Volume 551 Issue 7678, 2 November 2017

Global regulations to limit carbon dioxide from the shipping industry are overdue.

A look at what we have published highlights the variety of editorial judgements in selecting and assessing papers.

It's time for academic institutions to take responsibility for protecting students and staff, says Laurel Issen.

The week in science: 27 October–2 November 2017.

Scientists scramble to avert disruption to data set that has tracked polar ice since the late 1970s.

Critics say selection process for high-stakes funding programme is flawed.

Hints emerge that past environments could have influenced psychiatric disorders.

A group of volunteers claims that the organization that spearheaded global protests in April has been unduly secretive about its management practices.

Feathered carnivore was dark on top and light underneath, with a raccoon-like face.

Pilot projects aim to pinpoint how benign tumours turn into lung, breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers.

Experiments are starting to probe the limits of the classical laws of thermodynamics.

Thomas R. Insel's biggest lesson from his shift from NIMH director to Silicon Valley entrepreneur: academic and technology company researchers should partner up.

Putting a value on emissions can lower energy use, write Kenneth Gillingham, Stefano Carattini and Daniel Esty.

Alexandra Witze welcomes a history of IceCube, an ambitious neutrino observatory.

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

Lisa-ann Gershwin delights in two books on marine invertebrates.

The discovery of gravitational waves from a neutron-star merger and the detection of the event across the electromagnetic spectrum give insight into many aspects of gravity and astrophysics. See Letter p.64, p.67, p.71, p.75 & p.80

What came first: oxygen-producing photosynthesis, or compounds that protect cells from oxygen-induced damage? It emerges that one such compound might have been produced in microbes before Earth's oxygenation.

Removing the protein complex cohesin from chromosomes destroys one layer of the genome's 3D structure but leaves another intact. Genome structure is therefore built by independent processes that work together. See Letter p.51

In nuclear fusion, energy is produced by the rearrangement of protons and neutrons. The discovery of an analogue of this process involving particles called quarks has implications for both nuclear and particle physics. See Letter p.89

Schwann cells support neuronal signalling. The discovery that these cells become dramatically reprogrammed after nerve injury, adopting migratory characteristics that promote repair, highlights the plasticity of mature cell types.

Ecological interactions emerge spontaneously in an experimental study of bacterial populations cultured for 60,000 generations, and sustain rapid evolution by natural selection. See Letter p.45

Using data from sixty thousand generations of the E. coli long-term evolution experiment, the authors shed new light on the processes that govern molecular evolution.

Depletion of chromosome-associated cohesin leads to loss of topologically associating domains in interphase chromosomes, without affecting segregation into compartments, and instead, it unmasks a finer compartment structure that reflects local chromatin and transcriptional activity.

Single-particle cryo-electron microscopy is used to resolve the structure of the phycobilisome, a 16.8-megadalton light-harvesting megacomplex, from the red alga Griffithsia pacifica at a resolution of 3.5 Å.

Optical to near-infrared observations of a transient coincident with the detection of the gravitational-wave signature of a binary neutron-star merger and a low-luminosity short-duration γ-ray burst are presented and modelled.

Observations of the transient associated with the gravitational-wave event GW170817 and γ-ray burst GRB 170817A reveal a bright kilonova with fast-moving ejecta, including lanthanides synthesized by rapid neutron capture.

Detection of X-ray emission at a location coincident with the kilonova transient of the gravitational-wave event GW170817 provides the missing observational link between short gamma-ray bursts and gravitational waves from neutron-star mergers.

Observations and modelling of an optical transient counterpart to a gravitational-wave event and γ-ray burst reveal that neutron-star mergers produce gravitational waves and radioactively powered kilonovae, and are a source of heavy elements.

Modelling the electromagnetic emission of kilonovae enables the mass, velocity and composition (with some heavy elements) of the ejecta from a neutron-star merger to be derived from the observations.

The astronomical event GW170817, detected in gravitational and electromagnetic waves, is used to determine the expansion rate of the Universe, which is consistent with and independent of existing measurements.

Two singly charmed baryons can fuse into the recently discovered doubly charmed baryon and a neutron through an exothermic reaction analogous to the nuclear fusion between deuterium and tritium.

Association analysis identifies 65 new breast cancer risk loci, predicts target genes for known risk loci and demonstrates a strong overlap with somatic driver genes in breast tumours.

Highly parallel single-cell transcriptome profiling of Plasmodium falciparum blood stages provides insight into the role AP2-G plays in early sexual development of this eukaryotic pathogen.

Single-cell transcriptomics analyses of cell intermediates during the reprogramming from fibroblast to cardiomyocyte were used to reconstruct the reprogramming trajectory and to uncover intermediate cell populations, gene pathways and regulators involved in this process.

TGFβ signalling regulates T helper 17 (TH17) cell differentiation by reversing SKI–SMAD4-mediated suppression of RORγt, revealing a potential therapeutic target for treating TH17-related diseases.

Interleukin-1 receptor 8 (IL-1R8), a negative regulator of the IL-1 family of cytokines, restrains the activity of natural killer (NK) cells, suggesting that IL-1R8 acts as a checkpoint regulator of NK cell activation and that its blockade may be of use in cancer therapy.

Metabolic flux analysis in mice reveals that lactate often acts as the primary carbon source for the tricarboxylic acid cycle both in normal tissues and in tumour microenvironments.

A new approach to modelling bacterial growth removes the need to know kinetic parameters for metabolic and regulatory processes and can be used to model adaptive processes such as antibiotic responses and ecological dynamics.

The seed-specific transcription factor LEC1 promotes an active chromatin state at the floral repressor FLC and activates its expression in the Arabidopsis pro-embryo, thus reversing the winter cold-induced silenced state that is inherited from gametes.

Scientists lured by big-prize competitions should weigh contests' aims and non-monetary benefits before entering.

Collaborations lead to a research post with a top drugmaker for a longtime federal scientist.

With the most to lose from looming federal funding cuts, California's researchers take a stand.

With government funding plummeting, researchers in the United States need to find alternative sources.

National initiatives that track people, rather than papers, will lead to better science in the United States.

Initiatives are in place to keep early-career investigators in the biomedical system, but more support is needed.

Key investments in people and infrastructure have helped Illinois become a major player in chemistry.

The committed team behind LIGO's detection of gravitational waves is contending with ongoing technical challenges of a mighty big laboratory.

Undergraduate research programmes are expensive, and the benefits can be hard to measure.

A description of the terminology and methodology used in this supplement, and a guide to the functionality available free online at natureindex.com