Volume 604 Issue 7905, 14 April 2022

Iranian researchers are at risk as never before. Governments are urging quiet diplomacy. But a new book shows why public campaigns matter.

Arguments for quality work better than quibbles over facts.

The African pygmy mouse, which weighs only 3–12 grams, has a complicated sex-determination system that pits males against females.

Excluding the winged creatures from the branches of coffee plants meant fewer flowers and smaller fruit.

Light-sensitive dye molecules make a crystalline material sliceable.

The barriers that shield the city of canals from rising sea levels have knock-on effects for local marshes.

Sophisticated global climate model offers as much as nine months notice of extreme heat in some parts of North America.

Air-flow analysis reveals ideal configuration for a ‘telescoping’ box.

Campaign to ‘nudge’ people in Singapore to save water failed, but bathroom upgrades succeeded.

The latest science news, in brief.

Data from an old experiment find that the mass of the W boson is higher than theory predicts, hinting at future breakthroughs.

Many Western nations are severing scientific links — but it’s a different story in China, India and South Africa.

Analysts explain why some fear that the Russian military will use chemical weapons — and how the world would know if it did.

Based on more than 120,000 brain scans, the charts are still preliminary. But researchers hope they could one day be used as a routine clinical tool by physicians.

Studies have revealed that infected immune cells prompt a massive inflammatory response.

Russia’s invasion has caused a short-term spike in prices, but could prompt a long-term shift towards sustainability.

DeepMind software that can predict the 3D shape of proteins is already changing biology.

The United States should learn from its mistakes on decarbonization.

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

Lessons from launching a spin-off company: invest in collaborations and engineering, and protect intellectual property to speed up tech development.

Alexander Semenov’s foray into science communication began with amateur photography at a remote research station. His career change has brought him to unvisited dive sites and in direct contact with the public and press.

Najat Saliba is pairing researchers around the world with local communities in Lebanon.

Analysis of climate pledges by nations at the COP26 meeting indicates that such commitments could ensure that global warming does not exceed 2 ºC before 2100 — but only if backed up by short-term policies.

Skin cells called melanocytes are not equally affected by the same genetic changes. Their ability to form tumours has now been linked to gene-expression programs that are selectively activated according to a cell’s anatomical position.

Plasmids — circular DNA molecules — are found in many bacteria, and carry genes that can give the host microorganism new features. The mystery of how a cholera-causing bacterium eliminates plasmids has now been solved.

The polarization, wavelength and power of a light wave can be simultaneously identified by a compact device made from twisted layers of carbon atoms — with a little help from an artificial neural network.

Chemical synthesis often relies on reactions catalysed by transition metals. Electrochemical methods have now been developed that negate this need, opening up pathways to previously challenging reactions.

The benefits and future prospects of neuromorphic, or bio-inspired, computing technologies are discussed, as is the need for a global, coordinated approach to funding, research and collaboration.

Matched Annotation from NCBI and EMBL-EBI (MANE) delivers joint transcript sets from Ensembl/GENCODE and RefSeq for standardizing variant reporting in clinical genomics and research.

An unusual ultraviolet compact object associated with a dusty starburst has been observed at a redshift of about 7.2, with a luminosity that falls between that of quasars and galaxies, possibly in transition between the two. 

Tunable quantum geometric properties of moiré graphene enable the use of a convolutional neural network to simultaneously decipher the light polarization, power and wavelength in a subwavelength-scale smart device.

A nanocrystalline metallic alloy with ultrahigh tensile strength and good ductility is achieved by introducing compositional undulation in a highly concentrated solid solution.

A thin low-loss indium oxide interconnect layer grown by atomic layer deposition enables perovskite–organic hybrid tandem solar cells with a high open-circuit voltage and a high power conversion efficiency.

Two-junction TPV cells with efficiencies of more than 40% are reported, using an emitter with a temperature between 1,900 and 2,400 °C, for integration into a TPV system for thermal energy grid storage.

An electrochemical method is used to couple together two alkyl halides, enabling efficient cross-electrophile coupling of a variety of alkyl electrophiles with improved chemoselectivity compared with existing methods.

A synthetic strategy for the stereoselective preparation of sulfinate esters and related sulfur stereogenic centres via asymmetric condensation expands the drug discovery toolbox for these compounds.

If all new and updated national climate change mitigation pledges stemming from the Paris Agreement are implemented in full and on time, then 21st-century warming could be limited to just below 2 degrees Celsius.

A complex regulatory network of temporally expressed transcription factors in Drosophila optic lobe stem cells regulates the generation of all neuronal diversity.

Two defence systems are identified in pandemic Vibrio cholerae that act both cooperatively and independently to eliminate invasive plasmids and bacteriophages.

A study reports the detection and characterization of SARS-CoV-2-like viruses in Laotian cave-dwelling bats that are also demonstrated to infect human cells through the ACE2 pathway.

Obesity changes the characteristics of the immune response induced in a mouse model of atopic dermatitis, suggesting therapies that could be used against immune dysregulation in obesity.

The feasibility of adeno-associated-virus-delivered nonsense suppressor tRNAs operating on premature termination codons (AAV-NoSTOP) is explored to restore gene function, using a mouse model of mucopolysaccharidosis type I for proof of concept.

Metabolomics analysis of the mouse embryo shows a metabolic shift towards the tricarboxylic acid cycle between gestational days 10.5 and 11.5, leading to the subsequent development of organ-specific metabolic programmes.

In a zebrafish model of human cutaneous and acral melanomas, CRKL amplification causes tumours to favour a fin location, indicating that tumour location is determined by both the driver oncogenes and the pre-existing positional identity gene program.

N⁶-methyladenosine is enriched in poly(A) tails of VSG transcripts in Trypanosoma brucei, and when lacking result in mRNA degradation.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the bacterial O-antigen ligase WaaL, combined with genetics, biochemistry and molecular dynamics simulations, provide insight into the mechanism by which WaaL catalyses the biosynthesis of lipopolysaccharide.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of PIEZO1 in liposome vesicles in curved and flattened conformations demonstrate the high deformability underlying the high mechanosensitivity and ion selectivity of PIEZO channel gating.

The rhodopsin signalling cascade, initiated by light, is captured using mass spectrometry of a native membrane.