Volume 518 Issue 7538, 12 February 2015

The US measles outbreak highlights why most states should reconsider their vaccination rules.

A year of illumination switches on with a Nature special issue.

Portrayals of science in the cinema are growing in sophistication — but not exactly at the speed of light, says Colin Macilwain.

An analysis linking the number of researchers in a lab to productivity spurs online debate.

The week in science: UK’s science academies call for more science spending; US FDA chief resigns; and Japan probe to try for Venus orbit again.

British approval for pioneering fertility technique leads other nations to consider rule changes.

Agency wants to pay senior biomedical researchers to wind down their labs.

Scientists pinpoint genes behind famous beak variations.

The US media are abuzz after an outbreak of measles in Disneyland but the disease will keep on popping up until it is wiped out worldwide.

Language analysis reflects how projects succeeded in unique assessment.

Scientists are pushing the properties of light to new extremes. A special issue explores these frontiers.

Shape it, squeeze it, energize it or tie it into knots. Scientists are taking light to new extremes.

Using techniques adapted from astronomy, physicists are finding ways to see through opaque materials such as living tissue.

To minimize risks, we must learn more about how financial markets operate at ever faster rates, urges Mark Buchanan.

Jim Al-Khalili revisits Ibn al-Haytham's hugely influential study on its millennium.

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

Alison Abbott analyses Tom Stoppard's latest play, which tackles the crucial question in neuroscience.

Biologist who steered German research organizations through reunification.

The cosmic microwave background is a faint glow of light left over from the Big Bang. It fills the entire sky and records the Universe's early history. Two independent experts outline what we know about this ancient light, both theoretically and observationally.

An analysis of dying cells reveals that they play an active part in modifying tissue shape by pulling on neighbouring cells. This induces neighbouring cells to contract at their apices, which results in tissue folding. See Letter p.245

High-resolution astronomical observations of a nearby molecular gas cloud have revealed a quadruplet of stars in the act of formation. The system is arguably the youngest multiple star system detected so far. See Letter p.213

The faithful propagation of species requires a complex balance of DNA-repair pathways to maintain genome integrity. New work sheds light on one such poorly understood pathway and its role in certain cancers. See Letters p.254 & p.258

A record of boron isotopes in fossils of microscopic plankton provides fresh evidence that some ocean regions were a source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere when Earth warmed at the end of the last ice age. See Letter p.219

A protein released during hypothermia has been found to affect the progression of neurodegenerative disease in mice by sparing neurons from death and preserving the connections between them. See Letter p.236

A review of the phases of copper oxides (especially the ‘strange metal’), discussing their high-temperature superconductivity and their various forms of quantum matter, and the implications for fundamental theory.

Genome-wide association meta-analyses of waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index in more than 224,000 individuals identify 49 loci, 33 of which are new and many showing significant sexual dimorphism with a stronger effect in women; pathway analyses implicate adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution.

A genome-wide association study and Metabochip meta-analysis of body mass index (BMI) detects 97 BMI-associated loci, of which 56 were novel, and many loci have effects on other metabolic phenotypes; pathway analyses implicate the central nervous system in obesity susceptibility and new pathways such as those related to synaptic function, energy metabolism, lipid biology and adipogenesis.

Grid cells are cells of the brain’s internal map of space that fire when an animal is in a location corresponding to the vertices of a hexagonal grid pattern tiling the entire environment; how the pattern is mapped onto the external environment has remained a mystery, however, new studies in rat reveal that the axes of the grid are determined by the boundaries of the external environment and provide insight into the rotation of the grid axis in relation to these boundaries.

Observations of a wide-separation quadruple system in the Perseus star-forming region reveal a young protostar and three gravitationally bound dense gas condensations; each condensation is expected to form a star and the closest pair will form a bound binary, while the quadruple stellar system itself is bound but unstable on timescales of 500,000 years.

Grains collected from comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the Rosetta mission come from a dusty crust that is predicted to be imminently shed as the comet nears the Sun; the grains are high in sodium and fluffy, not icy, suggesting that they are the precursors of interplanetary dust particles.

The boron isotope pH proxy in sediment-core planktic foraminifera is used as a tracer of oceanic CO₂ outgassing to show that surface waters which derive partly from deep water upwelled in the Southern Ocean became a significant source of carbon to the atmosphere during the last deglaciation.

Observations of rapid, persistent elevation gains that occur on the ice surface above a subglacial lake as the lake is refilled with surface meltwater during the summer melt period in Greenland show that surface meltwater may be trapped and stored at the bed of an ice sheet, affecting ice dynamics downstream.

Argon and luminescence dating of fossil shell infills from Trinil in Java, where Homo erectus lived, reveals that the hominin-bearing deposits are younger than previously thought; perforated shells, a shell tool and an engraved shell indicate that Homo erectus ate freshwater mussels, used their shells as tools and was able to create abstract engravings.

Neuronal grid cells fire in a spatial grid pattern laid out across the surface of a familiar environment, however the role of environmental boundaries in the construction of this pattern is not well understood; this study shows that the grid pattern orients to the walls of polarized environments such as squares but not circles and that the hexagonal grid symmetry is permanently broken in highly polarized environments such as trapezoids.

Structural synaptic plasticity and remodelling are features of the healthy adult brain and are seen during hibernation; a hibernation-inspired model of mouse cooling used to study synaptic regeneration has identified the ‘cold-shock’ RNA-binding protein, RBM3, as a regulator of synaptic assembly, deficiency of which contributes to synapse loss in neurodegenerative disease.

A study of genome evolution in a metastatic breast cancer bearing an activating PIK3CA mutation, following treatment with the PI(3)Kα inhibitor BYL719, shows that all metastatic lesions, when compared to the pre-treatment tumour, had lost a copy of PTEN; parallel genetic evolution of separate sites with different PTEN genomic alterations had led to a convergent PTEN-null phenotype resistant to PI(3)Kα inhibition.

Apoptotic cell death is required for morphogenesis of the developing leg joint of fruitflies; using this model system, the authors show here that within apoptotic cells a transient pulling force exerted through a highly dynamic apico-basal myosin II cable-like structure acts as a mechanical signal to increase tissue tension and modify tissue shape.

DEAD-box RNA helicase DDX21 is involved in both the transcription and RNA processing of ribosomal genes in human cells, sensing the transcriptional status of both RNA polymerase I and RNA polymerase II and associating with non-coding RNAs involved in ribonucleoprotein formation, possibly allowing for coordinated regulation of protein synthesis.

Next-generation sequencing technology is used to show that the error-prone polymerase θ (Polθ) is needed to promote alternative non-homologous end joining at telomeres, and during chromosomal translocations, while counteracting homologous recombination; inhibition of Polθ represents a potential therapeutic strategy for tumours that have mutations in homology-directed repair genes.

In studies in mammalian cells, polymerase theta (Polθ, also known as POLQ) is identified as the polymerase responsible for non-homologous end joining DNA repair; this DNA repair pathway acts in many tumours when homologous recombination is inactivated and the identification of the polymerase responsible may aid the development of new therapeutic approaches.

How scientists can use Twitter to expand their social contacts and find jobs.

How individual US states stack up.

Proposed legislation would loosen visa restrictions.

What a waste.