Volume 587 Issue 7832, 5 November 2020

A plan to green 7,000 kilometres of Africa’s drylands is struggling to take off. Researchers must help.

Bottom-up workshops have laid a foundation for responsible research, but institutions must add structural support.

Some of the cells on a cephalopod’s suckers respond to substances produced by ocean creatures.

A standard laboratory tool allows researchers to produce two potentially dangerous metals and to observe them as they form.

Borrowed genes help E. coli to subsist on the relatively modest levels of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.

Canines bark at the pearly gates, according to inscriptions on gravestones installed since the Second World War.

The latest science news, in brief.

The vaccine, designed to prevent harmful mutations, is seen as key to eradicating polio.

Young children are unlikely to spread the virus — but older kids are more at risk, say researchers.

Injections of antibodies might prevent mild COVID-19 from becoming severe, but the treatments are expensive and difficult to make.

The huge Paris–Saclay University has earned a top international ranking — but researchers say it’s too soon to judge whether the model is a success.

Genomes trace how the animals moved around the world — often with humans by their side.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s six-figure donation is a step towards addressing racial injustice in the sciences.

Data scientist Emilio Ferrara tells Nature that fake social-media accounts are harder to detect than ever before.

A fringe theory links microbes in the brain with the onset of dementia. Now, researchers are taking it seriously.

Why proposals to largely let the virus run its course — embraced by Donald Trump’s administration and others — could bring “untold death and suffering”.

Intellectual-property laws imagine creatorship as white, a book argues. By Shobita Parthasarathy

A gene-editing primer maps the solid ground better than the quagmires. By Natalie Kofler

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

Illusionist who exposed fraud to showcase the perils of credulity.

Researchers in many countries need custom-built systems to do robust and transparent science.

Luciana Leite and Luisa M. Diele-Viegas are using their own negative experiences to research the impact of societal and family expectations on women’s career choices.

Researchers have invented methods to study microbes that thrive in the world’s most inhospitable environments.

Analytical chemist and avid surfer Cliff Kapono takes to his board to study the health of coral reefs off the coast of Hawaii.

A structural-biology technique called cryo-electron microscopy has attained the ability to locate individual atoms within a protein. What are the implications of this advance?

The neutron drip line refers to the maximum number of neutrons that can be packed into the atomic nuclei of each chemical element. A mechanism has been proposed that could explain the long-debated origin of this drip line.

An analysis of satellite images has pinpointed individual tree canopies over a large area of West Africa. The data suggest that it will soon be possible, with certain limitations, to map the location and size of every tree worldwide.

The origins of millisecond-long bursts of radio emissions, known as fast radio bursts, from beyond our Galaxy have been enigmatic. The detection of one such burst from a Galactic source helps to constrain the theories.

The mechanisms and origins of fast radio bursts are reviewed in connection with data and insights from the neighbouring fields of gamma-ray bursts and radio pulsars.

Measurements of an intense radio burst from a Galactic magnetar provide evidence that magnetars are the probable source of some fast radio bursts.

Observations of the fast radio burst FRB 200428 coinciding with X-rays from the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154 indicate that active magnetars can produce fast radio bursts at extragalactic distances.

An 8-hour radio observational campaign of the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154, assisted by multi-wavelength data, indicates that associations between fast radio bursts and soft γ-ray bursts are rare.

A mechanistic explanation for the origin of the neutron dripline shows that nuclei accommodate the addition of neutrons by becoming increasingly ellipsoidal, up to a maximum number of neutrons, reconciling theory and experiments.

Logic operations and reconfigurable circuits are demonstrated that can be directly implemented using memory elements based on floating-gate field-effect transistors with monolayer MoS₂ as the active channel material.

Deep learning was used to map the crown sizes of each tree in the West African Sahara, Sahel and sub-humid zone using submetre-resolution satellite imagery, revealing a relatively high density of trees in arid areas.

Phylogenetic statistical analyses, biophysical models and information from the fossil record show that an evolutionary signal of natural selection acted to increase the flight efficiency of pterosaurs over millions of years.

Lapses in attention before remembering partially account for why we remember or forget in the moment, why some individuals remember better than others, and why heavier media multitasking is related to worse memory.

Dimethoxy-1,4-benzoquinone signalling occurs in Arabidopsis and in the root parasite Phtheirospermum japonicum via increases in cytosolic Ca²⁺ concentration mediated by the leucine-rich-repeat receptor-like kinase CARD1 in Arabidopsis, or by its homologues in P. japonicum.

Single-nucleus RNA sequencing in mouse and human adipose tissue identifies a subpopulation of adipocytes that regulates thermogenesis in neighbouring adipocytes in a paracrine manner by modulating acetate signalling.

Experiments using an ecologically realistic 185-member bacterial synthetic community in the root system of Arabidopsis reveal that Variovorax bacteria can influence plant hormone levels to reverse the inhibitory effect of the community on root growth.

Human cytomegalovirus rotates the nuclei of infected cells to set up intranuclear polarization and thereby separate viral DNA from inactive histones and associated host DNA.

Depletion of transforming growth factor-β receptor 2 (TGFBR2) in CD4⁺ T cells results in IL-4-dependent vascular remodelling, stopping tumour growth in a transgenic mouse model of breast cancer, suggesting that type 2 immunity could be targeted for cancer treatments.

4T-Trap, a bispecific molecule designed to recognize CD4 and bind TGF-β, blocks TGF-β signalling in T helper cells, causing interleukin-4-dependent vascular reorganization and cancer cell death in a mouse model of breast cancer.

Chromosomal instability enables the continuous selection of somatic copy number alterations, which are established as ordered events that often occur in parallel, throughout tumour evolution and metastasis.

The adaptor protein TRADD is a regulator of both cellular homeostasis and apoptosis, and represents a potential therapeutic target for human diseases.

Binding of RNA polymerase II during zygotic genome activation in mouse embryos is determined using the newly developed method Stacc–seq.

A protein condensate formed by multivalent interactions between the long non-coding RNA Xist and specific RNA-binding proteins drives the compartmentalization required to perpetuate gene silencing on the inactive X chromosome.

Advances in electron cryo-microscopy hardware allow proteins to be studied at atomic resolution.

Advances in electron cryo-microscopy allow the structure of apoferritin to be determined at a resolution that enables the visualization of individual atoms.