Volume 526 Issue 7573, 15 October 2015

Scientist-led conferences are no longer the best way to resolve debates on controversial research.

The wiring diagram of the male nematode’s nervous system is only a beginning.

Investigate and incorporate the mechanisms of complementary medicine instead of rejecting it outright, says Jo Marchant.

Online responses ranged from wonder to disappointment.

Heart-drug trial is stopped; killer whale breeding is banned; and gene patent gets overturned.

Cancer Research UK to invest £100 million in seven big goals.

After years of frustration, researchers are getting genetic material from old bones in warm places.

After a fraught few years, experiments to redefine the unit have reached agreement.

Two companies expand their extraction plants and line up customers.

Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar share 2015 prize.

A look at the legal landscape suggests where human genome editing might be used in research or reproduction.

Neuroscientists are probing the idea that intestinal microbiota might influence brain development and behaviour.

To forge a strong climate accord in Paris, nations must agree on a common goal in everyone's self-interest, say David J. C. MacKay and colleagues.

Policymakers are ignoring evidence on how advisers make judgements and predictions, warn William J. Sutherland and Mark A. Burgman.

Ken Goldberg reviews three books that probe the nexus of people and robots.

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

Next week, Refuse the Hour, a chamber opera about time, opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. The work is a collaboration between physics historian Peter Galison and South African multimedia artist William Kentridge. Galison talks about the nexus of technology and imperial conquest, the 'twin paradox' associated with Einstein's special theory of relativity and the metaphorical resonance between black holes and mortality.

A leading force in immunology.

The combined neuronal activity of two seemingly opposite types of Purkinje cell in the brain's cerebellum has been found to be required to control the jerky eye movements known as saccades in monkeys. See Letter p.439

Simulations show that melting of the Antarctic ice sheet in response to climate change could raise the global sea level by up to 3 metres by the year 2300 and continue for thousands of years thereafter. See Letter p.421

The epithelial cells that line the intestine have been found to sense tight attachment of bacteria, and to respond by producing proteins that shape the effector functions of the immune system's T_H17 cells.

Breakthrough measurements of a rare decay process in an excited barium nucleus pave the way for the development of techniques that probe the structure and decay modes of atomic nuclei. See Letter p.406

Mutations in the gene MECP2 cause an intellectual-disability disorder called Rett syndrome. In a mouse model, electrical stimulation of deep brain regions is found to ameliorate some of the features of the syndrome. See Letter p.430

Cold ions sliding across periodic energy-potential patterns formed by lasers have been used to elucidate the physics of dry friction between crystals. Experiments with no more than six ions suffice to explore a vast domain of frictional forces.

Experiments suggest that when people can see wealth inequality in their social network, this propels further inequality through reduced cooperation and reduced social connectivity. See Letter p.426

This Review evaluates current techniques used to investigate human brain function, discusses the successes and limitations of these techniques to test hypotheses about causal mechanisms, and looks to future directions and implementation of these techniques in real-world problems.

Description of a well-preserved 125-million-year-old fossil of a triconodont mammal from Spain, which extends the record of mammalian soft-tissue preservation back into the Mesozoic era.

In the worm C. elegans, a previously unidentified pair of bilateral neurons in the male (termed MCMs) are shown to arise from differentiated glial cells upon sexual maturation; these neurons are essential for a male-specific form of associative learning which balances chemotactic responses with reproductive priorities.

The SLC2 family glucose transporters facilitate the transport of glucose and other monosaccharides across biological membranes; the X-ray crystal structure of human GLUT3 has been solved in outward-open and outward-occluded conformations and a model for how the membrane protein rearranges itself during a complete transport cycle has been proposed.

This study has determined the X-ray crystal structures of GLUT5 from Rattus norvegicus in an open, outward-facing conformation and GLUT5 from Bos taurus in an open, inward-facing conformation; comparison of these structures with previously published structures of the related Escherichia coli d-xylose:H⁺ symporter XylE suggests that transport in GLUT5 is controlled by both a global ‘rocker-switch’-type motion and a local ‘gated-pore’-type transport mechanism.

The ‘onion-like’ stratification of the two lobes of the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko reveals that its unusual shape is the result of a gentle collision merging two kilometre-sized objects in the early stages of the Solar System.

The exotic double-gamma nuclear decay has been observed in cases where the usual single-gamma decay is forbidden, but now a double-gamma decay of excited ¹³⁷Ba is reported that is in competition with a single-gamma decay.

A high-fidelity two-qubit CNOT logic gate is presented, which is realized by combining single- and two-qubit operations with controlled phase operations in a quantum dot system using the exchange interaction.

Some peptoids—synthetic structural relatives of polypeptides—can assemble into two-dimensional nanometre-scale sheets; simulations and experimental measurements show that these nanosheets contain a motif unique to peptoids, namely zigzag Σ-strands, which interlock and enable the nanosheets to extend in two dimensions only.

Despite computational and methodological uncertainties, and a wide range of potential greenhouse gas emissions, here millennial-scale simulations of the Antarctic Ice Sheet in a warming climate show that most of Antarctica’s fringing ice shelves will collapse, leading to a rise in sea level of up to 3 metres by 2300.

Wealth inequality and wealth visibility can potentially affect overall levels of cooperation and economic success, and an online experiment was used to test how these factors interact; wealth inequality by itself did not substantially damage overall cooperation or overall wealth, but making wealth levels visible had a detrimental effect on social welfare.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the fimbria–fornix—a region that provides input to the hippocampus—is shown to restore hippocampus-dependent memory and hippocampal long-term potentiation and neurogenesis in a mouse model of Rett syndrome, suggesting that DBS, which is already used in the treatment of several neurological conditions, could be a viable approach to mitigating cognitive impairment in Rett syndrome and other disorders of childhood intellectual disability.

Activation of GABAergic neurons in the ventral medulla can reliably induce REM sleep and prolong the duration of REM episodes in mice.

Recording from Purkinje cells in monkeys, this study found that the combined simple-spike responses of bursting and pausing Purkinje cells, but not either population alone, predicted the real-time speed of saccades; moreover, when Purkinje cells were organized according to their complex-spike field, the population responses encoded both speed and direction of the eye during saccades via a gain field.

A new pathway for the processing of β-amyloid precursor protein (APP) is described in which η-secretase activity, in part mediated by the MT5-MMP metalloproteinase, cleaves APP, and further processing by ADAM10 and BACE1 generates proteolytic fragments capable of inhibiting long-term potentiation in the hippocampus.

A subset of adult neural stem cells, responsive to sonic hedgehog, are more effective at remyelination when the transcription factor Gli1 is inhibited.

A novel ALK transcript expressed in a subset of human cancers, arising from a de novo alternative transcription initiation site within the ALK gene, is described; the ALK transcript encodes three protein isoforms that stimulate tumorigenesis in vivo in mouse models; resultant tumours are sensitive to treatments with ALK inhibitors, indicating a possible therapeutic avenue for patients expressing these isoforms.

Nanoscopes capable of super-resolution offer scientists intricate views of a world beyond the limits of conventional microscopes — but not every technique fits all imaging needs.

Expert witnesses have a crucial role in bringing science into the legal system — but the job is not without pressure.

A conservation biologist innovates to share views of the planet and of women in science.

Thought experiments.

Precision medicine integrates research disciplines and clinical practice to guide individualized patient care. This Insight examines the emerging framework that is bringing together researchers, clinical laboratories, clinicians and patients in a precision-medicine ‘ecosystem’, progress in pharmacogenomics and gene therapy towards personalized treatments, and the need to redesign clinical trials to match patients with the most suitable trial.