Volume 573 Issue 7775, 26 September 2019

An assessment of nature’s contribution to economic growth must listen to diverse voices.

To navigate the present, we must heed the lessons of history.

ReproducibiliTea can build up open science without top-down initiatives, says Amy Orben.

A now-extinct Australian animal was even bigger than previously thought and had joints that are unique among mammals.

Immune cells’ built-in timepieces affect response to inoculation.

Tiny device holds an unprecedented number of quantum units of information.

‘Supercooled’ rain falls in the darkness of the long polar winter.

On opening, a bottle of bubbly releases a carbon dioxide plume that travels faster than the speed of sound.

Semen that impairs a female’s eyesight is one weapon in the sexual arms race between male honeybees and queens.

Fluorescent tag can be affixed to proteins or genetic structures of interest.

The week in science: 20-26 September 2019.

As the movement prepares for a massive global protest, researchers break down why its message is gaining ground.

From Bangkok to Brisbane, researchers were among those protesting to urge action on global warming.

For one year, a research ship will drift while frozen in sea ice — and give scientists their closest look at the rapid changes gripping the polar north.

Researchers warn that the country’s push to hold back its deserts could strain water resources.

Scientists analysed chemical changes to the ancient humans’ DNA to reveal broad, Neanderthal-like facial features.

Thomas Crowther wants to restore the planet, but first he needs to know how many trees, fungi, worms and microbes live on it.

A five-year regulatory free-for-all in regenerative medicine has given the industry a boost. But patients might be paying the price.

David Kaiser traces the roots of government support for science, in the first of a series of essays on how the past 150 years have shaped the research system, marking Nature’s 150th anniversary.

Virtual models boost smart manufacturing by simulating decisions and optimization, from design to operations, explain Fei Tao and Qinglin Qi.

Ann Pettifor finds astonishing contemporary resonance in John Maynard Keynes’s critique of globalization and inequity.

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

The tools of chemical biology, genomics and data mining can yield insights into the metabolites of the microbiome.

A chance visit to the Science Museum in London brought Emily Scott-Dearing into science communication.

Kimberlites are volcanic rocks that derive from deep in Earth’s mantle, but the nature of their source is uncertain. A study of this source’s evolution over two billion years provides valuable information about its properties.

Why brain tumours progress rapidly is unclear. The finding that such cancer cells form synaptic connections with neurons uncovers an interaction that accelerates tumour growth rate and lethality.

Monarch butterflies’ ability to migrate over long distances is impressive. Evidence that some monarchs reared in captivity have impaired migratory skills compared with wild monarchs has conservation implications.

T-cell receptors orchestrate immune-system responses against infection and cancer. A structure of an entire T-cell receptor complex clarifies its assembly and signalling, and sheds light on its dynamic ligand recognition.

How Nature reported political support for European union in 1969, and early studies of the effects of sewage on fish from 1919.

Little was known about the properties of hydrogen under extreme pressure. Experiments now reveal key details about the arrangement of molecules in several of the element’s high-pressure phases.

Progress in integrating atomically thin two-dimensional materials with silicon-based technology is reviewed, together with the associated opportunities and challenges, and a roadmap for future applications is presented.

Multivalent anions are found to be capable of electron-doping polymer semiconductors to realize conductive films with very low work functions, which enable efficient electron injection into materials with low electron affinity.

Breast-to-brain metastasis is enabled by activation of an N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor, which is achieved via the formation of pseudo-tripartite synapses between cancer cells and glutamatergic neurons.

Neurons form glutamatergic synapses with glioma cells in mice and humans, and inhibition of AMPA receptors reduces glioma cell invasion and growth.

Neurons form synapses onto glioma cells, and depolarization of glioma membranes promotes glioma growth in vivo, whereas blocking electrochemical signalling blocks tumour growth.

A high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy structure of the human octameric T cell receptor–CD3 complex, including the complete extracellular and transmembrane domains, reveals the structural basis for TCR–CD3 assembly and provides insights into T cell receptor activation.

Transmission of single-spin and entangled quantum states without the physical displacement of electrons is demonstrated in a quadruple quantum dot array using the Heisenberg exchange interaction and coherent SWAP gates.

X-ray diffraction measurements of solid hydrogen provide crystallographic information for high-pressure phases of hydrogen and transitions between them, suggesting a series of isostructural transitions under compression before band closure and metallization.

The chemical synthesis of (+)-perseanol, a diterpene with potent insecticidal properties, is reported.

A statistical forecast model using a deep-learning approach produces useful forecasts of El Niño/Southern Oscillation events with lead times of up to one and a half years.

A global dataset of river longitudinal profiles shows that river profiles become straighter with increasing aridity and numerical modelling suggests that this can be explained by rainfall–runoff regimes in different climate zones.

Globally distributed kimberlites have their origins in a single, homogeneous early Earth reservoir that was subsequently perturbed, probably by subduction along the margins of Pangaea, around 200 million years ago.

Wilderness areas with minimal levels of human disturbance promote the persistence of biodiversity by acting as buffers against species loss, and therefore represent key targets for environmental protection.

Mollisonia plenovenatrix, a small predatory arthropod from the Burgess Shale dated to about 508 million years ago, is morphologically close to horseshoe crabs, which suggests chelicerates arose as micropredators early during the Cambrian explosion.

The RNA helicase DDX3X has a critical role in regulating both the induction of stress granules and the activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome in cells under stress conditions.

Restoring the function of p53 in a mouse model of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma leads to the accumulation of α-ketoglutarate, which increases levels of the 5-hydroxymethylcytosine chromatin modification and results in reduced tumour-cell fitness.

V(D)J recombination in B cells involves cohesin-mediated extrusion of chromatin loops to present DNA targets for cleavage and joining.

Single-molecule dynamics reveal that the GTPase activity of eukaryotic initiation factor eIF5B serves as a kinetic checkpoint for the transition from translation initiation to elongation.

Structural and biophysical studies reveal that low-barrier hydrogen bonds enable long-range communication between the active sites of multimeric enzymes and synchronise catalysis.