Volume 610 Issue 7933, 27 October 2022

A second term for Jair Bolsonaro would represent a threat to science, democracy and the environment.

Progress on one of the world’s biggest killers will stall without big registries linking scattered records.

Beasts with small heads and long legs roved an ancient supercontinent that included North America and most of Asia.

A study of more than a century’s worth of papers helps to explain why women physicists get fewer citations.

Molecules equipped with a lipid streamer of just the right length can wriggle through a cell’s defensive membrane.

Measurements of elementary particles called muons provide insight into the structure of swirling storms.

‘Crossed wires’ in the spinal cord explain how a brush of the skin can lead to severe pain.

Experiments find a link between a person’s allure to the blood-sucking insects and specific molecules that waft from their skin.

Massive blazes in California and Oregon increase the ferocity of thunderstorms in the central United States.

The latest science news, in brief.

Fabled star catalogue by ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus had been feared lost.

Ancient DNA from closely related individuals offers fresh insight into Neanderthals’ lives and social structures.

Physicist Jian-Wei Pan and his colleagues have achieved an important milestone towards redefining the second.

Reanalysis of landmark paper finds that eight genome sequences were mistakenly assigned to the wrong orangutans. The impacts on research are as-yet unclear.

The US National Science Foundation has decided to instead open an educational centre at the site.

Behavioural scientists want to know how much energy people are conserving, and how long new habits will last.

The protein KRAS, mutated in many cancers, was deemed ‘undruggable’. Now scientists are hoping to save lives with a batch of new compounds that target it.

An expansive global history explores humanity’s vexed relationship with venerable plants.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Intensive irrigation and climate change are depleting groundwater reserves in this fast-developing nation. To improve its water security, researchers need more information on water use, quality, flows and forecasts.

Scholars in PhD and master’s programmes struggle with securing work–life balance and support around career training and mental health, finds Nature survey.

After years of development, researchers have managed to shrink two-photon microscopy into a device that can be mounted on rodents’ heads without impeding behaviour.

Amy Pickering helped create a purification device that runs without electricity and removes contaminants that can enter leaky pipes.

A combined analysis of 281 genome-wide association studies finds 12,111 common DNA variants associated with a person’s height — and shows that larger studies will not yield more variants in populations of European ancestry.

Truly general chemical reactions work well regardless of the structural features and functional groups in the starting molecule. A new screening protocol speeds up the identification of such reactions in the field of asymmetric catalysis.

A map of Earth reveals hotspots of soil biodiversity and regions to target for conservation. Many of these areas are currently unprotected, which suggests that it is time to rethink our soil management and conservation priorities.

Microorganisms store some genetic information on non-chromosomal elements. The emergence of a surprising version of these elements shifts our understanding of their diversity and potential roles.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

During evolution, key physiological changes enabled vertebrates to achieve a more active lifestyle. A comparison between living animals challenges current ideas on the timing of one such change in our ancestors.

The immune system must be actively controlled to prevent inflammatory bowel disease. Cell populations have been found that promote immunosuppressive regulatory T cells of the immune system in the gut.

Nuclear-fusion experiments performed deep under Earth’s surface reveal one possible scenario that could have resulted in the chemical abundances found in an ancient star in the Milky Way.

The unquantified, poorly understood and uncertain risks of climate change in economic valuations are identified and classified, and an integrated approach is proposed to include these missing risks in future valuations and decision-making processes.

 Analysis of a gravitational-wave signal reveals a strongly precessing black-hole binary that contains a rapidly spinning black hole.

Observation of a new resonance in the 19-fluorine to 20-neon thermonuclear reaction at the China JinPing Underground Laboratory (over 2 km below ground) may provide clues to observed discrepancies in calcium production in the evolution of the first stars.

By using 1 W optical frequency combs and nanowatt-level linear optical sampling modules, a time–frequency dissemination over a free-space link of 113 km is achieved with a stability of less than 4 × 10⁻¹⁹ at 10,000 s.

A self-referenced optical frequency comb with digital electronics is used for real-time attosecond control of the comb’s pulse train, and can be used in quantum-limited sensing.

Preparing crystals held together with macromolecular bonds can create shape memory materials that can be engineered to exhibit a wide range of reversible changes useful for chemical sensing, optics and robotics.

 The analytical workflow outlined in this study allows multiple crude reaction mixtures to be analysed simultaneously, with substantial reductions in method development and analysis time, and maximizes the chances of finding catalytic systems with broad substrate scope.

Coupling advances in socioeconomic projections, climate models, damage functions and discounting methods yields an estimate of the social cost of carbon of US$185 per tonne of CO₂—triple the widely used value published by the US government.

A global field survey that analyses samples of soil from all continents identifies hotspots for soil nature conservation, and shows that different ecological dimensions of soil are associated with different priority areas for conservation.

Measurements in three taxa with the characteristics of vertebrate ancestors (lamprey ammocoetes, amphioxus and acorn worms) suggest that gas exchange at gills has a vertebrate origin, but that ion regulation at gills has an earlier and possibly stem deuterostome origin.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

RNA sensing-mediated payload expression provides a specific, versatile, simple and generalizable means of detecting and manipulating animal cells with broad potential applications.

Behavioural and genetic experiments in mice reveal gut-to-brain circuits driving the development of fat preference, one responding to intestinal sugar and fat using cholecystokinin signalling, and the other responding only to fat.

Borgs are remarkably large, divergent archaeal extrachromosomal elements with metabolic genes linked to the methane cycle.

Induction of T regulatory cells by gut microbes is mediated by antigen-presenting RORγt⁺ cells, unlike that of T follicular helper and T helper 17 cells, which requires different cell types.

ILC3s expressing MHC class II control the fate of inflammatory versus tolerogenic T cells that respond to the microbiota by selecting for antigen-specific RORγt⁺ T_reg cells and against T_H17 cells, establishing intestinal homoeostasis.

Single-cell transcriptomic and epigenetic analysis has enabled the identification of Thetis cells, a class of RORγt⁺ antigen-presenting cells with a key role in the differentiation of commensal microbiota-induced peripheral regulatory T cells.

The adaptor protein AP-1 controls the shutdown of STING signalling through a mechanism in which AP-1 recognizes a dileucine motif in phosphorylated STING, which leads to targeted transport of STING to the endolysosomal system for degradation.

HRG-9 (also known as TANGO2) is an evolutionarily conserved haem chaperone that traffics haem from sites of storage or synthesis in eukaryotic cells.

C-terminal cyclic imides are physiological degrons that enable the ubiquitin E3 ligase adapter protein cereblon to target substrates for degradation.

Detailed mechanistic insight into fetal globin gene induction during hypoxia-associated stress erythropoiesis provides new therapeutic approaches to treat β-haemoglobinopathies, such as sickle cell disease and β-thalassaemia.

The authors report on the structures of α-synuclein filaments from the brains of individuals with Parkinson's disease, Parkinson's disease dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies and how they differ from those seen in multiple system atrophy.

Structural studies of the native transmembrane channel-like protein 1 (TMC-1) mechanosensory transduction channel complex of Caenorhabditis elegans reveal the subunit composition and the roles of protein–membrane interactions in the conversion of mechanical force to ion channel activity.