Volume 584 Issue 7820, 13 August 2020

Pandemic policy must include defining and measuring what we mean by mild infection.

Malaraia parasistes isolated in Rwanda have mutations conferring resistance to a front-line drug.

Earthquake-monitoring stations could also help to monitor the effects of incoming solar particles.

Crystals of physically distanced dye molecules fluoresce brilliantly in a rainbow of colours.

A change in the sex ratio of offspring in the United Kingdom might reflect shifting attitudes about gender.

The latest science news, in brief.

Researchers are redoubling efforts to understand links between biodiversity and emerging diseases — and use that information to predict and stop future outbreaks.

The US National Science Foundation’s new focus on computer science could also put already-under-represented groups at a disadvantage, critics say.

Pioneering guidelines aren’t enough to prevent overseas militaries such as China’s from co-opting the country’s science, say some experts.

One-time head of the US National Science Foundation Rita Colwell speaks out on sexism — and how her experiences as a leader in science can inform pandemic response.

Neuroscientists are scrutinizing huge piles of data to learn how brains create emotions and other internal states such as aggression and desire.

Astrophysicist Katie Mack’s book explores all the ways the cosmos could destroy itself.

Comprehensive fire surveillance will strengthen resilience and adaptation to climate change.

Survey finds that standard metrics of success can’t completely explain why some candidates get offers and others don’t.

Rob Salguero-Gómez shares how he made the most of lockdown by moving a planned laboratory retreat online.

Marine biologist Greg Rouse is elated to have been on a research cruise that discovered the world’s longest creature.

Molecules have previously been made that induce protein destruction inside cells. A new class of molecule now induces the degradation of membrane and extracellular proteins — opening up avenues for drug discovery.

Does the loss of species through habitat decline follow the same pattern whether the area lost is part of a large or a small habitat? An analysis sheds light on this long-running debate, with its implications for conservation strategies.

Stretching the skin of mice reveals that mechanical strain is communicated by a subpopulation of stem cells that proliferate and promote mechanical resistance, and so generate extra skin.

Plots of tropical forest soils were warmed by 4 °C for two years to observe the effects on soil carbon emissions. The increase in efflux of carbon dioxide was larger than expected — a result with worrying implications for climate change.

A strongly lensed galaxy at redshift 4.2 appears to be a dynamically cold disk galaxy, similar to spiral galaxies in the local neighbourhood and weakly affected by extreme physical processes.

A qubit generated and stabilized in a superconducting microwave resonator by encoding it into Schrödinger cat states produced by Kerr nonlinearity and single-mode squeezing shows intrinsic robustness to phase-flip errors.

High-quality rhombohedral graphite films are found to offer an alternative to twisted bilayer graphene as a platform for studying correlated physics in carbon materials.

Buckled monolayer graphene superlattices are found to provide an alternative to twisted bilayer graphene for the study of flat bands and correlated states in a carbon-based material.

An iron complex sequentially activates N₂ and C–H bonds in benzene to form aniline, with coupling achieved through partial silylation of a reduced iron–nitrogen complex and phenyl migration.

A linear relationship between the storage of heat and carbon in global oceans in response to anthropogenic emissions is used to reconstruct the effect of circulation changes on past and future ocean warming patterns.

When tropical forest soils are warmed in situ, they release more CO₂ than predicted by theory, creating a potentially substantial positive feedback to climate change.

Analysis of 123 studies of assemblage-level abundances of focal taxa from fragmented habitats finds that increasing fragmentation has a disproportionately large effect on biodiversity loss, supporting the ecosystem decay hypothesis.

High-resolution maps of DNase I hypersensitive sites from 733 human biosamples are used to identify and index regulatory DNA within the human genome.

An autism-associated mutation in Nlgn3 results in impaired oxytocin signalling in dopaminergic neurons and altered social behavioural responses in mice, and treatment with an inhibitor of MAP kinase-interacting kinases rescues these phenotypes.

Modelling based on pooled data from 11 European countries indicates that non-pharmaceutical interventions—particularly lockdowns—have had a marked effect on SARS-CoV-2 transmission, driving the reproduction number of the infection below 1.

Analyses of COVID-19 infection rates show that non-pharmaceutical interventions achieved large, beneficial and measurable health outcomes in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France and the United States; these results may inform decisions on whether or when these interventions should be deployed, intensified or lifted.

Single-cell analysis in a mouse model of skin stretching shows that stretching causes a transient expansion bias in a population of epidermal stem cells, which is associated with chromatin remodelling and changes in transcriptional profiles.

A mouse model of systemic versus mucosal exposure to microbial taxa reveals that the former provokes a flexible B cell response with a diverse immunoglobulin repertoire, whereas the latter generates a more-restricted response.

The 8-oxoguanine modification of the microRNA miR-1 results in redirected recognition and silencing of target genes and leads to cardiac hypertrophy in mice.

During the activation of mouse macrophages by lipopolysaccharides, histone deacetylase 3 controls inflammatory responses by both repressing and activating gene transcription depending on its differential association with transcription factors.

Lysosome-targeting chimaeras—in which a small molecule or antibody is connected to a glycopeptide ligand to form a conjugate that can bind a cell-surface lysosome-shuttling receptor and a protein target—are used to achieve the targeted degradation of extracellular and membrane proteins.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of apo, agonist- and positive allosteric modulator-bound forms of the GB1–GB2 heterodimer of the metabotropic γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptor shed light on the activation mechanism of this receptor.

The structure of the GABA_B receptor in an inactive state reveals, amongst other features, a latch between the two subunits that locks the transmembrane domain interface, and the presence of large phospholipids that may modulate receptor function.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of heterodimeric and homodimeric full-length GABA_B receptors, combined with cellular signalling assays, shed light on the mechanisms that underpin signal transduction mediated by these receptors.