Volume 602 Issue 7898, 24 February 2022

Scientific collaboration has become a casualty of Switzerland’s and the United Kingdom’s tussles with the European Union.

Governments and organizations responsible for crucial COVID data must do more not less.

A CT-like scan images what’s inside a live cell in 3D — including the interactions of its components.

Study of tens of thousands of academics links transparency in compensation with greater pay equality.

A porous layer gives pollen grains extraordinary toughness while allowing them to float on the breeze.

Analysis of fossil pollen suggests that populations in some areas grew despite the plague’s rampage.

Efforts to clean up beaches could be aided by a model that traces the movement of floating plastic debris.

An X-ray scan helps to show how the pharaoh’s knife was forged — and suggests a prestigious pedigree.

Therapy reduces study participants’ levels of respiratory syncytial virus — and ‘mucus weight’.

The latest science news, in brief.

Researchers say that conflict will hinder progress made since Ukraine’s revolution in 2014.

Early studies suggest that the BA.2 lineage might prolong the Omicron wave, but won’t necessarily cause a fresh surge of COVID infections.

The data-sharing policy could set a global standard for biomedical research, scientists say, but they have questions about logistics and equity.

Scientists say newly published guidelines will spur research into crops that have increased yields and greater resilience to climate change.

Massive study shows a long-term, substantial rise in risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke, after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Researchers take stock of the US$1.8-billion initiative’s first five years as Biden announces ambitious target.

When a star from our Galactic neighbourhood explodes, it could outshine the Moon. Researchers are racing to get ready for the fireworks.

Efforts to chart and reduce bias in scholarly publishing will ask authors, reviewers and editors to disclose their race or ethnicity.

There’s so much more to the Arctic than tundra, explorers and pseudoscience.

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

Nobel prizewinner whose universal catalysts transformed chemistry.

Go beyond the attitudes of individuals and focus more on what governments must do to build people’s trust and ensure easy access to vaccines for all.

A clear vision and good delegation skills can help women to advance in their careers.

It might demand 12-hour days, but the chance to help shape African science makes it all worth it.

A whole-hearted commitment to the demands of a job can help women to thrive in male-dominated spheres in Africa.

Female mathematicians are inspiring young people in Africa to pursue careers in unconventional fields.

Methods that meld imaging with sequencing are uncovering the organizational principles of the genome — and how it influences cell fates.

Computational microbiologist Gregorio Iraola leads a consortium focused on tailoring public-health interventions for local needs.

A quantum device uses ultracold atoms to sense gravitational changes that can detect a tunnel under a city street. Here, scientists discuss the advance from the viewpoints of quantum sensing and geophysics.

Certain patterns of mutations occur frequently in cancer. The culprit behind one mutational signature is now shown to be a cellular enzyme with the mundane role of relieving stress in supercoiled DNA.

Two-dimensional materials have been restricted to systems in which strong chemical bonds hold atoms together in sheets. Now, 2D materials consisting of molecules linked by weak non-covalent bonds have been peeled from crystals.

Luminous bursts of radio emission are linked to highly magnetized neutron stars known as magnetars. Now, bursts have been detected from a globular star cluster, an environment thought to be devoid of magnetars.

The fast radio burst FRB 20200120E is shown to originate from a globular cluster in the galaxy M81, and may be a collapsed white dwarf or a merged compact binary star system.

A study reports a quantum gravity gradient sensor with a design that eliminates the need for long measurement times, and demonstrates the detection of an underground tunnel in an urban environment.

Shear phenomena in the infrared dielectric response of a monoclinic crystal are shown to unveil a new polariton class termed hyperbolic shear polariton that can emerge in any low-symmetry monoclinic or triclinic system.

Multiple complementary optical signatures confirm the persistence of ferroelectricity and inversion-symmetry-breaking magnetic order down to monolayer NiI₂, introducing the physics of type-II multiferroics into the area of van der Waals materials.

Sonication of layered metallacycle crystals gives free-standing nanosheets held together by weak non-covalent interactions, with chiral surfaces that show improved binding and enantiodiscrimination compared with individual metallacycle molecules.

Model simulations show that the historical relationship between global temperature and precipitation under a medium greenhouse gas concentration scenario lowers the projected high end of future precipitation change.

A study uses a temperature-percentile water mass framework to analyse warm-to-cold poleward transport of freshwater in the Earth system, and establishes a constraint to help address biases in climate models.

Defective ribonucleotide excision repair causes ID4, an indel cancer signature characterized by deletions of 2–5 base pairs.

Diuretic hormone 31 secreted by the gut in response to feeding on protein-rich food excites brain neurons that promote switching from feeding to mating behaviour in Drosophila.

Developmental activity in transient receptor potential gamma-expressing neurons controls global brain activity and synapse structure in the developing Drosophila brain.

The gut-derived molecule 4-ethylphenol influences complex behaviours in mice through effects on oligodendrocyte function and myelin patterning in the brain.

Plasma from individuals vaccinated with BNT162b2 exhibits 22-fold less neutralization capacity against Omicron (B.1.1.529) than against an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain but residual neutralization is maintained in those with high levels of neutralization of ancestral virus.

A high-throughput yeast display platform is used to analyse the profiles of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD) that enable escape from antibodies, and suggests that most anti-RBD antibodies can be escaped by the Omicron variant.

Pseudovirus assays and surface plasmon resonance show that the Omicron receptor-binding domain binds to human ACE2 with increased affinity relative to the ancestral virus, and that most neutralizing antibodies are considerably less potent against Omicron.

An isolate of the Omicron variant of SARS-COV-2 was completely or partially resistant to neutralization by all nine clinically approved monoclonal antibodies tested.

The B.1.1.529/Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is resistant to neutralization by serum not only from patients who recovered from COVID-19, but also from individuals vaccinated with one of the four widely used COVID-19 vaccines.

Sera from unvaccinated, vaccinated, and previously infected and vaccinated individuals show reduced neutralizing and spike protein-binding activity towards the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant of SARS-CoV-2 compared to other variants.

Analyses of circulating cell-free RNA (cfRNA) in blood samples from pregnant mothers identify changes in gene expression that could be used in liquid biopsy tests to identify and monitor individuals who are at risk of preeclampsia.

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography capture how aromatic side chains can flip within the core of a protein via the generation of a local void volume.

Light-activated trapping is used in a mechanism-based assay to capture and identify substrates of protein hydrolases.