Volume 600 Issue 7887, 2 December 2021

Nature’s salary survey finds that industry researchers are more positive about their careers. Academia must raise its game.

Anthony Fauci on four decades of progress against HIV, and what’s needed for the future.

An easily produced seismic isolator designed to protect buildings from earthquakes mimics the bones of human limbs.

Transgenic jellyfish reveal how these fragile creatures get by without a brain.

Even birds get divorced, and, as in humans, resource constraints can drive more couples to the brink.

Herculean stellar event provides scientific clues to how stars die.

Hidden inside a leaden amulet, researchers find words of magic and Christian creed side by side.

Scientists’ creation can cut proteins into pieces and thread them through a molecular tunnel.

Modellers look at how climate policies might change with time — and find a wide range of possible outcomes, none of them good.

The latest science news, in brief.

Preprint data show that a three-dose combo of Soberana jabs has 92.4% efficacy in clinical trials.

The DART mission has launched. Next up, it will try out a manoeuvre that could one day deflect killer asteroids from Earth.

An analysis showing that the National Health and Medical Research Council awards fewer ‘investigator grants’ to women prompts thousands to sign a petition calling for gender quotas.

Carbon-neutrality institutes, and other initiatives to support a pledge to achieve net zero by 2060, are popping up like mushrooms across China.

An open letter signed by 145 female scientists from across the world expresses concern over recent dismissals of women leaders.

Researchers are racing to determine whether a fast-spreading coronavirus variant poses a threat to COVID vaccines’ effectiveness.

What we eat needs to be nutritious and sustainable. Researchers are trying to figure out what that looks like around the world.

What sort of system nurtures a decades-long programme of deliberately infecting children and prisoners with a dangerous disease?

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

Two former NIH directors call for a cabinet-level department to formulate long-range science policy and oversee technology development.

Failure to get COVID-19 vaccines to nations with high rates of uncontrolled advanced HIV puts people living with that virus at even greater risk, and could drive the emergence of coronavirus variants.

Employers need to do more to improve workplace diversity, equity and inclusion, a Nature survey finds.

Tom Cameron works with local oyster growers to restore native oysters to their natural habitat in the United Kingdom.

A mission to unexplored lunar territory has returned the youngest volcanic samples collected so far. The rocks highlight the need to make revisions to models of the thermal evolution of the Moon.

To respond better to future pandemics, we must understand how the SARS-CoV-2 virus dispersed so rapidly. A model of COVID-19 spread sheds light on cryptic transmission, undetected by surveillance efforts, in early 2020.

How underwater seagrasses obtain the nitrogen they need has been unclear. Evidence has now emerged of a partnership with a bacterium that might be analogous to the system used by many land plants to gain nitrogen.

A technical feat reveals subtle changes in water structure that can accelerate hydrogen production at an electrode interface. The catalytic process could be developed to help boost supply of this clean fuel.

Machine-learning tools have been used to assist the part of mathematical research that usually relies on human intuition and creativity — leading to two fundamental results in different areas of mathematics.

The initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic saw an increase in calls to mental-health helplines in 19 countries. Helpline-call data can be used to monitor distress at a population level in near-real time.

Water abundance and hydrogen isotope compositions of two-billion-year-old basalt samples returned from the Moon by the Chang’e-5 mission suggest that the samples came from a relatively dry mantle source.

Basalt samples returned from the Moon by the Chang’e-5 mission are revealed to be two billion years old by radioisotopic dating, providing insight on the volcanic history of the Moon.

Isotopic analysis of basalt clasts returned from the Moon by the Chang’e-5 mission indicates that the rocks were derived from a mantle source that lacked potassium, rare-earth elements and phosphorus.

By controlling the generation and collision of individual vortices in atomic Fermi superfluids, a study provides a comprehensive view of vortex decay due to mutual friction and vortex–sound interaction.

A framework through which machine learning can guide mathematicians in discovering new conjectures and theorems is presented and shown to yield mathematical insight on important open problems in different areas of pure mathematics.

Stable, dissipative optomechanical solitons are realized using optical fields in a whispering gallery mode resonator by balancing the optomechanical nonlinearities with a tailored modal dispersion.

Interfacial water consists of hydrogen-bonded water and Na·H₂O, its structure changes at hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) potentials, and when structurally ordered it aids interfacial electron transfer, resulting in higher HER rates.

A large-scale metagenomic analysis of plant and mammal environmental DNA reveals complex ecological changes across the circumpolar region over the past 50,000 years, as biota responded to changing climates, culminating in the postglacial extinction of large mammals and emergence of modern ecosystems.

In the post-mitotic nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans, the promotion of a mature neuronal transcription program is controlled by the developmental-stage-specific upregulation of the microRNA LIN-4 and the subsequent repression of its target, the transcription factor lin-14.

Two different cell types in the mediodorsal thalamus have complementary roles in decision-making, with one type of mediodorsal projection amplifying prefrontal activity under low signal levels and one type suppressing it under high noise levels.

The N₂-fixing symbiont ‘Candidatus Celerinatantimonas neptuna’ lives inside the root tissue of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica, providing ammonia and amino acids to its host in exchange for sugars and enabling highly productive seagrass meadows to thrive in the nitrogen-limited Mediterranean Sea.

Bacteria in the human gut and oral microbiome encode enzymes that selectively phosphorylate the antidiabetic drug acarbose—an inhibitor of both human and bacterial α-glucosidases—resulting in its inactivation and limiting the drug's effects on the ability of the host to metabolize complex carbohydrates.

The mechanism of Thoeris—a bacterial anti-phage defence system—is described in detail, revealing that bacterial TIR-domain proteins recognize infection and produce signalling molecules to execute cell death, akin to the roles of these proteins in plants.

Data collected from crisis helplines during the COVID-19 pandemic show that pandemic-related issues replaced rather than exacerbated underlying anxieties, and demonstrate that helpline data are useful indicators of public mental health.

Modelling highlights international travel as the main driver of the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 to Europe and the USA, and suggests that introductions and local transmission may have begun in January 2020.

The presence of porcine deltacoronavirus has been detected in three children from Haiti that could have originated from zoonotic spillover.

MORC3 is revealed as an essential negative regulator of the anti-viral interferon response that functions in an innate immune pathway that detects viral virulence factors. 

Structural studies of the complex of anaplastic lymphoma kinase and leukocyte tyrosine kinase and their activating cytokines identify unique architectural features of the complex, and provide a novel mechanistic paradigm among receptor tyrosine kinases.

Analysis of crystal structures of anaplastic lymphoma kinase elucidate the mechanism by which ligand binding and the glycine-rich domain regulate its activity.

Cryo-electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance and X-ray crystallography are used to provide structural and mechanistic details of the activation of anaplastic lymphoma kinase by the ligands ALKAL1 and ALKAL2.

Endogenous formaldehyde accumulation reveals Cockayne syndrome in mice and stimulates production of the anorexiogenic peptide GDF15 in proximal tubule cells.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the MRGPRX2–G_i1 trimer in complex with polycationic compound 48/80 or inflammatory peptides provide insights into the sensing of cationic allergens by MRGPRX2, potentially facilitating the design of therapies to prevent unwanted pseudoallergic reactions.

Structural studies of the itch receptors MRGPRX2 and MRGPRX4 in complex with endogenous and synthetic ligands provide a basis for the development of therapeutic compounds for pain, itch and mast cell-mediated hypersensitivity.