Volume 582 Issue 7811, 11 June 2020

The scientific community should agree on the essential information to be provided when pulling a paper from the scientific literature.

Bacteria embedded with coded snippets of DNA survive microwaving, boiling and frying.

Advice from special relativity: avert your eyes as that bicycle whizzes by.

A tumour’s genomic fingerprint provides a way to track minute quantities of cancer DNA in a person’s bloodstream.

The connections and information provided by a mobile phone could improve women’s well-being.

The latest science news, in brief.

An academic strike is planned for this week, alongside marches and demonstrations worldwide.

Cryo-electron microscopy breaks a key barrier that will allow the workings of proteins to be probed in unprecedented detail.

Near-real-time data on carbon emissions reveal the sectors, countries and events that had the most impact, but it is unclear how long the dip will last.

Retracted studies had relied on health-record analyses from a company that declined to share its raw data for an audit.

How virtual classrooms and dire finances could alter academia: part 1 in a series on science after the pandemic.

Financial crises could spell trouble for science budgets but spending could surge in some countries: part 2 in a series on science after the pandemic.

Virtual meetings are becoming the norm under COVID-19 and winning over many researchers: part 3 in a series on science after the pandemic.

The push for rapid and open publishing could take off — although financial pressures lie ahead: part 4 in a series on science after the pandemic.

Researchers expect long-term changes that reduce travel for work and conferences: part 6 in a series on science after the pandemic.

The country is rapidly gaining on the United States in research, but problems could slow its rise: part 5 in a series on science after the pandemic.

Remote clinical trials and other changes could permanently alter pharmaceutical development: part 7 in a series on science after the pandemic.

Thousands of researchers have jumped into studying coronavirus and many want to continue: part 8 in a series on science after the pandemic.

What happens when facts face personal, political and commercial pressures? A book on the workings of science explores.

Maryam Mirzakhani, Fields medallist and Iranian national hero, is celebrated in an elegant documentary.

Analysis of past recoveries shows a low-carbon reboot matters more for climate than does the brief emissions crash.

Open up, share and network information so that marine stewardship can mitigate climate change, overfishing and pollution.

Abdelrahman Y. Fouda shares six things he learnt from interviewing online.

An inability to focus during a weekend trip forced Jeff Clements to ponder often-overlooked drivers of academic mental health.

Researchers are developing technologies to find and grow microbes that biologists have struggled to culture in the lab.

Research-optimized tools can take notes, dictate instructions and answer questions, allowing researchers to work hands-free.

Aboriginal archaeologist Chris Wilson retraces the steps of the Ngarrindjeri people in South Australia.

Six-hour weather forecasts have been used to validate estimates of climate change hundreds of years from now. Such tests have great potential — but only if our weather-forecasting and climate-prediction systems are unified.

Exotic ultracold gases called Bose–Einstein condensates have been created on board the International Space Station. This feat is not only a technological landmark, but could also improve our understanding of fundamental physics.

Rapid, reliable identification of an unknown viral infection is challenging. Use of CRISPR technology can simultaneously detect nucleic acids of many viruses and pinpoint specific ones, such as the virus that causes COVID-19.

What controls the height of mountain ranges? An analysis of the forces acting on mountains near tectonic-plate boundaries suggests that tectonic forces are the main controller, rather than climate-driven erosion.

It emerges that strings of nucleotides are added to messenger RNAs that are undergoing silencing in nematode worms. The composition of these nucleotide tails promotes the formation of small RNAs that drive heritable gene regulation.

A Bose–Einstein condensate prepared in low Earth orbit shows a free-expansion time greater than one second, demonstrating the advantages of a microgravity environment for such studies.

Electron–electron interactions in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene can split usually degenerate electronic bands, giving rise to a cascade of electronic transitions revealed by spectroscopy.

Local electronic compressibility measurements of magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene show that the insulating and superconducting phases of this system are both derived from a high-energy symmetry-broken state.

The photonic dispersion of phonon polaritons in bilayers of α-phase molybdenum trioxide can undergo tunable topological transitions at magic interlayer twist angles.

Information from quantum coherence observations guides synthetic modifications of an iron-based chromophore, increasing the excited-state dynamics lifetime by a factor of 20, with implications for photo-induced electron-transfer applications.

A hexagonal self-assembled monolayer of soft microparticles acts as the template for a second layer of the same particles, forcing the formation of patterns with unexpected structural symmetries and complexities.

Simulations using a force balance model match mountain heights observed around the globe, suggesting that mountain elevation is almost completely controlled by tectonic forces rather than erosion.

Insights into the interactions between pro- and anti-vaccination clusters on Facebook can enable policies and approaches that attempt to interrupt the shift to anti-vaccination views and persuade undecided individuals to adopt a pro-vaccination stance.

In an ethnically diverse group of Peruvian individuals, the population-specific, missense variant in FBN1 (E1297G) is associated with lower height and shows evidence of positive selection within the Peruvian population.

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association study data from 77,418 individuals of East Asian ancestry with type 2 diabetes identifies novel variants associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

Single-cell RNA sequencing reveals molecular determinants of the developmental programs that orchestrate the intermingling of neuronal subtypes in the hypothalamus.

Nodal signalling coordinates embryonic development before and during gastrulation by directing perforation of the basement membrane via spatiotemporal regulation of matrix metalloprotease expression.

NOTCH3 signalling is shown to be the underlying driver of the differentiation and expansion of a subset of synovial fibroblasts implicated in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis.

A specific type of glycosylation—sialylation—is more common on immunoglobulin E from individuals with a peanut allergys than from non-atopic people, suggesting that it has a role in regulating anaphylaxis.

Hoxb13 acts as a cofactor of Meis1 in regulating cardiomyocyte maturation and cell cycle, and knockout of both proteins enables regeneration of postnatal cardiac tissue in a mouse model of heart injury.

CRISPR-based nucleic acid detection is used in a platform that can simultaneously detect 169 human-associated viruses in multiple samples, providing scalable, multiplexed pathogen detection aimed at routine surveillance for public health.

In Caenorhabditis elegans, the ribonucleotidyltransferase RDE-3 adds alternating uridine and guanosine ribonucleotides to the 3′ termini of RNAs, a key step in RNA interference and thus epigenetic inheritance in the C. elegans germline.

A programme of structure-assisted drug design and high-throughput screening identifies six compounds that inhibit the main protease of SARS-CoV-2, demonstrating the ability of this strategy to isolate drug leads with clinical potential.

Using high-resolution atomic force microscopy of live cells, the authors present an updated view of the cell walls of both Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis.