Volume 608 Issue 7923, 18 August 2022

Before diving into new economic waters, establish what must be done for the land.

Studies of Chinese coins reveal the composition of Jin and Xi — and hint at unexpected complexity in metallurgy.

Brain cancer that has its roots in the breast stops growing, and even shrinks, after a hybrid therapy.

Primates that showed infantile behaviour after losing in a conflict drew consolation from their companions.

A damaging earthquake in Indonesia is ascribed to a previously unknown fracture in Earth’s crust.

Archival data reveals a trove of the mysterious phenomena known as fast X-ray transients.

Deep-learning programme is taught to match materials to their patterns of electrical charge.

A seemingly simple marine animal clears particles from its tubes with sneeze-like contractions.

The latest science news, in brief.

These infections increase the risk of the next pandemic.

Economic modelling shows that the compromise legislation might bring the United States within range of meeting its climate commitments.

Injectable antiviral cabotegravir provides stronger protection than oral pill, but researchers fear it could be too expensive to make a difference for countries with the greatest disease burden.

An unprecedented number of crystallography database entries are undergoing extra checks amid fears that they are based on fabricated data.

The BA.2.75 variant is rising fast in the country, but hospitalization rates are low so far.

David Bimler, also known as Smut Clyde, scours the scientific literature for bogus articles.

Unprecedented temperatures are coming faster and more furiously than researchers expected, raising questions about what to anticipate in the future.

After Russia’s invasion, politicians promised to boost military research funding — but policy specialists aren’t convinced that a rapid change lies ahead.

More must be done to forecast and try to manage globally disruptive volcanic eruptions. The risks are greater than people think.

Bystander-intervention programmes use humour and other tools to call out bullying and harassment in science.

Powerful ‘grammar’ allows geneticists to display their data in interactive and scalable illustrations.

PhD student Gianluca Torta contributes to green recycling by extracting rare-earth metals from industrial landfill for reuse in electric motors.

Analysis of when and how fast temperate deciduous trees in North America grow suggests that the earlier onset of the growing season induced by climate change does not result in extra carbon sequestration from wood production.

Electrons in a pure-carbon material display properties that are reminiscent of those in heavy-element compounds. A model inspired by this link hints at how a single-element material can exhibit complex electronic behaviour.

Understanding the processes that affect carbon storage in tropical forests is crucial for assessing the effects of climate change. An experiment reveals that a nutrient shortfall is hampering such carbon capture.

An analysis of the distribution of the elementary particles that make up the proton provides evidence that it contains a type of quark known as an intrinsic charm quark — verifying a proposal made four decades ago.

A process called A-to-I RNA editing helps to prevent unwanted immune responses. Associations between genetic variants and this type of RNA editing now provide mechanistic insights into the genetic basis of autoimmune diseases.

Variations in ocean oxygen levels during Earth’s history have been linked to evolution and mass extinctions. Simulations now suggest that the configuration of the continents has a substantial impact on ocean oxygenation.

Through machine learning analysis of a large set of collider data, a study disentangles intrinsic from radiatively generated charm, and finds evidence for an intrinsic charm quark within the proton wavefunction.

Rabi dynamics between the ground state and an excited state in helium atoms are generated using femtosecond extreme-ultraviolet pulses from a seeded free-electron laser, which may allow ultrafast manipulation of coherent processes at short wavelengths.

A mechanism for self-oscillating pumping in a quantum gas is demonstrated using a Bose–Einstein condensate coupled to a dissipative cavity, where a particle current is observed without external periodic driving.

Multidimensional time- and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy is used to determine the interlayer exciton formation process, reveal a direct hallmark of the superlattice moiré modification, and reconstruct the real-space wavefunction distribution.

A compute-in-memory neural-network inference accelerator based on resistive random-access memory simultaneously improves energy efficiency, flexibility and accuracy compared with existing hardware by co-optimizing across all hierarchies of the design.

The nanostructured diamond capsule process with the inert gases solid argon and neon is demonstrated, where the trapped volatile gases could sustain their high-pressure states without confinement of conventional high-pressure vessels, opening up the possibility of in-depth investigations of high-pressure phenomena.

This work introduces lightweight, leaf-like photoelectrochemical devices for unassisted water splitting and syngas production, which could be used in the fabrication of floating systems for solar fuel production.

Analysis of a series of Earth system model experiments shows that continental rearrangement during the Phanerozoic had a marked influence on variations in ocean oxygenation, independent of atmospheric pO₂.

Over the past 35 years, annual tree mortality risk has increased in the moist tropical forests of Australia and is associated with increased atmospheric water stress.

The survival of southern boreal tree saplings decreases in response to even modest warming and reduced rainfall, which,together with species-specific growth responses, could lead to regeneration failure of currently dominant tree species.

A boreal conifer is advancing northwards into Arctic tundra, with this treeline advance facilitated by climate warming together with winter winds, deeper snow and increased soil nutrient availability.

Warmer spring temperatures affect the timing of stem diameter growth of temperate deciduous trees but have little effect on annual growth.

Nutrient manipulation of low-phosphorus soil in an old growth Amazon rainforest shows that phosphorus availability drives forest productivity and is likely to limit the response to increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations.

A new elpistostegalian from the Late Devonian period has been discovered that shows disparity in the group and represents a previously hidden ecological expansion, a secondary return to open water, near the origin of limbed vertebrates.

cis-RNA editing quantitative trait loci, which are associated with immunogenic double-stranded RNAs, underlie genome-wide association study variants in common autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

The visual network in mice develops in a modular manner with initial establishment of parallel modules followed by their concatenation.

In mouse brain, neurotensin released into the basolateral amygdala by neurons in the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus assigns positive or negative valence during associative learning.

Biochemical and structural studies of the interactions between antibodies and spike proteins from SARS-CoV-2 Omicron subvariants indicate how these variants have evolved to escape antibody-mediated neutralization.

Findings from a systematic antigenic analysis of these surging Omicron subvariants that this lineage of SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve, successively yielding subvariants that are not only more transmissible but also more evasive to antibodies.

Truncation of exon 18 of FGFR2 (FGFR2^ΔE18) is a potent driver mutation in mice and humans, and FGFR-targeted therapy should be considered for patients with cancer expressing stable FGFR2^ΔE18 variants.

The evolutionarily conserved RNA-binding protein GTSF1 and its homologues interact with members of the PIWI class of Argonaute proteins, increasing the efficiency of the RNA-cleaving activity of PIWI proteins, an essential function across the animal kingdom.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the bacterial protein machinery that is involved in the production and function of nitrous oxide provide insight into the assembly pathway of this enzyme and the mechanisms of copper transport.