Volume 566 Issue 7745, 28 February 2019

Sharing experimental data enhances materials discovery and engineering.

To be successful as researchers, we must be able to think through the impacts of our work on society and speak up when necessary, says Natalie Kofler.

To scientists’ surprise, the toothy predators fail to reach their most efficient cruising speed when swimming at the water’s surface.

Gut fungus helps to trigger the proliferation of T cells that are prevalent in inflamed lung tissue.

Device achieves resolution thousands of times higher than current display screens.

Known emitters of chloromethane do not produce enough of it to account for its atmospheric abundance.

Tools discovered at the Carn Goedog quarry indicate that prehistoric workers exploited natural cracks in the rock face.

Scientists debunk a popular explanation for a flashy party trick.

Novel virus extracted from a hot spring bears thousands of unique spikes.

The week in science: 22–28 February 2019.

Tired of regulatory confusion and a lack of funding, some US researchers are taking their gene-edited livestock abroad.

An Israeli firm has sent a privately built craft called Beresheet to the Moon — and is leading a fresh era of exploration.

Synthetic DNA seems to behave like the natural variety, suggesting that chemicals beyond nature’s four familiar bases could support life on Earth.

Powerful gene-editing tool could help to diagnose illnesses such as Lassa fever early and rein in the spread of infection.

Recent upgrades to the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory will allow it to trace the history of exploding stars.

As concerns surge after a bombshell revelation, here are four questions about this fast-moving field.

A mysterious group of extinct humans known as Denisovans is helping to rewrite our understanding of human evolution. Who were they?

Real materials rarely behave like their digital counterparts. Stability of the compounds must be part of the burden of proof for predicting the complex properties of matter, urges Alex Zunger.

Sonja Schmid extols two studies on the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe, from medical impacts to radioactive blueberries.

Jan Zalasiewicz enjoys Brian Switek’s exploration of how the human scaffold — and our ideas about it — evolved.

The hunt for male and female distinctions inside the skull is a lesson in bad research practice, writes Lise Eliot.

An alternative to chemical oligonucleotide synthesis inches closer to reality.

The extracellular matrix governs a surprising number of cellular functions. New techniques are revealing how cells and matrix communicate — and why this cross-talk matters.

Offering support to female colleagues can trigger a culture change that makes science and engineering more equitable for all.

Iridescent colours have been observed to be reflected from specially designed droplets of colourless liquids, with the reflected colour depending on the viewing angle. The finding reveals a curious mechanism for creating coloration.

When cancer spreads, this metastatic stage of the disease is usually lethal. An analysis of immune cells that cluster with tumour cells in the bloodstream illuminates a partnership that might aid metastasis.

Quantum computers require controlled encoding to protect computations from environmental noise. Two experiments have achieved such encoding using what are known as infinite-dimensional quantum systems.

How Nature reported preparations for the Moon landing in 1969, and a rare archaeological find in 1919.

Nine years ago, the compound kynurenine was reported to be responsible for the dilation of blood vessels during a potentially fatal inflammatory condition. New evidence has now identified the true culprit.

Failed chemical reactions are often not reported, which means that vast amounts of potentially useful data are going to waste. Experiments show that machine learning can use such data to optimize the preparation of porous materials.

Studies of multiple sclerosis have long focused on the white matter of the brain. Insights into how immune cells target the brain’s grey matter now illuminate the stage of the disease at which neurodegeneration occurs.

Combining mobile phone technologies with infectious disease diagnostics can increase patients’ access to testing and treatment and provide public health authorities with new ways to monitor and control outbreaks of infectious diseases.

Topological materials are thought to be scarce, but an algorithm that diagnoses nontrivial topology in nonmagnetic materials finds the opposite: more than 30 per cent of the 26,688 materials studied are topological.

Topological quantum chemistry and newly developed codes are used to analyse and compute the topological properties of materials in a large crystal database and to identify new topological phases, finding that more than 27 per cent of all materials in nature are topological.

An algorithm based on symmetry indicators is used to search a crystallographic database and finds thousands of candidate topological materials, which could be exploited in next-generation electronic devices.

Single-cell profiling is used to create a molecular-level atlas of cell differentiation trajectories during gastrulation and early organogenesis in the mouse.

Data from single-cell combinatorial-indexing RNA-sequencing analysis of 2 million cells from mouse embryos between embryonic days 9.5 and 13.5 are compiled in a cell atlas of mouse organogenesis, which provides a global view of developmental processes occurring during this critical period.

In a rat model of multiple sclerosis, β-synuclein-specific T cells induce inflammation and pathological changes in the grey matter of the central nervous system; these cells were also found in higher numbers in patients with multiple sclerosis, particularly those with a chronic progressive course.

Two superconducting cavity modes are entangled using an exponential-SWAP logic gate.

A single logical qubit is encoded, manipulated and read out using a superposition of displaced squeezed states of the harmonic motion of a trapped calcium ion.

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy is used to characterize the surface states of bismuth iodide, providing experimental evidence of a weak topological insulator state that had previously been only theoretically predicted.

A mechanism for creating patterns of iridescent structural colour by total internal reflection of light beams along a concave optical interface leading to interference is described, for complex microscopic systems and for systems as simple as condensed water drops.

The ancestral tribosphenic therian chewing stroke is conserved in Monodelphis domestica, and couples tooth-row eversion and inversion in jaw opening and closing, respectively, with a rotational grinding stroke.

Evidence from hippocampal place cells shows that path-integration gain, previously thought to be a constant factor in the computation of location, is flexible and can be rapidly fine-tuned.

There are no new oligodendrocytes in potentially remyelinated multiple sclerosis shadow plaques, although oligodendrocyte generation is increased in the normal appearing white matter of patients with aggressive disease, informing the development of new therapies.

Single-nucleus RNA sequencing analysis identifies different subclusters of oligodendroglia in white matter from individuals with multiple sclerosis compared with controls, and these differences may be important for understanding disease progression.

Singlet molecular oxygen, produced by indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1 activity, gives rise to a signalling molecule that regulates arterial relaxation under inflammatory conditions.

The authors show that circulating tumour cells can be found in association with neutrophils, an interaction which supports their proliferation and their ability to seed metastasis.

A strategy using droplet-based and barcode-linked sequencing captures multiplex chromatin interactions at single-molecule precision, and here provides topological insight into chromatin structures and transcription in Drosophila.