Volume 586 Issue 7828, 8 October 2020

The terminology for long-lasting COVID symptoms — and the definition of recovery — must incorporate patients’ perspectives.

Slow-lane logistics shouldn’t stymie fast-track science, says head of UK government’s Vaccine Taskforce.

Centuries-old ‘unidentified marine objects’ hint that sea creatures have been getting entangled in fishing lines since before the invention of plastic.

More than 40% of people globally face a long trip to a health-care facility unless they find a ride by car, bus or similar form of transport.

Ruins and human bones in Spain capture a prosperous market town on the day when it was burnt and its inhabitants slaughtered.

A merger between two black holes of vastly different masses might have stemmed from a relationship between two unequal stars.

The latest science news, in brief.

The coronavirus pandemic, climate change and space exploration are among the issues that Biden will influence if he wins the upcoming US election.

Researchers will also recommend an open-access policy that promotes research being shared in online repositories.

Interest in Earth’s hellish neighbour explodes after the detection of phosphine, a potential marker of life.

If confirmed, Amy Coney Barrett is likely to influence the court on environmental regulation, scientific expertise and agency transparency, say legal scholars.

The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough?

The US president’s actions have exacerbated the pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the United States, rolled back environmental and public-health regulations and undermined science and scientific institutions. Some of the harm could be permanent.

Mathematician whose invention connected knots to quantum physics.

History must not repeat itself — global and continental cooperation are essential.

Five international students and postdocs reflect on a turbulent year triggered by the Trump administration’s visa restrictions.

Cayne Layton dives into his work on restoring kelp forests in cold-water oceans.

A field experiment reveals that people are more likely to demand that rich members of society should pay more taxes when reminded about ongoing inequality through exposure to a symbol of wealth.

Electronic devices called inductors are hard to miniaturize because their effectiveness is proportional to their size. An approach based on quantum mechanics could overcome this issue, offering many potential applications.

Resident bacteria in the maternal gut are important for normal fetal brain development in mice. It emerges that this effect is driven by bacterially produced metabolite molecules that signal to the fetal brain.

Narrow rings and gaps have been seen in a particularly young disk of dust and gas around a nascent star, using the world’s most powerful radio telescope. The finding provides a potential glimpse of the earliest stages of planet formation.

The current state of programmable photonic integrated circuits is discussed, including recent developments in their building blocks, circuit architectures, electronic control and programming strategies, as well as different application spaces.

The long-term success of area-based conservation—including both protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures—after 2020 will depend on governments securing adequate funding and prioritizing biodiversity in land, water and sea management.

Dust-emission observations of the young (<500,000 years old) protostar IRS 63 show evidence of rings and gaps in its disk, a prerequisite of planet formation.

Microscale magnetic devices containing nanoscale spin helices produce an inductance comparable in magnitude to that of a commercial inductor, in a volume about a million times smaller.

An air gap embedded within the structure of a thermophotovoltaic device acts as a near-perfect reflector of low-energy photons, resulting in their recovery and recycling by the thermal source, enabling excellent power-conversion efficiency.

Asymmetric nickel catalysis is used to intercept transient cyclic allene intermediates to achieve stereocontrol.

Bottom-up and top-down approaches are used to quantify global nitrous oxide sources and sinks resulting from both natural and anthropogenic sources, revealing a 30% increase in global human-induced emissions between 1980 and 2016.

Local exposure to inequality in low-income areas is positively associated with support for a tax on wealthier individuals to address economic disparities.

Single-nucleus RNA-sequencing analyses of brain from humans, macaques, marmosets, mice and ferrets reveal diverse ways that interneuron populations have changed during evolution.

The supramammillary nucleus in the hypothalamus acts as a novelty hub that selectively directs different types of novelty signals to different subregions of the hippocampus and flexibly modulates the encoding of memory.

An organoid-based screening platform maps the genetic interactions underlying intestinal development and regeneration, showing that retinoic acid metabolism maintains the balance between regeneration and homeostasis, and that an antagonist of the retinoid X receptor promotes regeneration in vivo.

Small molecules that arise from the maternal gut microbiome in pregnant dams promote fetal thalamocortical axonogenesis in their offspring.

Na⁺ controls the function of the mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation system and hypoxic redox signalling through an unexpected interaction with phospholipids.

In cells with microsatellite instability, expanded TA-dinucleotide repeats form cruciform structures that stall replication forks and cause chromosome shattering in the absence of the WRN helicase.

Expression of the axon-guidance gene Slit2 in endothelium, induced by endothelial sensing of tumour-derived double-stranded RNA, promotes metastatic dissemination in mouse models of breast and lung cancer.

Using an auxin-inducible approach, the authors show that downmodulation of CTCF activity promotes cohesin-driven RAG endonuclease scanning, and thus V(D)J recombination, across the Igh locus.

Structural determination of the salicylic-acid-binding core of Arabidopsis NPR4 sheds light on the mechanisms through which this plant hormone interacts with its receptors, providing insights that are of potential use in engineering enhanced immunity.

Structures of the acetohydroxyacid synthase complexes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Arabidopsis thaliana provide insights into the biosynthesis of and feedback inhibition by branched-chain amino acids.