Volume 589 Issue 7843, 28 January 2021

Now that specific floods, heatwaves and more can be attributed to our actions, decision makers can act.

Experimental data and predictive algorithms combine to reveal the essential biomolecule’s shape-shifting.

Scientists have a new theory for how the ringed planet got its tilt.

Precise engineering generates a structure that fractures more easily in one direction than the other.

A plan uses real-time monitoring to vaccinate more than two-thirds of a city’s canines at low cost.

Ambitious irrigation schemes are planned for sub-Saharan Africa — but those already built have a dismal track record.

An adaptation to the body’s pigment formula produces particles that outshine melanin.

Plastic bags and wrappers host a thriving community of ocean creatures.

The latest science news, in brief.

Nearly one year ago, the World Health Organization sounded the alarm about the coronavirus, but was ignored.

Evidence that a variant of the coronavirus identified in South Africa might compromise immunity sparks concerns about vaccine effectiveness.

Scientists praise US president’s selection of the bioethics and social inequality specialist to help lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Children are no more susceptible to these lineages than adults are — and closing schools on the basis of incomplete information could have repercussions.

Vaccinated people in Israel are less likely to test positive for SARS-CoV-2, but a population-wide effect will take time to become clear.

Subscription journals will let some Plan S funded researchers share accepted manuscripts under open licences.

Regulators will soon grapple with how to safely administer powerful psychedelics for treating depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Chemical clues reveal stories from the birth of the Solar System.

Theoretician who simplified nuclear physics and revamped Japan’s science.

It is time to move beyond tumour sequencing data to identify vulnerabilities in cancers.

University policies often present barriers to bringing assistance dogs into the lab or on campus.

COVID considerations unsurprisingly dominate the tech developments that could have a big impact in the coming year.

Leah Tsang helps to bring bird poisoners to justice as part of her role at Australia’s oldest museum.

Isoprenoid molecules are essential in many disease-causing microorganisms, and intermediates made during their synthesis trigger immune-defence responses by γδ T cells. ‘Immunoantibiotics’ exploit this dual vulnerability.

The size of the helium nucleus has been determined using exotic helium atoms in which one electron has been replaced with its heavier cousin, a muon. The result sheds light on a decade-old puzzle regarding the proton radius.

Pain-sensing nerve cells can mobilize blood stem cells in mice, with a component of chilli peppers being one stimulus. The finding holds the promise of improving procedures for stem-cell transplantation.

Scientists have long been baffled by the mismatch of climate simulations of the past 12,000 years with temperature reconstructions from geological records. It now emerges that seasonal biases in the records explain the disparity.

No cure exists for the lethal premature-ageing condition Hutchinson–Gilford progeria. A gene-editing tool — adenine base editors — offers a way to treat the condition in mice. Could this approach lead to an effective therapy?

A strategy for machine learning has been developed that exploits the fact that data are often collected in different ways with varying levels of accuracy. The approach was used to build a model that predicts a key property of materials.

The 2S–2P transitions in muonic helium-4 ions are measured using laser spectroscopy and used to obtain an α-particle charge-radius value five times more precise than that from electron scattering.

X-ray diffraction measurements of solid carbon compressed to pressures of about two terapascals (approximately twenty million atmospheres) find that carbon retains a diamond structure even under these extreme conditions.

Correlation-driven topological phases with different Chern numbers are observed in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene in modest magnetic fields, indicating that strong electronic interactions can lead to topologically non-trivial phases.

A versatile and rapid metallaphotoredox catalytic method of making ³H- and ¹¹C-labelled tracer compounds for use in positron emission tomography (PET) is reported.

Reanalysis of Holocene sea surface temperature records affirms the role of retreating ice and rising greenhouse gases in driving a steady increase in global temperatures over the past 12,000 years.

Trends in the rate of region- and sector-specific land-use greenhouse gas emissions in 1961–2017 show an acceleration of about 20% per decade after 2001.

Data from ocean bottom seismometers show that the mantle transition zone beneath the equatorial Mid-Atlantic Ridge is thin and warm, which suggests more material transfer than previously thought.

The global abundance of oceanic sharks and rays has decreased by 71% since 1970 and 24 species are threatened with extinction owing to a concomitant increase in fishing pressure.

An analysis of the search behaviour of recruiters on a Swiss online recruitment platform shows that jobseekers from minority ethnic groups are less likely to be contacted by recruiters, and also provides evidence of gender-based discrimination.

In Drosophila melanogaster, female mating decisions are governed by female-specific descending neurons that integrate input from auditory neurons that respond to features of the song of a conspecific male and central neurons that encode the mating status of the female.

Hunger status in a fly is shown to drive either sleep-dependent or sleep-independent memory formation through different mushroom body circuits.

Repurposing of an SHR–SCR stem cell program in the legume root cortex enables rhizobial symbiosis.

Stimulation of pain-sensing neurons, which can be achieved in mice by the ingestion of capsaicin, promotes the migration of haematopoietic stem cells from the bone marrow into the blood.

A class of compounds with a dual mechanism of action—direct targeting of IspH and stimulation of cytotoxic γδ T cells to enhance pathogen clearance—are active against multidrug-resistant bacteria.

Transgenic K18-hACE2 mice are a useful model of COVID-19 including anosmia; infection of these mice resulted in severe pneumonia and, in some cases, infection in the brain, which was prevented by convalescent plasma.

In a mouse model of progeria, an adenine base editor delivered with adeno-associated virus corrects the pathogenic mutation in LMNA, rescues vascular pathology and markedly extends the lifespan of the mice.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of non-structural protein 1 (nsP1) of chikungunya virus reveal the mechanisms that underpin the association of viral replication machinery with virus-induced membranous organelles within host cells.

The authors report on the structure of a glucocorticoid-bound adhesion G-protein-coupled receptor–G protein complex.