Volume 542 Issue 7640, 9 February 2017

Mark Walport has the experience needed to take on the top job in UK science.

Carnivorous plants have fascinated writers and botanists alike.

Too many researchers make up or massage their data, says Timothy D. Clark. Only stringent demands for proof can stop them.

The week in science: 3–9 February 2017.

Researchers caution that stem rust may have returned to world’s largest wheat-producing region.

It missed the historic discovery, but the Virgo lab in Italy is now primed to extend LIGO’s reach and precision.

Industry and public-health experts concerned about ramifications of Nagoya Protocol.

The government’s cancelled National Children’s Study has a successor that may sidestep earlier challenges.

Archaeologists worry that a museum exhibition will encourage exploitation of priceless historical sites.

Blueprint outlines ambitious scheme to solve uncrackable problems using existing technology.

Researchers look into the future of the far North for clues to save species and maybe even bring back sea ice.

The intricate development of the fetus is yielding its long-held secrets to state-of-the-art molecular technologies that can make use of the mother's blood.

Zhong Lin Wang proposes a radically different way to harvest renewable energy from the ocean using nanogenerator networks.

Richard B. Norgaard is troubled by the incrementalism of Jeffrey Sachs's modest new plan for the US economy.

Ewen Callaway extols a study on the creation of a cell line key to combating rubella.

Andreas Albrecht ponders a study of the physicists who grapple with the origins of the Universe.

Nobel-winning inventor of ways to modify genes.

A mouse pancreas grown in a rat controls blood-sugar levels when transplanted into a mouse that models type 1 diabetes. This achievement provides a tantalizing glimpse of how organs could be grown for therapeutic use. See Article p.191

The ocean's uptake of carbon dioxide increased during the 2000s. Models reveal that this was driven primarily by weak circulation in the upper ocean, solving a mystery of ocean science. See Letter p.215

Newly discovered microscopic fossils might shed light on the early evolution of the deuterostomes, the animal group that includes vertebrates. But more work is needed to resolve the fossils' place in the deuterostome tree. See Letter p.228

WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles, are the leading candidates for dark matter, the 'missing' mass in the Universe. An experiment has obtained no evidence for such particles, despite an impressive increase in sensitivity.

Electrical stimulation of the human brain does not enhance memory, according to a report that is in apparent conflict with earlier work. But this discrepancy could enable deeper insight into brain dynamics by stimulating basic research.

Cellular organelles called peroxisomes aid metabolism, and defective peroxisome formation can cause disease. It emerges that peroxisomes can form de novo from the fusion of vesicles derived from two distinct organelle types. See Letter p.251

The existence of medium-sized black holes has long been debated. Such an object has now been discovered in the centre of a dense cluster of stars, potentially enhancing our understanding of all black holes. See Letter p.203

The delicate balance between the immune system and metabolism, and its implications for obesity and metabolic disease are explored.

Data from over 700,000 individuals reveal the identity of 83 sequence variants that affect human height, implicating new candidate genes and pathways as being involved in growth.

The authors inject mouse pluripotent stem cells into pancreatogenesis-disabled rat blastocysts and thereby generate rats with mouse pancreata from which the islets, when transplanted into mice, can provide a long-term cure for symptoms of diabetes, without continuous immunosuppression.

The application of genome-wide CRISPR–Cas9 screening coupled with a fluorescent reporter to interrogate the microRNA pathway reveals that continual transient phosphorylation of Argonaute 2 is required to maintain the global efficiency of microRNA-mediated repression.

The properties of pulsars in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae suggest that an intermediate-mass black hole is hidden in the cluster’s gas-starved central cavity.

Excitations to Rydberg states in a gas of ultracold atoms are used to produce a robust, nonlinear phase shift of exactly π/2 between two photons, which is protected against variations in experimental parameters by a symmetry of the system.

Cells in dense bacterial suspensions can self-organize into highly robust collective oscillatory motion, while individual cells move in an erratic manner; their interaction is modelled to reveal a weak synchronization mechanism.

Modelling of ocean carbon uptake for the 1980s to the 2000s shows that stronger upper-ocean overturning caused less carbon to be absorbed by the oceans in the 1990s, but that as the overturning circulation weakens more carbon is now being absorbed.

The mechanism producing Antarctic meltwater at depth is elucidated and modelled.

Removal of invasive exotic shrubs from mountaintop communities increased the number of pollinators and positively altered pollinator behaviour, which enhanced native fruit production, indicating that the degradation of ecosystem functions is partly reversible.

Saccorhytus coronarius are millimetric fossils from the early Cambrian period in China that are proposed to represent the most basal known deuterostomes.

Coordinated gamma oscillations in the lateral hypothalamus, lateral septum and medial prefrontal cortex are shown to drive food-seeking behaviour in mice independently of nutritional need and to organize firing of feeding behaviour-related hypothalamic neurons.

Using a metagenomic approach, three types of CRISPR–Cas systems have been discovered in uncultivated bacterial and archaeal hosts from a variety of different environments.

Cytochrome P4501 enzymes have a role in the regulation of aryl hydrocarbon receptor ligand levels in the gut, affecting innate lymphoid and T_H17 cell responses.

Wild-type Drosophila epithelial cells outcompete proto-oncogenic cells through translocation of the ligand Sas to the wild-type–tumour cell interface, where it binds the PTP10D receptor of the tumour cell, initiating pro-apoptotic signalling.

Peroxisomes—tiny intracellular organelles that contain metabolic enzymes—are generated in mammalian cells by the fusion of structures that arise from both mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum.

The crystal structure of yeast separase in complex with its inhibitor securin sheds light on the mechanism of inhibition, in which securin inhibits separase by inserting a short segment into the active site.

When couples are colleagues, work–life balance is key.

Doing a US postdoc in the biomedical sciences can cost you future earnings.

UK report predicts huge job growth in STEM fields over next few years.

Discretion is the better part of valour.