Volume 607 Issue 7917, 7 July 2022

European nations led the world in promoting strong climate action. They risk undoing all of that work now that European energy security is at risk.

Better legislation will help all without significantly contributing to climate change.

Physicians show less empathy at the end of a night shift than after a daytime stint — and are less likely to prescribe drugs for treating pain.

Garments laced with strips that flatten and bend help to cool a hot person or warm a cold one — without battery power.

A molecule that can be extracted from the fruit is linked to a decline in fat storage and faster breakdown of sugar in mice.

Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau boast a wide diversity of microorganisms, including species found nowhere else.

Coyotes in isolated Louisiana swamps are found to harbour genetic material from the critically endangered red wolf.

Mortality climbs when either excessive cold or extreme heat sets in, but deaths from the latter are on a path to eclipse those from the former.

The hulking object bounced across the atmosphere like a stone skimming across a pond.

The latest science news, in brief.

Years of studies point to the negative economic and health effects of restricting access to abortions.

African researchers have been warning about monkeypox outbreaks for years. As vaccines are deployed globally, they worry they will be left behind.

COVID-19 vaccines are due for an upgrade, scientists say, but emerging variants and fickle immune reactions mean it’s not clear what new jabs should look like.

US cases of liver inflammation among children have remained flat, but UK cases seem to have risen, leading some to suggest a coronavirus contribution.

Meteorologists are forecasting a third consecutive year of La Niña. Some researchers say similar conditions could become more common as the planet warms.

A measure of last resort got a major workout during the pandemic. Scientists are now trying to determine whether the benefits outweighed the potential damage to public trust.

A friend’s close look at a reclusive physicist and his community.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the week’s best science picks.

Four broad categories capture countries’ political and economic barriers to quit coal. Use these to tailor solutions.

Presenting and networking at events can be daunting for researchers with a stammer or other speech disability. Here’s how colleagues can support them.

Webscraping is a useful tool for gathering data from public websites, but researchers must develop some fundamental software skills to use it.

Doreen Anene works to boost the quality of hens’ eggs and inspire girls to study science.

The deadly spread of cancer occurs predominantly during sleep, as revealed by an analysis of migrating human tumour cells in the bloodstream. What are the implications of this finding for the treatment of cancer?

A mechanism resembling a crankshaft switches the electric polarization of a material in response to changes in an applied magnetic field. The resulting four-state switch is linked to the material’s intriguing topology.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

The sensation of touch-evoked itch is common in people who have chronic itch conditions. Evidence in mice now suggests that the mechanoreceptor protein Piezo1 underlies this sensation.

Enzymes use molecular clusters containing iron and sulfur atoms to bind and ‘fix’ nitrogen gas into a bioavailable form. A synthetic cluster that binds and reduces nitrogen molecules casts light on the mechanism of fixation.

The trigeminal nerve has a key role in migraine. An atlas of cell types and gene-expression profiles for cells in this nerve in mice and humans promises to improve our understanding of head pain.

Ten years since the discovery of the Higgs boson, the exploration of the Higgs sector, as this overview shows, has progressed far beyond original expectations, but many research questions still remain open.

 Rare, converging cold flows gave birth to the massive black holes that were the seeds of the first quasars.

Ten years after the discovery of the Higgs boson, the ATLAS  experiment at CERN probes its kinematic properties with a significantly larger dataset from 2015–2018 and provides further insights on its interaction with other known particles.

The most up-to-date combination of results on the properties of the Higgs boson is reported, which indicate that its properties are consistent with the standard model predictions, within the precision achieved to date.

Heralded entanglement between two independently trapped single rubidium atoms is generated over long telecom fibre links using quantum frequency conversion in an important step towards the realization of large-scale quantum network links.

Vortices in an electron fluid are directly observed in a para-hydrodynamic regime in which the spatial diffusion of electron momenta is enabled by small-angle scattering rather than electron–electron scattering.

The electric polarization of a multiferroic is reversed by the application and subsequent removal of a magnetic field, resulting in topologically protected unidirectional magnetoelectric switching.

Iron atoms in a synthetic metal–sulfur cluster can capture nitrogen and catalyse its silylation, demonstrating successful nitrogen reduction by iron atoms in a sulfur-rich environment.

To perch safely, large birds minimize the distance flown after stalling when swooping up from a dive to a perch, but not the time or energy required.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

Experiments in mice show that the mechanically activated ion channel PIEZO1 is expressed in itch-specific sensory neurons and has a role in transducing mechanical itch.

Global ocean microbiome survey reveals the bacterial family ‘Candidatus Eudoremicrobiaceae’, which includes some of the most biosynthetically diverse microorganisms in the ocean environment.

Isolates of authentic SARS-CoV-2 variants BA.1 and BA.2 exhibit similar infectivity and pathogenicity and show susceptibility to neutralizing therapeutic antibodies and antiviral compounds in mouse and hamster models.

A third dose of an mRNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 results in an expanded B cell repertoire that produces antibodies with increased potency and breadth.

cBAF is a negative determinant of memory T cell fate and the manipulation of cBAF early in T cell differentiation can improve cancer immunotherapy.

The transcription factor NFIL3 acts antagonistically to C/EBP proteins by binding the Zeb2 enhancer to prevent Zeb2 expression and the development of the conventional type 2 dendritic cell lineage.

A newly developed genetically engineered mouse model enables the analysis of specific antigen presentation in vivo, providing insights into the tumour immunopeptidome and cancer progression.

A study of patients with breast cancer and mouse models demonstrates that most circulating tumour cells are generated during the rest phase of the circadian rhythm, and that these cells are highly prone to metastasize.

The BMP inhibitor GREM1 is a key regulator of cellular heterogeneity in pancreatic cancer in human and mouse.

The POU2F3–OCA-T complex is the master regulator of tuft cell identity and a prominent molecular vulnerability of tuft-cell-like small-cell lung cancer.

A new high-throughput assay applied to 1,000 enhancers and 1,000 promoters in human cells reveals how different classes of enhancers and promoters control RNA expression.

Single-molecule spectroscopy and structural studies were used to examine the dynamics of association of eIF1A and eIF5B with the human translation initiation complex and their role in presenting tRNA to the complex to initiate translation.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of a 2.8 megadalton bacterial type IV secretion system encoded by the plasmid R388 and comprising 92 polypeptides provide insights into the stepwise mechanism of pilus assembly.