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A large yellow mirror made up of many hexagons in a honey comb pattern makes up part of the James Webb telescope

The James Webb telescope. Its mirror and sunshield will be folded up during launch.Credit: NASA

2021: science to watch out for

This year looks set to be a pivotal one in the fight against climate change. We also expect to hear a major decision for the Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab and see the long-awaited launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. Several more trials of COVID vaccines will announce their results, and a task force established by the World Health Organization will head to China to try to identify the source of the pandemic.

Nature | 6 min read

Biden’s science team shapes up

As US president-elect Joe Biden announces his advisers and agency heads, Nature’s guide tracks the appointees who matter most to science.

• Veteran environmental regulator Michael Regan will lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

• Xavier Becerra, who pushed legal routes to environmental justice as attorney-general of California, will head the Department of Health and Human Services — which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.

• Renowned HIV researcher Rochelle Walensky, Biden’s pick for the next head of the CDC, has emphasized the need for science-based decision-making in the pandemic.

• In newly created roles, former secretary of state John Kerry will serve as climate envoy, leading the administration’s effort to reintegrate the country into the Paris climate agreement. And Gina McCarthy, a staunch environmentalist and former EPA head, will be the US climate czar. “What we were looking for is a White House structure that could rapidly mobilize the entire government to act on climate change,” says environmental consultant Jeremy Symons, who is part of an independent group of academics, policy specialists and former government officials that has crafted a blueprint for federal climate action. “There’s no question that president-elect Biden is exceeding our expectations.”

Nature | 7 min read & Nature | 6 min read (on Regan and the EPA) & Nature | 5 min read (on Walensky and the CDC)

NeurIPS takes steps to improve AI ethics

The Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) meeting is tackling the thorny issue of ethics in artificial-intelligence (AI) research. Last month, the conference required presenters to submit a statement on the broader impact their research could have on society, including any possible negative effects. The organizers also appointed a panel of reviewers to scrutinize papers that raised ethical concerns — a process that could lead to rejection.

Nature | 6 min read

COVID-19 vaccine update

What the data say about border closures

After countries in Europe rushed to close their borders to the United Kingdom to prevent transmission of a new — and potentially more transmissible — variant of SARS-CoV-2, research has estimated the effect of international travel restrictions on COVID-19 spread earlier in the pandemic. Models have found that strict border closures could have helped to limit viral transmission in the pandemic’s early days. But once the virus started spreading in other countries, border closures provided little benefit.

Nature | 5 min read

Reference: medRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed) & Science paper & The Lancet paper

Science grapples with fast-spreading strain

Scientists are racing to understand a group of mutations in SARS-CoV-2 that seems to make the virus more transmissible. The variant, named B.1.1.7, was identified in early December and seems to be contributing to an explosion in infections in the United Kingdom. The country has one of the world’s most comprehensive genomic surveillance systems, which helped it to pinpoint the issue. Scientists are cautiously optimistic that the strain will not impede the effectiveness of vaccines, but many questions remain about how much more infectious the variant is.

Science | 8 min read

Britain changes tack on vaccine roll-out

Facing rising infections and the prospect of ever-tightening lockdowns, the United Kingdom will delay the second dose of both the BioNtech–Pfizer and AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccines. The change — from 21 days between doses to 12 weeks — will allow more people to get the protection of at least one dose.Some scientists have raised concerns that the plan does not replicate the conditions tested in efficacy trials. Others worry that the approach could foster vaccine-resistant forms of the virus by releasing many people with incomplete protection into a community swamped with SARS-CoV-2.

STAT | 8 min read

Features & opinion

Uninterested in prizes, he won the Nobel

Particle physicist Jack Steinberger, who has died aged 99, “was admired for his instinct and prowess as an experimental physicist, his intellect as a teacher and supervisor, and for being a great friend,” writes science writer Christine Sutton. Steinberger shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988 (with Melvin Schwartz and Leon Lederman) for a 1962 experiment that revealed the existence of two distinct types of an enigmatic particle: the neutrino. But Steinberger, who fled Nazi Germany for Chicago in 1934, was uninterested in prizes and often reiterated his belief that “the pretension that some of us are better than others [is not] a good thing”.

Nature | 5 min read

All about immunization

Plenty of infographics smooth the way of a rigorous but very readable review of the history, development and impact of vaccines. The authors explore the immunological basis of immunization, how herd immunity works and the challenges to vaccination success.

Nature Reviews Immunology | 55 min read

Infographic of the week

Research cash: Bar chart showing the European Union's 2014-20 research program funding was distributed between countries.

Source: European Commission/Horizon 2020 dashboard/Eurostat

Quote of the day

“That the United Kingdom, formerly one of the EU’s biggest economies, has chosen to reject an institution that values evidence and science so highly is of huge significance.”

The European Union must learn from the anti-expert narrative that drove Brexit, argues a Nature editorial from 16 December.