Volume 580 Issue 7803, 16 April 2020

Governments need to think twice before they suppress messages related to COVID-19.

A squad of sensory cells in the throat prompts a reflex to keep the airways clear.

To lead a climate-friendly life, kiss the car goodbye.

The discovery could help to unravel the evolution of the Universe’s most extreme environments.

Radioactive fallout from the cold war shows that one whale shark studied was 50 years old when it died.

The latest science news, in brief.

Doctors are reaching for drugs that dampen the immune response — but these also undermine the body’s own fight against the coronavirus.

US labs that underwent huge efforts to retool for COVID-19 testing still aren’t operating at full capacity. Experts say the lack of a national strategy is largely to blame.

Tantalizing signs that coronavirus lockdowns are making air cleaner aren’t as straightforward as they seem.

NASA’s high-flying SOFIA observatory has struggled to prove its scientific worth.

How epidemiologists rushed to model the coronavirus pandemic.

A biography digs into Pulitzer prizewinner and farming pioneer Louis Bromfield’s life. By David R. Montgomery.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the week’s best science picks.

In the first of two articles about laboratory closures triggered by COVID-19, scientists affected by the shutdowns outline the tools they are using to run their research groups remotely.

Li Hua is seeking drugs that can treat people infected with the coronavirus.

In a mirror world, antiparticles should behave in the same way as particles. But it emerges that leptons — neutrinos, electrons and their more exotic cousins — might not obey this expected pattern.

A method for identifying atmospheric contamination of volcanic-gas samples reveals variations in the isotopic composition of nitrogen in the mantle, and provides a clearer view of the origins of this element in Earth’s interior.

In many neurodegenerative disorders, the spread of protein aggregates underlies disease progression in the brain. A receptor molecule has now been found that mediates the neuronal uptake of one such harmful protein.

The development and future prospects of prospectively designed multispecific drugs, which have the potential to transform the biopharmaceutical industry by enabling the targeting of currently inaccessible components of the proteome, are reviewed.

The T2K experiment constrains CP symmetry in neutrino oscillations, excluding 46% of possible values of the CP violating parameter at a significance of three standard deviations; this is an important milestone to test CP symmetry conservation in leptons and whether the Universe’s matter–antimatter imbalance originates from leptons.

A quantum system combining the accuracy of trapped ions and the speed of Rydberg atoms is reported; the implemented fast gate is a step towards a scalable quantum computer.

A scalable silicon quantum processor unit cell made of two qubits confined to quantum dots operates at about 1.5 K, achieving 98.6% single-qubit gate fidelities and a 2 μs coherence time.

Lithographically defined qubits are shown to support full two-qubit logic at temperatures above one kelvin by using electron spin states in silicon quantum dots.

Photoemission electron microscopy images of trap states in halide peroskites, spatially correlated with their structural and compositional factors, may help in managing power losses in optoelectronic applications. 

A rare nitrogen isotopologue is used to detect contamination by air in volcanic gas effusions, and thereby derive the isotopic compositions of mantle endmembers.

Analyses of the hominin skull from Broken Hill, Zambia, place it at an earlier date than previously thought, confirming that later Middle Pleistocene Africa was home to at least three lineages of hominin.

A population of neurons in the parabrachial nucleus that expresses prodynorphin monitors ingestion using mechanosensory signals from the upper digestive tract, and mediates negative feedback control of intake when the digestive tract is distended.

Low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1 (LRP1) is shown to be a critical determinant of tau propagation in the brain.

In mouse models of bowel inflammation, depletion of the SETDB1 histone methyltransferase leads to genome instability, which releases repression of endogenous retroviruses that triggers ZBP1-dependent necroptosis and inflammation in gut.

Analyses of mouse models of inflammation suggest some chronic inflammatory conditions may result from Z-DNA-binding protein 1 sensing endogenous Z-form nucleic acids—such as those of endogenous retroelements—through its Zα domains.

Germline mutations in the Elongator complex gene ELP1 predispose individuals to the development of childhood medulloblastoma.

A human binary protein interactome map that includes around 53,000 protein–protein interactions involving more than 8,000 proteins provides a reference for the study of human cellular function in health and disease.

Analysis of cryo-electron microscopy structures of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis ABC transporter Rv1819c suggests that it is a multi-solute transporter for hydrophilic molecules.

The mycobacterial ABC transporter IrtAB functions as a siderophore importer despite exhibiting an exporter fold in its structure, and contains a siderophore interaction domain capable of siderophore reduction and iron release inside the cell.