Volume 529 Issue 7584, 7 January 2016

This year, scientists should resolve to follow the lead of Pope Francis and seek an inclusive approach to climate change, says Daniel Sarewitz.

Volkswagen sued; Nobel laureate Alfred Gilman dies; and Guinea now free of Ebola.

Strong genomics record bodes well but a shortage of doctors could pose a hurdle.

Epidemic in dogs complicates push to wipe out parasite.

AWARE project will help unravel effects of global warming.

Academic consortia urge faster changes in scholarly publishing.

Space missions, carbon capture and gravitational waves are set to shape the year.

From flocking birds to swarming molecules, physicists are seeking to understand 'active matter' — and looking for a fundamental theory of the living world.

Giving researchers access to information on turbine performance would allow wind farms to be optimized through data mining, says Andrew Kusiak.

Gear up for some big birthdays, as anniversaries roll around for Star Trek, H. G. Wells and the US National Park Service. And jostling for the spotlight are Finding Nemo's fishy crew, a modern twist on haute couture, groundbreaking artists, ground-quaking dinosaurs and (perhaps) Keanu Reeves. Daniel Cressey reports.

Black holes can produce oscillating outbursts of radiation that were thought to be associated with high rates of infalling matter. The observation of pulses of visible light from a black hole complicates this picture. See Letter p.54

Patterns of species association reveal that terrestrial plant and animal communities today are structured differently from communities spanning the 300 million years that preceded large-scale human activity. See Letter p.80

The polymerase enzyme from avian influenza A viruses does not function well in human cells. The protein ANP32A has been identified as the cellular factor mediating a major component of this host restriction. See Letter p.101

Tree rings can pinpoint the source of wood as well as how old it is. This method has now been used to identify the sources of timber used by the Native Americans who constructed the pre-Columbian 'great houses' of Chaco Canyon.

Light isotopes of hydrogen and helium formed minutes after the Big Bang. The study of one of these primordial isotopes, helium-3, has now been proposed as a useful strategy for constraining the physics of the standard cosmological model.

Analysis of the 3D structure of DNA in tumour cells reveals how mutations in the IDH1 gene, and associated changes in methyl groups attached to DNA, elevate the expression of cancer-promoting genes. See Letter p.110

The regenerative properties of muscle stem cells decline with age as the stem cells enter an irreversible state of senescence; a study of mouse muscle stem cells reveals that entry into senescence is an autophagy-dependent process and promoting autophagy in old satellite cells can reverse senescence and restore their regenerative properties in an injury model.

Recent analyses have suggested that the intrinsic behaviour of tissue stem cells may be responsible for malignant transformation and cancer progression, raising questions regarding the influence of extrinsic factors on tumourigenesis; here, both data-driven and model-driven evidence show that such intrinsic risk factors contribute only marginally to cancer development, indicating that cancer risk is heavily influenced by extrinsic factors.

Symmetric dimethylation of the human RNA polymerase II C-terminal domain residue R1810 by the protein arginine methyltransferase 5 (PRMT5) directly recruits the protein survival of motor neuron (SMN) and indirectly recruits the helicase senataxin to resolve R-loops and promote transcription termination.

Observations of V404 Cygni, an X-ray transient containing a black hole of nine solar masses and a companion star, show that optical oscillations on timescales of 100 seconds to 2.5 hours can occur at mass-accretion rates at least ten times lower than previously thought, suggesting that the accretion rate is not the critical parameter for inducing inner-disk instabilities.

A spectroscopic comparison of ten hot-Jupiter exoplanets reveals that the difference between the planetary radius measured at optical and infrared wavelengths allows atmosphere types ranging from clear to cloudy to be distinguished; the difference in radius at a given wavelength correlates with the spectral strength of water at that wavelength, suggesting that haze obscures the signal from water.

Raman spectroscopy of three isotopes of hydrogen under very high compression yields evidence of a new phase of hydrogen—phase V—which could potentially be a precursor to the long-sought non-molecular phase.

Electroreduction of carbon dioxide into useful fuels helps to reduce fossil-fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, but activating carbon dioxide requires impractically high overpotentials; here a metal atomic layer combined with its native oxide that requires low overpotentials to reduce carbon dioxide is developed, adapted from an existing cobalt-based catalyst.

The environmental and geopolitical problems associated with fossil fuels might be alleviated if it were possible to produce synthetic multicarbon fuels efficiently from single-carbon feedstocks; here, a molybdenum compound supported by a terphenyl–diphosphine ligand is used to convert carbon monoxide into a metal-free C₂O₁ fragment, with the ligand both serving as an electron reservoir and stabilizing the different intermediate species.

Experiments show that carbonated oceanic crust subducting into the mantle will intersect the melting curve at depths of about 300 to 700 kilometres, creating a barrier to direct carbonate recycling into the deep mantle.

Plant and animal assemblage co-occurrence patterns have remained relatively consistent for 300 million years but have changed over the Holocene epoch as the impact of humans has dramatically increased.

Analyses of the effects of extreme weather disasters on global crop production over the past five decades show that drought and extreme heat reduced national cereal production by 9–10%, whereas no discernible effect at the national level was seen for floods and extreme cold; droughts affect yields and the harvested area, whereas extreme heat mainly affects yields.

Synaptotagmin 7 is shown to be essential for synaptic facilitation at a variety of central synapses, and the results pave the way for future functional studies of short-term synaptic plasticity, a fundamental form of neuronal computation.

The FOXO transcription factor, DAF-16, is required for the long-life phenotype of daf-2 mutant nematode worms; here the authors find that daf-2 mutant worms maintain neuronal functions and behaviours with age by using a set of transcriptional targets that are distinct from previously identified canonical FOXO/DAF-16-regulated targets.

Antibody-mediated inhibition of R-spondin-3 in colorectal tumours decreases tumour growth and promotes differentiation—these effects are associated with a decrease in expression of genes associated with stem-cell function.

The host protein ANP32A is shown here to be a species barrier to the function of avian influenza virus polymerase in mammalian cells; the mutation E627K in viral protein PB2, which allows mammalian ANP32 family proteins to support the avian virus polymerase, is known to be associated with increased virulence of avian viruses in mammals.

Monoclonal antibodies with broad reactivity against antigens on the parasite that causes malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, are isolated from two subjects and are found to have an unusual insertion of an immunoglobulin-like domain from a different chromosome, illustrating a new mechanism of antibody diversification.

An epigenetic mechanism in which gain-of-function IDH mutations promote gliomagenesis by disrupting chromosomal topology is presented, with IDH mutations causing the binding sites of the methylation-sensitive insulator CTCF to become hypermethylated; disruption of a CTCF boundary near the glioma oncogene PDGFRA allows a constitutive enhancer to contact and activate the oncogene aberrantly.

Creators of computer programs that underpin experiments don’t always get their due — so the website Depsy is trying to track the impact of research code.

The move to make scientific findings transparent can be a major boon to research, but it can be tricky to embrace the change.

A biologist turns to economics — and Ethiopia — to explore policies that improve food security.

Cheque mate.