Volume 563 Issue 7733, 29 November 2018

Planners can help stop neighbouring sites blocking the wind.

All research institutions need a procedure for dealing with bullies.

Want to get the best research from your team? Take these six steps to invest in stronger relationships, urges Alison Antes.

Villagers clear the air by cutting consumption of ‘dirty’ fuels such as wood.

Device mimics natural nocturnal flowers that bloom in dark and humid conditions.

A potent chemical allows ants to slaughter larger prey.

A long, hot rinse loses its allure when there’s an energy meter on view.

Ecstasy can promote cooperation after one partner is double-crossed by another.

One in ten US residents sit for more than eight hours per day — and are inactive when not sitting.

Mounds of excavated dirt number into the millions and tower up to four metres tall.

The week in science: 23–29 November 2018

The startling announcement by a Chinese scientist represents a controversial leap in the use of genome editing.

Joint US-French-German mission will monitor seismic activity for clues to Mars’s internal structure.

A suite of automated tools is now available to assist with peer review but humans are still in the driver's seat.

The Neural Information Processing Systems meeting is trying to be more inclusive, but a recent survey reveals there is a long way to go.

Several projects are trying to develop animal models that more closely mimic how the brain disease affects people.

Researchers plan to spray sunlight-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, an approach that could ultimately be used to quickly lower the planet’s temperature.

A spate of bullying allegations have rocked several high-profile science institutions. Here’s how researchers, universities, funders and others are dealing with the issue.

Misleading terminology and arbitrary divisions stymie drug trials and can give false hope about the potential of tailoring drugs to individuals, warns Stephen Senn.

The Haldane principle, born a century ago, has enabled government scientists to speak truth to power without fear of retribution — cherish it, says Ehsan Masood.

Mark Buchanan savours a study of the social effects that boost fame and recognition.

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

Chemist who illuminated bioluminescence.

Five fathers describe how they and their partners combine parenting and careers.

During the most recent ice age, abrupt changes in the Arctic climate were transmitted through the ocean to Antarctica. An atmospheric link between the two hemispheres has now been identified across the Antarctic continent.

Variable brain-specific mutations have been observed in Alzheimer’s disease. One mechanism underlying this mosaicism involves integration of variant gene copies back into the neuronal genome.

What Nature said about an oil spill in 1968, and about the survival of science after the First World War.

In the debate about how bacterial mutations arise, an experiment in 1943 showed that they can occur spontaneously and independently of a selection pressure. This study also popularized the use of maths-driven analysis of biological data.

Have Neanderthals gained an unfair reputation for having led highly violent lives? A comparison of skulls of Neanderthals and prehistoric humans in Eurasia reveals no evidence of higher levels of trauma in these hominins.

Astronomical objects called quasars have been difficult to study because of the limited spatial resolution of observations. An approach has been developed that allows the structure and dynamics of quasars to be investigated.

The bacterium Staphylococcus aureus is a leading cause of hard-to-treat human infections. It now seems that, if the bacterium is infected by a virus, a viral enzyme helps the microbe to evade detection by the immune system.

The gene for the amyloid precursor protein (APP) shows somatic gene recombination in neurons, and the abundance and diversity of APP variants is increased in neurons from individuals with Alzheimer’s disease.

The authors use a machine-learning algorithm to predict the spectrum of CRISPR–Cas9-nuclease-mediated DNA repair outcomes at human genomic target sites.

The plant F-box protein D3 has a C-terminal α-helix that switches between two conformational states, allowing the α/β hydrolase D14 to recruit the transcription repressor D53 for strigolactone-dependent degradation.

High-angular-resolution observations of the quasar 3C 273 reveal that it has a relatively small but thick disk, viewed nearly face-on, in which material is orbiting the central supermassive black hole.

A non-classical superposition of zero- and one-phonon mechanical Fock states is generated and measured by strongly coupling a surface acoustic-wave resonator to a superconducting qubit.

Circuit quantum acoustodynamics is used to achieve controlled generation of multi-phonon Fock states in a bulk acoustic-wave resonator, which are demonstrated to have a quantum nature.

Cooperative quantum effects in superlattices of quantum dots made of caesium lead halide perovskite give rise to superfluorescence, with the individual emitters interacting coherently to give intense bursts of light.

A modelling framework is presented to determine the optimal layout and physical properties of networks in which the nodes and links have physical sizes and intersections between components is prohibited.

The position of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds responds immediately to abrupt North Atlantic climate events of the last ice age, with a spatially heterogeneous impact on Antarctic climate.

Neanderthals and Upper Palaeolithic modern humans exhibit similar overall incidences of cranial trauma that are higher for males of both taxa; however, there are species-specific, age-related variations in trauma prevalence.

Conditional deletion of Insm1 in mice demonstrates that INSM1 is the key switch that causes the maturation of outer hair cells in the cochlea, with its absence resulting in an increase in inner hair cells instead.

Ikzf2, which encodes the transcription factor Helios, is identified as a crucial regulator of gene expression in maturing cochlear outer hair cells, and overexpression of Ikzf2 in inner hair cells induces prestin expression and electromotility.

Introduction of a suicide gene together with a linked cell-division gene to generate a safe-cell system enables the selective elimination of proliferating cells after cell transplantation in mouse models of cell therapy.

Strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus use a prophage-encoded glycosyltransferase to alter the glycosylation of their wall teichoic acid and thereby evade antibody-mediated immune responses.

Cryptic connections facilitate the community-wide spread of disease both within and among species.

Distinct transcriptional programs are activated during different stages of apoptotic cell engulfment, including a unique program of genes coding for solute carrier proteins and enzymes in the glycolytic pathway.

Mannose reduces the growth of tumour cells by impairing the metabolism of glucose, and enhances cell death when used in combination with conventional chemotherapy.