Volume 564 Issue 7736, 20 December 2018

Fluffy pterosaurs offer vibrant insight into Mesozoic evolution.

There are two research routes to the supercomputers of the future. Which side are you on?

So much warming, so many dire effects, so little action — Dave Reay reveals how dreams of soggy soil and seaweed keep him going.

Members of a bat colony pass fur bacteria to each other.

3D cultures detail the complex relationship between a tumour and its environment.

A far-flung network of atomic clocks could hunt for defects in the fabric of space-time.

Snake waste the probable source of white colour on pottery from first millennium BC.

Fangs are feeble next to the fastest appendages in the animal world.

Receptor identified on bone cells binds to compound secreted by muscles.

The Elwha River quickly cleared itself of debris after dams’ demolition.

The week in science: 14–20 December 2018.

The science ministry alleges that KAIST leader Shin Sung-Chul made illegal payments to a California lab, but many scientists see a political purge.

The National Order of Biologists made a €10,000 donation to a group that questions the safety of vaccines.

Data from robotic ocean floats reveal that waters off Antarctica don’t absorb as much carbon as scientists thought.

Offending researchers could face restrictions on jobs, loans and business opportunities under a system tied to the controversial social credit policy.

Wildfires, cosmic rays and ancient-human hybrids are some of this year’s top stories.

California’s worst wildfires, cloned monkey twins, the world’s smallest house and more.

Picks include a rogue gene-editor, a wunderkind physicist and a DNA detective who helped catch a serial killer.

Promising immunizations for diseases that affect mostly people in low- and middle-income countries need help getting to market, urge David C. Kaslow and colleagues.

In seafarers’ journals, Huw Lewis-Jones found a rich record of discoveries made in cramped cabins, on open decks and on forays to shore to bring back proofs of marvels.

Crystallographer who won a Nobel prize for 3D imaging of viruses.

If you’re looking to move labs, countries or sectors this year, or seeking general career inspiration, here’s some advice from five researchers who featured in Nature Careers in 2018.

A method called microcrystal electron diffraction can rapidly image the structures of small molecules, including those found in mixtures. Will it usurp X-ray crystallography for determining small-molecule structures?

A study in mice identifies a brain adaptation that underlies the compulsive behaviour associated with drug addiction, and which might explain why some drug users behave compulsively whereas others do not.

Almost half a century ago, it was predicted that the confinement of quantum fluctuations could induce mechanical rotation — the Casimir torque. This prediction has now been confirmed using liquid crystals.

A modified protocol has enabled baboons that received transplanted pig hearts to survive for more than six months. This improvement on previous efforts brings pig-to-human heart transplants a step closer.

Observations reveal that a particular planetary nebula — the ejected envelope of an old star — is unusually enriched in rare carbon, nitrogen and oxygen isotopes. The finding could help to explain the origins of these isotopes.

Some samples of human growth hormone used as therapy until the mid-1980s contain amyloid-β peptide and cause genetically modified mice to develop amyloid-β deposits in the brain.

Extracts from selected News & Views articles published this year.

The presence of blubber and distribution of melanophores in a countershading pattern in an Early Jurassic ichthyosaur demonstrate that the evolutionary convergence of these reptiles with extant marine amniotes extends to the cellular and molecular levels.

In mice, synaptic potentiation of transmission from the orbitofrontal cortex to the dorsal striatum drives compulsive reinforcement, a defining symptom of addiction.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of connexin channels composed of connexin 46 and connexin 50 in an open-state reveal features that govern permselectivity and the location of mutated residues linked to herediatry cataracts.

Millimetre-wavelength observations of the bipolar planetary nebula K4-47 show very high abundances of the rare isotopes ¹³C, ¹⁵N and ¹⁷O, providing clues about the possible origin of the nebula.

Quantum many-body calculations of superfluid fission dynamics reveal that heavy fragments from asymmetric fission of actinides are associated with considerable octupole (pear-shaped) deformation acquired on the way to fission.

The theoretically predicted Casimir torque, which causes charge-neutral, birefringent materials to rotate towards a preferred alignment, is measured.

An electrically controlled phase transition from topological insulator to conventional insulator in ultrathin films of the topological Dirac semimetal, Na₃Bi.

Unactivated cyclohexane derivatives can be desymmetrized by site- and stereoselective C–H functionalization using carbene-insertion chemistry.

Vertical motions of Earth’s crust had the greatest effect on regional spatial differences in relative sea-level trends along the eastern coast of the USA during 1900–2017, explaining most of the large-scale spatial variance in regional rates of sea-level rise.

Magma storage and differentiation in the Earth’s crust mainly occurs by reactive melt flow in long-lived mush reservoirs, rather than by fractional crystallization in magma chambers, as previously thought.

Phylogenetic analyses based on single-cell transcriptomic data from two hemimastigotes, a Spironema species and the newly described Hemimastix kukwesjijk, indicate that Hemimastigophora is a supra-kingdom-level lineage of eukaryotes.

Archived vials of cadaveric human growth hormone contain substantial levels of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides and can seed Aβ plaques in susceptible mice, suggesting that this material could have transmitted Aβ pathology to humans.

Drosophila melanogaster are attracted to CO₂ when in an active, foraging state but experience aversion to CO₂ at low-activity levels, whereas they are attracted to ethanol in all behavioural states.

The identification of a complex haematopoietic system in a colonial tunicate sheds light on the evolution of the mammalian blood system.

α1,3-galactosyltransferase-knockout pig hearts that express human CD46 and human thrombomodulin require non-ischaemic preservation with continuous perfusion and post-transplantation growth control to ensure long-term orthotopic function of the xenograft in baboons.

In mouse macrophages, a range of short and non-ATG-initiated open reading frames that can generate proteins are identified, one of which is shown to be essential for host immunity to enteric mucosal infection and inflammation.

A small-molecule agonist for the cGAS–STING pathway has systemic activity in a mouse model of colon cancer.

Orthogonal ribosomes are engineered in which the two subunits are stapled together in a way that limits association with endogenous subunits in cells, enabling the evolution of new functionality in the orthogonal ribosome.