet.

With Joe Biden nearly locked in as the Democratic nominee for president, plans to address climate change are starting to take shape from both liberals and conservatives.

Scientists are championing biopesticides and better monitoring — but heavy rains, war and a lack of funding have been hampering efforts to control the biggest outbreak in more than a quarter of a century.

Public institutes are responding to allegations of interference in research by foreign governments, especially China.

Some researchers see promise in planned reforms.

Star field biologist and explorer George Schaller penetrates another isolated wilderness. By Tom McCarthy

A pioneering developmental biologist reflects on an epic journey studying the start of life. By Sarah Franklin

NASA mathematician who calculated trajectories for early space flights.

Nuclear physicist, polymath, disarmament pioneer and government adviser.

System built on short-term contracts and grants causes many to consider leaving.

Rachel Ragnhild Carlson put the skills she acquired as a US government scientist to good use when she started graduate school.

Researchers are finally uncovering the truth about glycans — the sugar-based chains that coat cells and decorate many proteins.

A barrage of fake responses to her online questionnaire prompted psychologist Melissa Simone to ferret out the culprits.

Andreia Martins tracks and monitors golden lion tamarins in Brazil in an effort to rebuild their population.

Neurogenetic tools commonly used in model organisms have now been adapted to investigate feeding behaviour in the fly Drosophila sechellia. The experiments shed light on why this fly is such a fussy eater.

Organic compounds can be synthesized in a continuous flow of solutions, but the need to balance mass flow across multiple reactors complicates the development of such systems. A new platform for flow chemistry addresses this issue.

Cellular stress can result in dysfunction and disease, and mechanisms exist to combat this. Previously unknown steps have been uncovered in a pathway that signals when mitochondrial organelles are dysfunctional.

Interfaces between the tiny crystal grains that make up solid copper have been shown to change from one ordered phase to another, independently of the phase adopted by the crystals, opening up prospects for materials development.

A newly discovered 66.7-million-year-old fossil bird excavated in Belgium provides us with the best evidence so far for understanding when the living groups of birds first evolved and began to diverge.

Study of WSe₂/WS₂ moiré superlattices reveals the phase diagram of the triangular-lattice Hubbard model, including a Mott insulating state at half-filling and a possible magnetic quantum phase transition near 0.6 filling.

Strongly correlated insulating Mott and generalized Wigner phases are detected in WSe₂/WS₂ moiré superlattices, and their electrical properties and excited spin states are studied using an optical technique.

A theoretical framework describing the hydrodynamic interactions between a passive particle and an active medium in out-of-equilibrium systems predicts long-range Lévy flights for the diffusing particle driven by the density of the active component.

A general strategy for the synthesis of two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructure arrays is used to produce high-performance electronic devices, showing the potential of this scalable approach for practical technologies.

Atomic-resolution observations combined with simulations show that grain boundaries within elemental copper undergo temperature-induced solid-state phase transformation to different structures; grain boundary phases can also coexist and are kinetically trapped structures.

An automated synthesis instrument comprising a series of continuous flow modules that are radially arranged around a central switching station can achieve both linear and convergent syntheses.

Coral records indicate that the variability of the Indian Ocean Dipole over the last millennium is strongly coupled to variability in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and that recent extremes are unusual but not unprecedented.

Variation in vegetation and climate affects the long-term changes in bird communities in intensive-agriculture habitats, but not in diversified-agriculture or natural-forest habitats, by changing the local colonization and extinction rates.

A newly discovered fossil from the Cretaceous of Belgium is the oldest modern bird ever found, showing a unique combination of features and suggesting attributes shared by avian survivors of the end-Cretaceous extinction.

A neurogenetic model, Drosophila sechellia—a relative of Drosophila melanogaster that has developed an extreme specialization for a single host plant—sheds light on the evolution of interspecific differences in behaviour.

A quantitative atlas of the transcriptomes, proteomes and phosphoproteomes of 30 tissues of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana provides a valuable resource for plant research.

The gasdermin E protein is shown to act as a tumour suppressor: it is cleaved by caspase 3 and granzyme B and leads to pyroptosis of cancer cells, provoking an immune response to the tumour.

In mouse models of cancer, a biorthogonal chemical system based on desilylation catalysed by phenylalanine trifluoroborate enables the controlled release of gasdermin to induce pyroptosis selectively in tumour cells

A genome-wide CRISPR interference screen shows that a signalling pathway involving OMA1, DELE1 and the eIF2α kinase HRI relays mitochondrial stress to the cytosol to trigger the integrated stress response.

Haploid genetic screening of cells under different types of mitochondrial perturbation shows that a pathway involving OMA1, DELE1 and the eIF2α kinase HRI communicates mitochondrial stress to the cytosol to trigger the integrated stress response.

Single-molecule visualization shows that condensin—a motor protein that extrudes DNA in one direction only—can encounter and pass a second condensin molecule to form a new type of DNA loop that gathers DNA from both sides.

Analyses reveal a previously undescribed transmembrane protein fold in the endoplasmic reticulum-based glucosyltransferase ALG6 and provide a structural basis for understanding the glucose transfer mechanism.

The cryo-electron microscopy structure of the 16-subunit yeast SWI/SNF complex RSC in complex with a nucleosome substrate provides insights into the chromatin-remodelling function of this family of protein complexes.

The cryo-electron microscopy structure of the yeast SWI/SNF complex bound to a nucleosome substrate provides insights into the chromatin-remodelling function of this family of protein complexes and suggests mechanisms by which the mutated proteins may cause cancer.