Volume 606 Issue 7914, 16 June 2022

Springer Nature editors urge consideration of the potential harms of all research relating to human populations, not just that directly involving human participants.

It’s time to make the survey of humanity’s ‘second genome’ more complete.

Light exposure prompts a molecular machine to wind up, but turning the light off makes it unwind and rewind over and over.

The small change suggests that many of those killed by Mount Vesuvius were of modest means.

Signals that dampen appetite travel through a winding circuit that includes the stomach and the brain, animal experiments show.

A sensor roughly the size of a grain of sand can register changes of less than 100 nanokelvin.

Floating seaweed has shuttled between land masses in the Southern Ocean with surprising frequency.

Sectors of unfrozen ground called taliks could become more common across Alaska by 2030.

The numbers of fledglings of the southern yellow-billed hornbill have declined steeply at one South African locale.

The latest science news, in brief.

Rolling up an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater, the rover starts crucial rock sampling.

Unwanted immune responses threaten to derail some gene therapies. But researchers are seeking ways to combat harmful inflammation.

Some countries have begun to use smallpox vaccines to protect people exposed to the monkeypox virus. But researchers see challenges ahead.

Nature explores how subvariants are named, and why none of Omicron’s family members has been upgraded to a ‘variant of concern’.

A collaboration between scientists and Native American tribes finds tree density in parts of the Klamath Mountains is at a record high, and at risk of serious wildfires.

A retracted paper highlights chemistry’s history of trying to avoid the expensive, toxic — but necessary — catalyst.

Tracking SARS-CoV-2 evolution during persistent cases provides insight into the origins of Omicron and other global variants. What can scientists do with this knowledge?

The philanthropist’s life-saving ideas need insights from political science.

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

Physicist and Nobel prizewinner who revolutionized understanding of the atomic nucleus.

Global dependence on Russian gas, oil and coal can be cut by 20–60% and greenhouse-gas emissions by 2.9% within one year, with the right policy support.

Six technicians and managers share tips on how their roles can be better developed and supported.

A host of companies provide a remote, automated workforce for conducting experiments around the clock.

Field mycologist Željko Zgrablić works with his dog to track how climate change affects truffles.

The economic value that the world’s ecosystems provide was first estimated in 1997, eliciting a wide range of reactions. How have such valuations advanced since then, and what are today’s frontiers in using these values for decision-making?

A high-precision comparison of the magnetic moments of two isotopically different neon ions opens a path to the search for elusive particles that could explain the unexpectedly low observed mass of the Higgs boson.

Sequences of the human genome have typically included gaps in repetitive regions of DNA. A combination of state-of-the-art technologies has now enabled researchers to generate the first complete human genome sequence.

Two-dimensional materials made of carbon have been limited to monolayers of atoms, such as graphene. Sheets composed of connected buckyballs — spherical clusters of atoms — have now been made by peeling layers from a crystal.

Informing people once about physicians’ views on COVID-19 vaccination improves vaccination rates by 4 percentage points after 9 months. This finding suggests that light-touch educative nudges can have lasting positive effects.

High-quality genome sequences for 44 wild and cultivated potatoes will enable researchers to better study this essential crop’s evolution and develop varieties that can withstand heat and drought caused by climate change.

Lyman-α absorption observations from the Las Campanas Observatory are used to find a population of ultraviolet-dim protoclusters that contain few galaxies compared with their analogues in cosmological simulations.

By trapping and crystallizing two highly charged ions of different neon isotopes in the same potential, a high-precision measurement of the bound-electron g-factor difference is obtained.

A ladder-like arrangement of an ultracold gas of lithium atoms trapped in an optical lattice enables the observation of a symmetry-protected topological phase.

Readout of a superconducting qubit embedded in a circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture is demonstrated at optical frequencies through a low-noise electro-optomechanical transducer.

High-resolution scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy are used to provide evidence for unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene.

Using a three-layer opto-electronic neural network, direct, clock-less sub-nanosecond image classification on a silicon photonics chip is demonstrated, achieving a classification time comparable with a single clock cycle of state-of-the-art digital implementations.

Using an interlayer bonding cleavage strategy, a two-dimensional monolayer fullerene network is prepared; its moderate bandgap makes it a potential candidate for use in two-dimensional electronic devices.

A solid-state electrochemical scheme is demonstrated that shows promise for upcycling aluminium scrap metal.

Using the new Beaumont number presented, it is concluded that the topographic evolution of collisional mountain belts is determined by the combination of plate velocity, crustal rheology and surface process efficiency.

Molecular analyses of modern and fossil skeletal samples reveal that elevated metabolic rates consistent with endothermy evolved independently in mammals and plesiosaurs, and ornithodirans: Exceptional metabolic rates are ancestral to dinosaurs and pterosaurs and were acquired before energetically costly adaptations, such as flight.

A precise catalogue of more than 19 million variants from 838 tomato genomes, including 32 new reference-level genome assemblies, advances the understanding of the heritability of complex traits and demonstrates the power of the graph pangenome in crop breeding.

High-quality diploid assemblies of potato genomes from 24 wild and 20 cultivated potatoes provide insights into the complex evolution and diversity of potatoes, and could have applications in the breeding of hybrid potatoes.

Correcting public misperceptions about the views of doctors on the COVID-19 vaccines can have lasting impacts on public uptake of the COVID-19 vaccines.

A mouse model of gliomagenesis reveals that olfaction can directly regulate the genesis of gliomas, showing that sensory experience and gliomagenesis are linked and providing insight into the neural circuitry involved.

Transcriptional changes associated with astrocyte reactivity are highly heterogeneous and are customized from vast numbers of potential DEGs through context-specific combinatorial interactions amongst transcriptional regulators.

Plants have adapted to grow at specific altitudes by regulating chlorophyll synthesis in response to ambient oxygen concentration, calibrated by altitude-dependent activity of GROUP VII ETHYLENE RESPONSE FACTOR.

A study of zebrafish identifies an innate mechanism of blood vessel formation through the transdifferentiation of lymphatic endothelial cells, and provides in vivo evidence for a link between cell ontogeny and functionality in endothelial cells.

Antibody-mediated SARS-CoV-2 uptake by monocytes and macrophages triggers inflammatory cell death that aborts the production of infectious virus but causes systemic inflammation that contributes to COVID-19 pathogenesis.

A new humanized mouse model for COVID-19 demonstrates SARS-CoV-2 infection and subsequent activation of inflammasomes in human macrophages as a critical driver of disease.

A small molecule can bypass the RNA-editing enzyme ADAR1 to directly activate the Z-form nucleic acid sensor ZBP1, induce necroptosis in tumour fibroblasts and reverse resistance to immune checkpoint blockade in mouse models of melanoma.

Structural analysis of several small mitoribosomal subunit intermediates reveals a sequential mechanism of biogenesis, and how assembly links to initiation to form active mitoribosomes.