Volume 593 Issue 7858, 13 May 2021

The pandemic has spawned too many uninformative clinical trials and reviews. Reform is needed to ensure the world gets the high-quality evidence it needs.

Proliferating military artificial intelligence will leave the world less safe — so we must focus on ethics and global cooperation.

A model shows how a spinning cylinder can stay suspended in the air next to an oil-slicked moving belt.

When the ice covering the west of the continent disappears, the bedrock could rise up and shove extra water into the ocean.

High-resolution imaging shows why the union between two sets of chromosomes goes awry as least as often as not.

Tropical cloud forests are safe havens for a vast range of creatures and plants, but they are under siege around the globe.

The Arabian Peninsula is dotted with hundreds of mysterious structures dating to the sixth millennium BC.

Light-sensitive cells, distributed throughout its body, help a simple creature to do the extraordinary.

A skin patch that monitors scratching is far less invasive than the infrared camera recordings used now.

The latest science news, in brief.

Biotech firm Oxitec launches controversial field test of its insects in Florida after years of push-back from residents and regulatory complications.

Global-south scientists say that an open-access movement led by wealthy nations deprives them of credit and undermines their efforts.

The WHO has approved one of China’s COVID-19 vaccines for use worldwide and another is under review. But published trial data remain scarce.

Hopes were high for drugs designed to lower levels of a mutant protein, but development has stalled.

Bacteria-infecting viruses have specialized enzymes to make genes with alternative nucleobase.

The pandemic stress-tested the way the world produces evidence — and revealed all the flaws.

Through a tour of ten materials, a scientist explores knowing through doing.

Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, worked at the heart of seventeenth-century scientific debates — in the shadow of her brother, Robert Boyle.

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

Polymath of cellular evolution who shaped understanding of the tree of life.

Analysis suggests that to limit global temperature rise, we must slash emissions and invest now to protect, manage and restore ecosystems and land for the future.

Standing up to a persecutor is tough, particularly if they are your supervisor. But you can take steps to report abuse and protect yourself.

The prevalence, power and portability of smartphones make them valuable tools for pathogen monitoring and citizen science.

Kehinde Apara draws on artificial intelligence and her own family background to source flora for her work at a California bioprospecting company.

A neural interface has been developed that could enable people with paralysis to type faster than they could using other technologies, by directly translating attempts at handwriting into text.

Known sources of formic acid could not explain the observed atmospheric concentrations of this compound. The discovery of a previously unknown pathway that generates formic acid in the atmosphere resolves this discrepancy.

Characterization of the early developmental process called gastrulation has mostly been limited to snapshots at different time points. A model of mouse gastrulation now maps the transitions between cell types continuously in time.

Mutations of the NOD2 gene are risk factors for Crohn’s disease. Many aspects of how they contribute to the condition are unknown. The discovery of cell populations that are involved suggests new therapeutic options.

Many scientific fields and industries rely on the synthesis of small organic molecules. A chemical reagent has been developed that allows such molecules to be made by ‘deleting’ nitrogen atoms from readily accessible precursors.

A cryogenic CMOS control chip operating at 3 K is used to demonstrate coherent control and simple algorithms on silicon qubits operating at 20 mK.

Electric contacts of semimetallic bismuth on monolayer semiconductors are shown to suppress metal-induced gap states and thus have very low contact resistance and a zero Schottky barrier height.

A multi-layered electrolyte, in which a less stable electrolyte is sandwiched between two electrolyte layers that are more stable, can inhibit the growth of lithium dendrites in highly pressurized solid-state lithium metal batteries.

Nitrogen is ‘deleted’ from secondary amines using anomeric amide reagents, which react with the amine to form an isodiazene, after which nitrogen gas is released and the resulting carbon radicals combine to form a carbon–carbon bond.

Analyses and modelling of noble gases in groundwater show that the mean annual surface temperatures of low-altitude, low-to-mid-latitude land masses were about 6 °C cooler during the Last Glacial Maximum than during the Late Holocene.

The oxidation of hydrated formaldehyde from cloud droplets is the dominant source of atmospheric formic acid, increasing atmospheric acidity by reducing cloud and rainwater pH.

Mapping enhancer regulation across human cell types and tissues illuminates genome function and provides a resource to connect risk variants for common diseases to their molecular and cellular functions.

Two-photon microscopy across the fly brain using sensors that permit simultaneous measurement of neural activity and metabolic flux reveals global and local coordination of neural activity and energy metabolism.

A brain–computer interface enables rapid communication through neural decoding of attempted handwriting movements in a person with paralysis.

Meningeal lymphatic drainage can affect the microglial inflammatory response and anti-amyloid-β immunotherapy in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease.

RNA-sequencing experiments determine that sorbitol, a metabolite produced by the host enzyme aldose reductase, is exploited by Clostridium difficile in its adaptation to inflammatory conditions in the gut.

Genetic and testing data from England show that the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern B.1.1.7 has a transmission advantage over other lineages.

Analysis of community-tested cases of SARS-CoV-2 indicates that the B.1.1.7 variant is not only more transmissible than pre-existing variants, but may also cause more severe illness, and is associated with a higher risk of death.

NOD2 deficiency drives fibrosis and stricturing complications in Crohn’s disease through dysregulated homeostasis of activated fibroblasts and macrophages, which is ameliorated by gp130 blockade in human cell and zebrafish models.

Positron emission tomography measurements of nutrient uptake in cells of the tumour microenvironment reveal cell-intrinsic partitioning in which glucose uptake is higher in myeloid cells, whereas glutamine is preferentially acquired by cancer cells.

The heterochromatin protein HP1 has an essential role in establishing several features of the 3D nuclear organization of the genome during early embryonic development in Drosophila.

Double-strand DNA break repair by the non-homologous end joining pathway involves the transition from a complex that bridges the DNA ends to a complex that aligns the DNA for ligation through the dissociation of the kinase subunits of the DNA-PK complexes.