Volume 595 Issue 7866, 8 July 2021

But for maximal benefit, more of these academic administrators need to get involved in the scholarly aspect of research.

Well-meant changes to improve science could become empty gestures unless underlying values change.

The dung of a dinosaur-like animal that lived more than 200 million years ago springs a surprise: a new insect species.

Climate change will allow more chunks of ice to break away from melting glaciers, with potentially grave effects.

Light from the early days of the Universe helps to pin-point when the stars switched on after the Big Bang.

Cells in the hippocampus play a part in time-stamping unfolding events.

Conventional detectors often obliterate photons, but the particles can escape a vacuum-based device unscathed.

Honeycomb-like structure thwarts a projectile travelling as fast as a speeding bullet.

Genomic analysis suggests that the Black Death began as a less virulent and less transmissible disease.

The latest science news, in brief.

A year after the first ‘Black in X’ campaigns debuted, organizers reflect on their fight against racism in academia, and the challenges ahead.

The tragic incident has exposed frustrations among academics who are under great pressure to publish papers, but face uncertain futures.

First scientific study of Myanmar’s worst mining accident reveals that human error contributed to the 2020 disaster that killed at least 172 people.

Research shows that a previous coronavirus infection plus one dose of vaccine provides powerful protection — but concerns linger.

Aducanumab’s fast-tracking has researchers both worried and hopeful about the future of drugs for neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s.

After a school term filled with anxiety and vitriol, researchers assess the spread of coronavirus and the prospects for a return to normal.

Organic chemist whose cross-coupling reaction builds many drugs.

Smartphones, sensors and consumer habits reveal much about society. Too few people have a say in how these data are created and used.

Helping with grant applications, ensuring compliance and coordinating with funders is all part of the job.

Geologist Nicole Khan examines coastal sediment samples to find out how sea levels have changed over the past 1,000 years.

Effective malaria vaccines are urgently needed. Now, clinical evidence indicates that a vaccination approach that uses live parasites growing in the liver can generate high levels of immune protection from infection.

There is widespread concern that the risk of food shocks — sudden disruptions to food supply — is increasing. It emerges that a city’s vulnerability to food shocks can be reduced by diversifying its supply chains.

Camels and llamas make antibodies that bind to targets using small, ‘nanobody’ protein domains. Mice have now been engineered to make nanobodies that might be more effective than conventional antibodies in treating COVID-19.

Imaging of a region where an oceanic tectonic plate descends below another plate reveals evidence that fluid-rich extinct volcanoes can help to lubricate the interface between plates — reducing the potential for large earthquakes.

The combination of computational and social sciences requires the integration of explanatory and predictive approaches into ‘integrative modelling’, according to Hofman and colleagues.

Approaches for the management, use and analysis of large-scale behavioural datasets that were not originally intended or created for research are described.

This Perspective discusses the challenges for social science practices imposed by the ubiquity of algorithms and large-scale measurement and what should—and should not—be measured in societies pervaded by algorithms.

The use of new datastreams and local knowledge to shed light on social aspects of disease transmission will allow more accurate modelling and prediction of epidemics.

The ability of people to understand the thoughts and actions of others—known as social sensing—can be combined with computational social science to advance research into human sociality.

Observations of an extremely metal-poor star suggest that rapidly rotating massive stars with large magnetic fields were a source of r-process elements in the early Universe.

A programmable quantum simulator with 256 qubits is created using neutral atoms in two-dimensional optical tweezer arrays, demonstrating a quantum phase transition and revealing new quantum phases of matter.

Programmable quantum simulation of two-dimensional antiferromagnets is achieved with up to 196 neutral atoms, and the capability of the platform is demonstrated on square and triangular arrays.

Two-dimensional electronic states are observed at the induced domain walls of a three-dimensional charge density wave material by manipulating the periodic lattice distortion via femtosecond infrared pulses.

Increased strength and ductility in a medium-entropy alloy of Fe, Ni, Al and Ti is demonstrated using nanoprecipitates that simultaneously hinder phase transformation and block dislocation motion.

An intensity−duration−frequency model linking food shock risk to supply chain diversity in the USA finds that boosting a city’s food supply chain diversity increases the resistance of a city to food shocks of mild to moderate severity.

Electromagnetic data collected at the northern Hikurangi Margin, New Zealand show that a seamount on the incoming plate allows more water to subduct, compared with normal, unfaulted oceanic lithosphere.

The ionotropic glutamate delta receptors GluD1 and GluD2 form distinct neurexin–cerebellin complexes that differentially regulate postsynaptic glutamate receptor activities.

Obesity in mice, caused by a high-fat diet, induces hair loss as a result of changes in the differentiation of hair follicle stem cells.

Severe caloric restriction in humans leads to reversible changes in the gut microbiota that promote weight loss and the expansion of an enteric pathogen in mice.

Multivalent nanobodies against SARS-CoV-2 from mice engineered to produce camelid nanobodies recognize conserved epitopes that are inaccessible to human antibodies and show promise as a strategy for dealing with viral escape mutations.

Rapid extracellular antigen profiling of a cohort of 194 individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 uncovers diverse autoantibody responses that affect COVID-19 disease severity, progression and clinical and immunological characteristics.

Two malaria vaccines comprising Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites and treatment with either pyrimethamine or chloroquine induced durable protective responses against both the African vaccine strain and a heterologous South American strain of P. falciparum.

A custom adenine base editor can edit the variant of the β-globin gene that causes sickle cell disease into a non-pathogenic variant in human and mouse cells, and transplantation of the edited cells rescues sickle cell disease in mice.

The noncoding RNA NORAD maintains genome stability in mammalian cells by sequestering Pumilio proteins in phase-separated compartments.

A CRISPR–Cas9 screen of chromatin regulators in mouse tumour models treated with immune checkpoint blockade identifies SETDB1 as an epigenetic checkpoint protein that suppresses tumour-intrinsic immunogenicity.

Cryo-electron microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations reveal how MFSD2A transports essential omega-3 fatty acids across the blood–brain and blood–retina barriers as lysolipids.