Volume 560 Issue 7717, 9 August 2018

Astronomers find a planetary nebula with an unusual structure.

I want to see whether the wisdom of crowds does a better job than conventional grant review at supporting research, says Johan Bollen.

Carbon taxes and related policies could lead to worse food shortages than climate change alone.

Mystery of ‘massive decline’ in colony that once covered the hills of an island off Antarctica.

A formula can predict the size of droplets formed by a nozzle’s spray.

But ‘cheaters’ abstain from puking while benefiting from the group defence.

Eruptions affect atmospheric chemistry responsible for ozone depletion.

Each line of Hong Kong’s transit system starts the day with a distinctive microbial profile — but this doesn’t last long.

The ancient ‘hobbits’ and short-statured modern humans arose independently on Flores Island.

The week in science: 3–9 August 2018.

Digital models of the river and surrounding settlements will help authorities to track and reduce waste.

Nomination of Kelvin Droegemeier could end long drought at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Haul thrills physicists, who previously knew of just a few hundred of these peculiar materials.

The Fields Medals have been awarded to four researchers who work on number theory, geometry and differential equations.

Big data and diversity lacking at Germany’s biggest science organization.

Researchers had high hopes for patient-derived xenografts. Now they are contending with limitations in the clinic and the lab.

Your first bout of flu may determine how you fare during the next pandemic. That’s why scientists are trying to understand immunologic imprinting.

Misleading accident classifications skew research and regulation. Zheng Wan and Jihong Chen set out three priorities for scientists and industry.

Malak Abedalthagafi extols a memoir from a trailblazer in women’s rights.

Philip Ball lauds a study of a famous experiment and the insights it offers into a thoroughly maddening theory.

Douwe Draaisma weighs up Eric Kandel’s study on mental illnesses as brain diseases.

Choosing wisely from a burgeoning array of digital tools can help researchers to record experiments with ease.

Want your study to make the headlines? You can get help with that.

How a technology position helps an ecologist to boost his impact

An approach has been developed for incorporating optoelectronic devices into polymer fibres, which can be woven into fabrics. Such materials could have applications in both telecommunication and health monitoring.

Better treatments are needed for the neglected tropical disease leishmaniasis. The development of a compound that tackles the disease in mice, and the identification of the protein it targets, offer a way forward.

The discovery that a set of lymphatic vessels interacts with blood vessels to remove toxic waste products from the brain has implications for cognition, ageing and disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

The electric polarization of materials called ferroelectrics is often suppressed by an internal electric field, limiting uses for these materials. The discovery of a thin-film ferroelectric that is resistant to this field represents a major advance.

In materials known as graphene nanoribbons, topological states can be precisely engineered and probed, providing an experimental platform for studying electronic topology.

Activation of the inflammasome protein complex in immune cells is a key step that triggers an innate immune response. It emerges that the synthesis and oxidation of mitochondrial DNA drives this activation step.

Coherent coupling between a three-electron spin qubit and single photons in a microwave resonator is demonstrated, which, unlike previous demonstrations, does not require ferromagnetic components near the qubit.

Meningeal lymphatic dysfunction promotes amyloid-β deposition in the meninges and worsens brain amyloid-β pathology, acting as an aggravating factor in Alzheimer’s disease and in age-associated cognitive decline; improving meningeal lymphatic function could help to prevent or delay age-associated neurological diseases.

A series of compounds are discovered for the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis, and cdc2-related kinase 12 (CRK12) is identified as the probable primary drug target.

New mitochondrial DNA synthesis links the priming and activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome.

A topologically engineered graphene nanoribbon superlattice is presented that hosts a one-dimensional array of half-filled, in-gap localized electronic states, enabling band engineering.

Graphene nanoribbons are used to design robust nanomaterials with controlled periodic coupling of topological boundary states to create quasi-one-dimensional trivial and non-trivial electronic quantum phases.

A scalable thermal drawing process is used to integrate light-emitting and photodetecting diodes into textile-ready polymer fibres, which can be woven into fabrics with possible optical communication and health monitoring applications.

Comparing the northern permafrost region of the Last Glacial Maximum with the same area today shows that the soil carbon stock has now increased, suggesting that permafrost carbon made no net contribution to preindustrial atmospheric carbon.

Mantle xenon isotope systematics reveals that no substantial recycling of atmospheric xenon into the deep Earth occurred before 2.5 billion years ago, indicating that downwellings were drier in the Archaean era than today.

Similarities between the patterning of the lateral plate in Ciona and of the neural plate ectoderm in vertebrates indicate that compartmentalization of the lateral plate ectoderm preceded the advent of vertebrates.

Metagenomic, chemical and biomass analyses of topsoil samples from around the world reveal spatial and environmental trends in microbial community composition and genetic diversity.

Mitochondrial double-stranded RNA can induce an interferon response if released into the cytoplasm, but self-recognition is prevented by SUV3 helicase and PNPase exoribonuclease.

Human neural stem cells from the subventricular zone are identified as the cells of origin that contain the driver mutations for glioblastomas.

A system that targets DNA polymerase activity with CRISPR-guided nickases to provide genetic diversification at user-defined loci enables forward genetic approaches.

Selective inhibitors of KAT6A and KAT6B inhibit MYST-catalysed histone acetylation, induce cell cycle exit and cellular senescence without causing DNA damage, and arrest lymphoma progression in mouse models.

A cryo-electron microscopy structure of human dynamin-1 demonstrates conformational changes and sheds light on the fission of membranes during endocytosis.

A cryo-electron microscopy structure of the mammalian mitochondrial translation initiation complex reveals unique features that are necessary to initiate mitochondrial translation and highlights a possible membrane-targeting peptide.