Volume 576 Issue 7786, 12 December 2019

The built environment consumes energy and produces waste, which makes it pivotal to fighting climate change. A stronger dose of research could help.

A new code of conduct strives for more-diverse research meetings and events.

Institutions must act together to reform research culture, says Marcus Munafò.

Porous material removes nitrogen dioxide from exhaust and transforms it into a valuable commodity.

As the world warms, an adaptable Antarctic bird thrives while the fortunes of a specialist relative fall.

Rats that lose their zest for life after tough times show changes in a key brain area, but resilient rats do not.

Today’s waterways could illuminate how ancient rivers helped to set the stage for life on land.

Genetic changes in utero set the scene for a paediatric kidney tumour.

Gut neurons that trigger unpleasant symptoms also rally the body’s defenses against Salmonella.

A memory-storage device can bank information delivered by either light or electronic signals.

The latest science news, in brief.

Humanity’s supposed singular transition to modernity in the first millennium bc was much messier than previously thought, finds sweeping study of historical data.

Provocative analysis of sea-floor cores suggests that quakes on the Cascadia fault off California can trigger tremors on the San Andreas.

Springer Nature and Wiley have concerns about lack of consent in genetics and facial-recognition papers.

Core from Hercules Dome site could reveal how susceptible the region’s ice is to warming.

Mendelian randomization offers a simple way to distinguish causation from correlation. But are scientists overusing it?

A promising field of research on social behaviour struggled after investigators couldn’t repeat key findings. Now researchers are trying to establish what’s worth saving.

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

New gene-editing documentary showcases biology’s hottest tool — up to the point when things went awry. By Amy Maxmen

The Futurium needs a bolder vision to show that we, technology and nature are one. By Stephen Cave

Biochemist whose discoveries led to faster, more-accurate DNA testing.

Leading scholars and publishers from ten countries have agreed a definition of predatory publishing that can protect scholarship. It took 12 hours of discussion, 18 questions and 3 rounds to reach.

Wildfires are becoming more and more frequent around the world, making expertise in the field a hot commodity.

By making videos about the first steps of his research, Adrian Smith has realized the production value of his science.

Mona Nemer seeks out common ground in shaping Canada’s national science policy.

The finding that a thin sheet of fibrous tissue under the skin contains a prefabricated, movable cellular sealant that can heal deep wounds might have implications for the treatment of scars and ulcers.

Experiments show that quantum fluctuations can allow heat to be transported between two objects separated by a vacuum gap. This effect could be harnessed to exploit and control heat transfer in nanoscale devices.

Drug resistance in malaria parasites is mediated by mutations in a transporter protein. The transporter’s structure reveals the molecular basis of how key mutations bring about resistance to different drugs.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is currently making a series of close encounters with the Sun. Initial observations from the spacecraft have improved our understanding of both the Sun and its environment.

Graphene coated with nanoparticles has been used to make wearable light sensors that measure the human pulse and blood oxygen levels from ambient light passing through tissue, offering a potential platform for health-care monitoring.

The Parker Solar Probe mission has reached the inner heliosphere of the Sun and made measurements of energetic particle events in the near-Sun radiation environment.

Data collected by the Parker Solar Probe in the solar corona are used to determine the organization of Alfvén waves, revealing an increasing flow velocity peaking at 35–50 km s⁻¹.

Observations of the solar corona by the Parker Solar Probe reveal evidence for the predicted dust-free zone and confirm that streamers comprise smaller substreamers that channel continuous multiscale density fluctuations.

Measurements from the Parker Solar Probe show that slow solar wind near the Sun’s equator originates in coronal holes.

Conventionally, heat transfer occurs by conduction, convection or radiation, but has also been theoretically predicted to occur through quantum fluctuations across a vacuum; this prediction has now been confirmed experimentally.

A general framework for incorporating and correcting for nonclassical electromagnetic phenomena in nanoscale systems is presented.

Data mining of a computational library of metal–organic frameworks identifies motifs that bind CO₂ sufficiently strongly and whose uptake is not affected by water, with application for the capture of CO₂ from flue gases.

Satellite-derived analysis of daily vertical migrations of ocean animals shows that the relative abundance and total biomass of these animals differ between different regions globally, depending on the availability of food and necessity to avoid predators.

The enamel proteome from a 1.9-million-year-old Gigantopithecus tooth shows that the Gigantopithecus and Pongo (orangutan) lineages diverged 12–10 million years ago.

Recordings from 30,000 neurons in 42 brain regions are used to delineate the spatial distribution of neuronal activity underlying vision, choice, action and behavioural engagement in mice.

Analyses of primary and relapse samples of embryonal tumours with multilayered rosettes provide insights into the molecular mechanisms that underlie the development and opportunities for the treatment of this deadly disease.

MLLT3 is identified as a crucial regulator of the self-renewal of human haematopoietic stem cells, and helps to maintain an active chromatin state in haematopoietic stem-cell regulatory genes during culture.

Cells that populate scar tissue in mammalian skin migrate to wounds as prefabricated matrix from the subcutaneous fascia, including embedded blood vessels, macrophages and peripheral nerves.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells engineered to overexpress the canonical AP-1 transcription factor c-Jun are resistant to T cell exhaustion, and provide enhanced therapeutic benefit in mouse tumour models.

A subpopulation of Caenorhabditis elegans, in which there is a naturally occurring transient increase in reactive oxygen species during early development, exhibits increased stress resistance, improved redox homeostasis and prolonged lifespan, which are linked to a global decrease in level of the histone mark H3K4me3.

The chromatin regulator CTCF has key roles in the gradual development of hierarchical chromatin structure during human embryogenesis.

Anoxygenic photosynthetic microorganisms can biomineralize manganese oxides without molecular oxygen being present and without high-potential photosynthetic reaction centres, which sheds doubt on proposed dates for the origins of oxygenic photosynthetic metabolism.

Structural, functional and in silico analyses of the chloroquine-resistance transporter PfCRT of Plasmodium falciparum suggest that distinct mechanistic features mediate the resistance to chloroquine and piperaquine in drug-resistant parasites.

A cryo-EM structure of a membrane-embedded core complex of the ESX-3/type VII secretion system from Mycobacterium smegmatis is reported, providing insights into the mechanisms by which virulence factors are secreted by these bacteria.