Review Articles, News & Views, Perspectives, Hypotheses, Analyses and Review in 2018

The mouse pancreas adopts a pre-inflammatory state in response to a chemical injury or the loss of one copy of the gene Nr5a2. This state might predispose mice, and possibly humans, to pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer.

Salvos of neuronal activity in the brain’s lateral habenula, regulated by astrocyte cells, drive depression-like behaviours in rodents. The finding might help us to understand one antidepressant and to develop more.

Spectacular light shows in Earth’s atmosphere called pulsating auroras are directly linked to processes in space. After decades of research, the full chain of events that creates such auroras has been observed.

Quantum spin liquids are long-sought exotic states of matter that could transform quantum computing. Signatures of such a state have now been observed in a compound comprising iridium ions on a honeycomb lattice.

Piezo proteins allow cells to sense forces by letting ions pass through the cell membrane in response to mechanical stimuli. Three structures of a Piezo protein shed light on how this crucial process works.

During breast-cancer progression, tumour cells that arise in the milk duct spread elsewhere in the breast. The origin of these invasive tumour cells is now revealed by an analysis of spatially defined single cells.

Many governments subsidize the production and consumption of fossil fuels. Contrary to expectation, a study finds that removing these subsidies would only modestly reduce global carbon dioxide emissions.

In 2017, gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation were detected from the merger of two stellar remnants called neutron stars. An observational analysis reveals how this radiation was released from the merger.

A population of progenitor cells in the midgut of fruit flies undergoes differentiation in response to mechanical force. This finding marks the first time that such a phenomenon has been reported in vivo.

Working memory is influenced by past experiences. An area of the rat brain has now been identified that represents recent history — silencing this area can remove biases from working memory and decision-making.

An improved method for compressing wood substantially increases its strength and stiffness, opening up the possibility of applications in engineering for which natural wood is too weak.

Whether intelligence is selected for in species that have a complex social life is debated and hard to test. Cognitive performance and associated reproductive success are now linked to group size in wild magpies.

An experimental technique allows packets of light called solitons to maintain their shape in all three dimensions as they travel through a material. Such wave packets could find applications in optical information processing.

This Review discusses recent developments in the combination of organocatalysis and photochemistry for the activation of molecules, which has enabled previously inaccessible reaction pathways and influenced many fields of chemical research.

Simulations by climate models show that Earth warmed during the Holocene epoch, whereas ocean sedimentary cores suggest that global cooling occurred. An analysis of fossil pollen samples now sides with the models.

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick proposed that rarely formed isomers of DNA bases cause spontaneous mutations to occur during the copying of DNA. Sixty-five years later, it looks as though they were right.

When abnormality in a gene is linked to cancer and a drug targets the encoded protein, how can the patients who will respond to the drug be identified if the gene is mutated in many different ways in many different cancers?

A highly reactive form of carbon, known as a carbyne, holds great promise for organic synthesis, but has been difficult to prepare. Reactions that produce carbyne equivalents now unleash this synthetic potential.

In women who have had breast cancer, drug treatments are often stopped five years after removal of the primary tumour. A meta-analysis shows that these individuals are still at risk of relapse.

Remote-sensing data for wild animals such as lions reveal that predators and prey optimize manoeuvrability rather than speed during the hunt.