Volume 566 Issue 7743, 14 February 2019

Studies of complex climate and ocean systems could gain from a hybrid between artificial intelligence and physical modelling.

Understanding who we are and how we got here is essential to forging connections in an increasingly polarized society, says Israel Hershkovitz.

Fertility rates in some African nations fell less quickly when fewer girls finished primary school.

A smash-up in space could underlie the origins of an odd exoplanet couple.

A fault in the Apennine Mountains wreaked damage on structures including the Colosseum.

Streamers on Alaska’s fishing fleet prove a boon to rare albatross and other bird species.

A molecule’s partial dissolution generates acid, leading to runaway degradation.

Sever its spinal cord, and the eel-shaped lamprey will soon be undulating through the water as usual.

Weight-loss operation raises levels of a hormone involved in appetite and insulin release.

The week in science: 8–14 February 2019.

‘Clean meat’ firms have drawn tens of millions of dollars in investment in recent years, but technical hurdles remain.

On the anniversary of an uprising that propelled Ukraine away from Russia and towards Europe, scientists say things are improving too slowly.

Plan promises funding stability and better career prospects for young researchers, but scientists say significant new investment is crucial.

AI enhancement and a virtual time machine are included in the shortlist of pitches.

Project analyses wetlands’ contribution to a spike in atmospheric concentrations of the potent greenhouse gas.

The fledgling democracy is opening up to the world – leading to a transformation in how it monitors earthquakes.

Trained in both medicine and archaeology, Vera Tiesler has revealed how the human body was deeply woven into the religion, tradition and politics of the Maya world.

Research needs an authoritative forum to hash out collective problems, argue C. K. Gunsalus, Marcia K. McNutt and colleagues.

Be impartial, humble and good value, urge Chris Tyler and Karen Akerlof.

Derek Lowe draws lessons for today from a history of scientists’ experimental hacks.

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

Adrian Woolfson weighs up a study on the role of evolution in conditions such as depression and anxiety.

Prolific unifier of mathematics.

Increased job competition over the past 50 years has cut the average length of time astronomy and ecology graduates spend in academic posts from 35 to 5 years.

Imposing a quota to boost the numbers of female academic researchers might have backfired.

In the first of a three-part series on science start-ups, Nature Careers explores how scientists with a sound business idea can thrive as entrepreneurs, and why leaving academia isn’t required.

It is well established that solid objects can be cooled by harnessing the properties of laser light. A laser-free technique that attains such cooling by tuning thermal radiation could have many practical applications.

If blood flow from the heart is impeded, the pressure created causes tissue dysfunction. It emerges that different signals converge on the TSC2 and mTOR proteins to fine-tune the response of heart cells to stress.

Genetic instability is a hallmark of cancer cells, and occurs when genes required for genomic maintenance are inactivated. It emerges that altering just one of the two copies of certain genes can drive genetic instability in yeast.

How do meerkat populations respond to extreme climatic variations?

Infection by Ebola virus can be fatal. The discovery of a human protein that mimics one type of Ebola protein and binds to another to suppress viral RNA production might aid the development of clinical treatments for the disease.

Nitrogen gas dissolved in the ocean must be fixed — converted into more-reactive compounds — before it can be used to support life, but the regions in which this nitrogen fixation occurs have been elusive. Not any more.

How Nature reported a key step towards test-tube babies in 1969, and strange damage to a German shell in 1919.

A system has been devised that computationally screens hundreds of millions of drug candidates — all of which can be made on demand — against biological targets. This could help to make drug discovery more efficient.

Complex Earth system challenges can be addressed by incorporating spatial and temporal context into machine learning, especially via deep learning, and further by combining with physical models into hybrid models.

Convergent estimates of nitrogen fixation from an inverse biogeochemical and a prognostic ocean model show that biological carbon export in the ocean is higher than expected and that stabilizing nitrogen-cycle feedbacks are weaker than we thought.

Neuronal networks involving the frontal cortex follow discrete attractor dynamics to maintain short-term memories over times of seconds, much longer than the time-constant of individual neurons.

CRISPR–CasX represents a distinct RNA-guided platform that is functionally separate from Cas9 and Cas12a and is active for bacterial and human genome modification.

Using a make-on-demand library that contains hundreds-of-millions of molecules, structure-based docking was used to identify compounds that, after synthesis and testing, are shown to interact with AmpC β-lactamase and the D₄ dopamine receptor with high affinity.

Thirteen fast radio bursts—astrophysical events that last on the order of a millisecond—have been discovered at frequencies as low as 400 megahertz, including only the second known repeating burst.

A second repeating fast radio burst is detected, showing behaviour similar to that of the first, and demonstrating that repeaters are unlikely to be rare.

The ‘negative luminescence’ of a reverse-biased photodiode is harnessed to draw thermal energy from a nearby solid object, thereby realizing photonic cooling without the use of coherent laser radiation.

Driving single-electron tunnelling in synchronization with the oscillations of the conductive tip of an atomic force microscope allows mapping of the electronic structure of individual molecules in different charge states.

Sporadic inactivation of the interleukin-22 receptor in the intestinal epithelium of the mouse shows that IL-22 is required for effective activation of the DNA damage response following DNA damage.

In experimentally induced osteoarthritis, chondrocytes show increased uptake and metabolism of cholesterol, implicating the CH25H–CYP7B1–RORα axis in the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis.

Poxvirus immune nucleases (poxins) degrade 2′,3′-cyclic GMP–AMP that is produced by cyclic GMP–AMP synthase (cGAS) to evade the innate immune system of the host.

Phosphorylation of one of two adjacent serine residues in TSC2 is both required and sufficient for PKG1-mediated cardiac protection against pressure overload in mice; these serine residues provide a genetic tool for the bidirectional regulation of stress-stimulated mTORC1 activity.

The m⁶A reader protein YTHDF1 suppresses the clearance of tumour cells by enhancing the translation of lysosomal proteases in dendritic cells and thereby suppressing tumour antigen presentation.

Repeated selection for adaptive mutations in a diploid yeast model results in increased genetic instability and sheds light on mechanisms of genetic instability that might contribute to tumorigenesis.

The Forkhead transcription factors FOXK1 and FOXK2, which are induced by starvation, reprogram cellular metabolism to induce aerobic glycolysis.