Volume 518 Issue 7537, 5 February 2015

Western institutions must speak out against human-rights abuses in their partner countries.

Realizing the benefits of driverless cars will require governments to embrace the technology.

An effort aimed at protecting ecosystems, modelled on the agency battling climate change, will need protecting from powerful enemies, warns Ehsan Masood.

A study that ranks ecology journals on the basis of citation numbers and review times attracts attention online.

The week in science: US nuclear-waste plan technically sound, China opens its first top-level biosecurity lab, teams scoop prizes for progress en route to the Moon.

White House plan would increase research and development funding but faces rough road in Congress.

The landmark BICEP2 result has turned to dust, but the search for primordial cosmic ripples continues.

Creation of electronic device using atom-thin silicon sheets could boost work on other flat materials.

Researchers at top science institute say education will have more effect than vocal opposition.

Automation is one of the hottest topics in transportation research and could yield completely driverless cars in less than a decade.

Babies are increasingly surviving premature birth — but researchers are only beginning to understand the lasting consequences for their mental development.

To save millions of dollars and dramatically improve reproducibility, protein-binding reagents must be defined by their sequences and produced as recombinant proteins, say Andrew Bradbury, Andreas Plückthun and 110 co-signatories.

Safe, small-scale experiments build trust and road-test governance, argue Jane C. S. Long, Frank Loy and M. Granger Morgan.

Sharon Weinberger ponders a chronicle claiming that fresh evidence has cracked the 'Pontecorvo affair'.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

Grande dame of mouse genetics.

The success of antibodies as pharmaceuticals has triggered interest in crafting much smaller mimics. A crucial step forward has been taken with the chemical synthesis of small molecules that recruit immune cells to attack cancer cells.

High-resolution imaging of the base of the Pacific plate as it descends beneath New Zealand discloses a 10-kilometre-thick channel that decouples the plate from underlying upper mantle. See Letter p.85

Optogenetic techniques enable light-activated control of protein–protein interactions in the cell. This approach has now been used to alter membrane dynamics and induce cellular reorganization. See Letter p.111

Can three-dimensional printing enable the mass customization of electronic devices? A study that exploits this method to create light-emitting diodes based on 'quantum dots' provides a step towards this goal.

Mass coral bleaching events can drive reefs from being the domains of corals to becoming dominated by seaweed. But longitudinal data show that more than half of the reefs studied rebound to their former glory. See Letter p.94

The metabolic origin of the sulfur atom in the naturally occurring antibiotic lincomycin A has been obscure — until now. The biosynthetic steps involved reveal surprising roles for two sulfur-containing metabolites. See Letter p.115

Comparison of climate records from the Pliocene and Pleistocene geological epochs of the past five million years suggests that positive climate feedbacks are not strengthened during warm climate intervals. See Article p.49

A new record of Pliocene carbon dioxide variations derived from boron isotopes shows that climate sensitivity (the change in global mean temperature in response to radiative forcing) during the Plio-Pleistocene does not vary when cycles in continental ice are taken into account; this suggests that current estimates can be used to predict future climate.

Essential enzymes in genetically modified organisms are computationally redesigned to functionally depend on non-standard amino acids, thereby achieving biocontainment with unprecedented resistance to escape by evolution or by supplementation with environmental metabolites.

Using single-particle electron cryomicroscopy, several structures are reported which illuminate the mechanisms of action of the ATPase NSF that disassembles the SNARE complex into individual protein components.

An analysis of a bacterial homologue of the human glutamate transporter using single-molecule FRET and X-ray crystallography reveals that opening of the interface between its distinct transport and scaffold domains is rate determining for the transport cycle.

A search of a data set of light curves for 247,000 known, spectroscopically confirmed quasars with a temporal baseline of about 9 years reveals a strong, smooth periodic signal in the optical variability of quasar PG 1302−102 with a mean observed period of 1,884 ± 88 days, indicating a possible supermassive black-hole binary.

Alloying steel with aluminium improves the material’s strength-to-weight ratio, but the resulting formation of brittle intermetallic compounds within the steel matrix reduces its ductility; here the morphology and distribution of the intermetallic precipitates are controlled to alleviate this problem.

Carbon–hydrogen (C–H) bond functionalization catalysed by potassium tert-butoxide, which is abundant and inexpensive, offers a direct route to the silylation of aromatic heterocycles that both obviates the need for precious metal catalysts and overcomes the limitations of previous methods.

A high-resolution image for the base of an oceanic plate that is subducting beneath North Island, New Zealand, reveals a channel, which is interpreted as a sheared zone of ponded partial melts or volatiles; this low-viscosity channel decouples the plate from mantle flow beneath, allowing plate tectonics to work.

Construction of a series of genomically recoded organisms whose growth is restricted by the expression of essential genes dependent on exogenously supplied synthetic amino acids introduces novel orthogonal barriers between these engineered organisms and the environment, thereby creating safer genetically modified organisms.

An analysis of 21 coral reefs in the Indian Ocean using data across 17 years that spanned a major climatic disturbance reveals factors that predispose a coral reef to recovery or regime shift from hard corals to macroalgae; these results could foreshadow the likely outcomes of tropical coral reefs to the effects of climate change, informing management and adaptation plans.

Documented cases of horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to eukaryotes are rare, but now, not only is a new class of transferred genes identified, the function of one representative is also demonstrated in its new setting, where it controls bacterial growth.

Exome sequence analysis of nearly 10,000 people was carried out to identify alleles associated with early-onset myocardial infarction; mutations in low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) or apolipoprotein A-V (APOA5) were associated with disease risk, identifying the key roles of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and metabolism of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins.

A novel anti-microRNA delivery platform that targets the acidic tumour microenvironment, in which a chosen anti-miRNA is coupled to a peptide that can transport the anti-miRNA across cell membranes specifically in an acidic environment.

An optogenetic strategy allowing light-mediated recruitment of distinct cytoskeletal motor proteins to specific organelles is established; this technique enabled rapid and reversible activation or inhibition of the transport of organelles such as peroxisomes, recycling endosomes and mitochondria with high spatiotemporal accuracy, and the approach was also applied to primary neurons to demonstrate optical control of axonal growth by recycling endosome repositioning.

Mycothiol and ergothioneine are shown to have important roles in the biosynthesis of lincomycin A, a sulfur-containing antibiotic that is used to treat severe Gram-positive bacterial infections in people who cannot receive penicillin antibiotics.

A novel biotin-dependent carboxylase with a preference for long-chain acyl-CoA substrates and a unique holoenzyme architecture is described.

A powerful programming language with huge community support.

Undergraduate researchers can boost a lab's energy and work, but need help to flourish.

When your research won't reproduce, publish!

Men tend to justify or deny evidence of bias.

Schools should collect career data on their doctorates.

An online tool helps university bigwigs with big strategies.

Follow these instructions carefully — your universe depends on it.