Volume 618 Issue 7966, 22 June 2023

Research-assessment exercises are often misused to judge researchers or cut their funding — changes to the United Kingdom’s scheme are a promising start.

Scientists place a phonon into superposition, paving the way for its use in quantum computers.

Artificial lighting could make some populations of these insects wink out.

Fine particulate pollution help the virus to enter cells, which might explain why influenza is worse when air quality is bad.

Surprisingly high levels of pollution rise from 135 remote lakes, which collectively release as much nitrogen oxides as London.

A pair of studies raises ethical and legal questions about the status of lab-grown human embryo models.

Mouse studies suggest that drugs from LSD to ecstasy renew the brain’s flexibility — but some scientists are sceptical.

The one-of-a-kind specimen will be housed at a museum in Santana do Cariri, near where it was found.

Link to bacterial infection suggests a potential way to treat the painful disorder.

‘Benchmark’ experiment suggests quantum computers could have useful real-world applications within two years.

The statement’s authors say the connection between repeated head injuries and the condition CTE is based on insufficiently rigorous data.

A skull fragment and shin bone suggest that early modern humans might have passed through southeast Asia earlier than thought.

Vaginal seeding is safe and seems to benefit infants delivered by the surgery — but larger trials are needed.

Survey of nearly 13,000 Icelanders pinpoints for the first time a genetic variant that shapes whether a person’s voice sounds high.

Researchers ventured to the world’s most remote island to study how fungi in soils could help to revive damaged ecosystems.

We are all complicit in a global farming industry that puts profit before animal welfare — but establishing what moral principles we should be applying isn’t easy, an update of a classic book shows.

Microchip entrepreneur and architect of Moore’s Law.

Three approaches that aim to cut the harms of agriculture — land sharing, rewilding and organic farming — risk driving up food imports and causing environmental damage overseas. An alternative approach is both effective and cheaper.

To mark Pride month, transgender scientists recount transition experiences as political landscapes turn increasingly hostile in many places.

By modifying the blueprint of life, researchers are endowing proteins with chemistries they’ve never had before.

Through better sensing, Yuhan Hu hopes to bring robots and humans closer together.

Juvenile mice find social experiences more rewarding than do adults. The discovery that psychedelics can re-engage the social neural circuits for varying durations in adults points to a possible therapeutic mechanism for these drugs.

A newly discovered fossil record of steroid molecules, spanning 1.64 billion years, points to ancient organisms in the eukaryotic domain being capable of only early steps in the synthesis of sterol molecules.

Time signals have been transmitted across 300 kilometres with an accuracy and precision limited only by the quantum nature of photons. The feat promises to revolutionize high-precision science using satellites.

Much remains to be discovered about how premalignant cells become cancer cells. An analysis of the development of a type of human leukaemia implicates ultraviolet light in triggering a rare form of cancer.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Energy released from molecules under strain can promote difficult chemical reactions. A practical method has been developed that uses an overlooked, highly strained compound to rapidly construct complex organic products.

The current state of the art of topological phenomena in photonics and acoustics is reviewed and future research directions for valuable applications are discussed.

This Review addresses the current understanding of the roles of tissue-resident macrophages in physiology and disease, including their development and their functions in tissue remodelling and nutrient recycling.

We present James Webb Space Telescope observations that detect the 3.3 μm polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon feature in a galaxy observed less than 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.

The chemical composition of the Galactic halo star J1010+2358 shows extremely low sodium and cobalt abundances, different from most other halo stars, indicative of a very metal-poor star being seeded with elements from a pair-instability supernova.

An experiment with atoms and photons provides a fully tunable and microscopically controllable platform for the experimental study of the interplay of superfluidity and density-wave order.

Laser-based time transfer with near quantum-limited acquisition and timing is demonstrated that can support femtosecond precision over 102 dB link loss, more than sufficient for future time transfer to geosynchronous orbits for future optical clock networks.

We developed large-scale photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers with controlled Hermitian and non-Hermitian couplings inside the photonic crystal and a pre-installed spatial distribution of the lattice constant, which leads to the realization of a continuous-wave brightness of 1 GW cm⁻² sr⁻¹.

Entropic repulsion caused by interfacial orientational fluctuations of cholesterol layers restricts protein adsorption and bacterial adhesion, providing a conceptually new physicochemical perspective on biointerfaces that may guide future material design in regulation of adhesion.

The introduction of chain entanglements into protein-based hydrogels yields hydrogels with high stiffness, high toughness, fast recovery and ultrahigh compressive strength, with mechanical properties close to those of cartilage.

The strained C₆H₆ isomer 1,2,3-cyclohexatriene and its derivatives participate in a host of reaction modes which demonstrate their potential for selective chemical transformations and provide an unconventional entryway to complex scaffolds.

Records show that tropical water availability rather than temperature appears to have been increasingly controlling the interannual variability of the terrestrial carbon cycle over the past 59 years.

Analysis of new geologic and palaeoseismic data using a 3D finite-element model suggests that the past six major earthquakes on the southern San Andreas Fault were probably triggered by highstands of ancient Lake Cahuilla.

Analysis of sedimentary rocks from the mid-Proterozoic interval reveals traces of protosteroids, suggesting the widespread presence of stem-group eukaryotes that predated and co-existed with the crown-group ancestors of modern eukaryotes.

Using two large biobank datasets, a study shows that the accuracy of polygenic scores decreases as a function of relatedness at the individual level when modelling genetic ancestry as a continuum.

We show that the perception of moral decline is pervasive, perdurable, unfounded and easily produced, and suggest that this illusion has implications for research on the misallocation of scarce resources, the underuse of social support and social influence.

Behavioural electrophysiological and transcriptomic studies in mice show that psychedelic drugs reopen the social reward learning critical period and suggest that this involves reorganization of the extracellular matrix.

Insect salivary protein (BISP) targets OsRLCK185 to suppress defence in susceptible plants, whereas in resistant plants BISP binds BPH14 to activate host plant resistance. To restore cellular homeostasis, the resistance mechanism is fine-tuned by selective autophagy.

Senescent melanocytes of skin nevi drive hyperactivation of hair growth through the signalling factor SPP1.

Resident macrophages of the muscularis externa refine the enteric nervous system (ENS) early in life by pruning synapses and phagocytosing enteric neurons, and later switch to a neuro-supportive function, indicating that the ENS is governed by a dedicated population of resident macrophages that adapt to the timely needs of the ENS.

Skin tumour array by microporation (STAMP) captures the dynamic relationships of spatial, cellular and molecular components of tumour rejection and has the potential to translate therapeutic concepts into successful clinical strategies.

Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) arises from clonal (premalignant) haematopoietic precursors in the bone marrow, and BPDCN skin tumours first develop at sun-exposed anatomical sites and are distinguished by clonally expanded mutations induced by ultraviolet radiation.

Suppressor tRNAs adapted to the amino acid that they carry enable readthrough of premature termination codons introduced by nonsense mutations and show potential for the treatment of genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis.

We identify a highly controlled cytosolic surveillance mechanism that integrates independent mitochondrial stress signals to initiate the mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPR), revealing a link between mitochondrial and cytosolic proteostasis.

CRISPR systems lacking Cas4 can use fused or recruited exonucleases for faithful acquisition of new CRISPR immune sequences.

This study reveals how Klotho and heparan sulfate glycosaminoglycan coreceptors enable FGF hormones to induce asymmetric 1:2 FGF–FGFR dimerization mandatory for FGFR kinase activation and hence signalling.