Volume 610 Issue 7931, 13 October 2022

The UN’s top leadership is reaching out to the scientific community to help inform decision making — a welcome move in a highly uncertain world.

The way that the global north pays for publishing hampers public, scholar-led efforts in Latin America.

Membranes only a few dozen nanometres thick sieve hydrocarbons from thick crude at a rapid clip.

People vaccinated not long after being infected with SARS-CoV-2 mount a weaker immune response than do those whose infections are well behind them.

Modelling suggests that tree cutting is a greater threat to the Milne-Edwards’s sifaka than are climate extremes.

Providing the clean fuel to manufacturing plants would be a cost-effective way to tackle the country’s climate goals.

The little animals known for their toughness have normal lifespans even when subjected to multiple cycles of freezing and thawing.

For the first time, scientists simulate the worldwide spread of the staggering wave triggered by the Chicxulub impact.

Doctored versions of jazz tracks help scientists to pinpoint the source of the elusive quality called swing.

The latest science news, in brief.

Emerging variants and waning immunity are likely to push infection rates higher in the Northern Hemisphere as influenza also makes a comeback.

Award goes to three experimental physicists whose pioneering research has laid the groundwork for quantum information science.

Researchers honoured for game-changing methods to couple molecules, including reactions that can be run in living cells.

Revised instrument calibrations are bedevilling work on the distant Universe.

Researchers fear further cuts to funding and a lack of action on climate.

Some countries are now offering COVID vaccines for children as young as six months. Nature looks at how effective they are and why more kids haven’t had them.

With cases declining in the United States and Europe, Nature examines scenarios of how the outbreak might play out.

More policymakers and practitioners should encourage exploration and discovery during youth, to prevent adolescents from reaching crisis.

PhD students call for further reforms after country’s largest research funder responds to campaigns with 10% increase.

Survey finds that students and postdocs report verbal and sexual abuse, unpaid labour and dangerous work conditions.

Quantum physicist Chao-Yang Lu develops superfast computers that rely on the curious collisions of single particles of light.

Around 20% of female hummingbirds have plumage that is characteristic of the males of the species. Evidence for why this happens offers a surprising perspective on how evolution helps to maintain colour variations.

An innovative approach to controlling wearable robots takes the optimization process out of the laboratory. The method uses a data-driven model to infer a user’s energy consumption and to personalize the assistance it provides.

It emerges that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has evolved to mimic one of the histone proteins that package DNA in the cell nucleus. This mimicry leads to disrupted gene transcription and a diminished antiviral response.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

The movement of electric charges in light-activated catalyst particles is key to the water-splitting reaction, which could be used to generate hydrogen as a renewable fuel. Such movement has now been observed in exquisite detail.

Human tissue resembling the brain’s cortex can be grown from stem cells in vitro. Transplanting this tissue into a developing rat cortex enables it to mature, integrate into neuronal circuits and influence behaviour.

Efforts to probe the biological functions of carbohydrates have long been limited by the lack of such molecules with well-defined structures. An automated carbohydrate synthesizer has been developed that could remedy this.

Multiepoch imagery of the circumstellar dust shell in WR140 is modelled to trace the expansion of the dust plume, which seems to be subject to radiation-driven acceleration.

Optical superluminal motion in the binary neutron-star merger GW170817 is used to constrain the speed and morphology of the structured jet, and improve constraints on the inclination angle of the merging binary system.

A portable ankle exoskeleton uses a data-driven method and wearable sensors to adapt to the user as they walk in a natural setting.

A design strategy termed ‘adaptive morphogenesis’ enables a robot inspired by aquatic and terrestrial turtles to adapt its limb morphology and gait to specialize for locomotion in different environments.

By forcing electron–hole pairs onto closed trajectories attosecond clocking of delocalized Bloch electrons is achieved, enabling greater understanding of unexpected phase transitions and quantum-dynamic phenomena.

Photovoltage measurements on cuprous oxide photocatalyst particles are used to spatiotemporally track the charge transfer processes on the femtosecond to second timescale at the single-particle level.

A highly chemoselective and enantioselective cross-electrophile coupling using ‘ene’-reductases is reported, and photoexcited enzymes demonstrate the ability to carry out reactions between electrophiles that are not known for small-molecule catalysis.

A ground-penetrating radar survey of Martian subsurface structure in a southern marginal area of Utopia Planitia constructed a detailed subsurface image profile showing a roughly 70-m-thick, multi-layered structure below regolith.

Using microcomputed tomographic scans, whole-skeletal reconstruction of the tiny Scleromochlus taylori from the early Late Triassic of Scotland reveals new anatomical details, identifying it as a cousin of pterosaurs.

Human stem cell-derived cortical organoids transplanted into rats mature and integrate into sensory and motivation circuits to influence behaviour.

Aberrantly formed microglia due to an adverse prenatal environment affect long-term microglia reactivity and proper striatal circuit development in mice

A structural analysis focusing on plant immunity reveals how LRR-containing receptor-like proteins recognize pathogenic ligands and consequently become activated, with the data suggesting that these proteins target pathogens through two different mechanisms.

Targeted therapies matched to genomics improved progression-free survival when genomic alterations were classified as level I/II (according to ESCAT), and genomics should thus be driven by target actionability in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

A genome-wide CRISPR–Cas9-mediated knockout screen in Drosophila cells identifies Visgun as a proteinaceous receptor for toxin complex toxins, demonstrating the utility of this approach for investigating insecticidal toxins and pathogens.

Subpopulations of cytokine-producing and myofibroblastic hepatic stellate cells, identified by single-cell RNA sequencing, protect against or promote the development of hepatocellular carcinoma via high expression of hepatocyte growth factor or type I collagen, respectively..

Cleaved and intact type I collagen have different effects on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), and remodelling of type I collagen—mediated through DDR1 signalling—is a prognostic indicator for the survival of patients with PDAC.

Systemic treatment of pancreatic cancer with STING agonist stimulates regulatory B cells to express immunosuppressive cytokine IL-35, which weakens the anti-tumour function of natural killer cells.

The SARS-CoV-2 protein ORF8 functions as a mimic of histone H3 to disrupt host cell epigenetic regulation.

NMR spectroscopy has been used to guide the directed evolution of myoglobin to a Kemp eliminase with high catalytic efficiency, outlining an approach that is likely to be generally applicable to other enzyme activities.

Structural studies of the Ebola virus polymerase complex provide insights into its function and demonstrate the structural basis of its inhibition by suramin.

Using cryo-electron microscopy, the directional multiple step mechanism of chitin biosynthesis is revealed.