Volume 611 Issue 7935, 10 November 2022

In astronomy, the use of sound instead of light is breaking down barriers to participation and providing insight into the Universe.

You might know what policymakers should know. That doesn’t mean you know how to help them to use that information.

A vaccine upgraded to target four influenza proteins instead of the usual one protects mice against a range of viral variants.

A US city’s crackdown inadvertently reveals the vehicles’ value.

The borders between two types of crystal help to keep a ceramic material from cracking.

Genomes in fragments of bone show that medieval fish harvests starting around 800 years ago eroded herring stocks in the western Baltic Sea.

Some dune fields and sand seas will move faster and even expand as wind patterns shift because of climate change.

A Brazilian fossil suggests that the super-stretcher necks of Argentinosaurus and its ilk evolved gradually rather than in a rush.

Candida albicans, which can cause fatal bloodstream infections, deploys a fat-digesting enzyme to undermine its host’s immune defences.

The latest science news, in brief.

Microbial molecules from soil, seawater and human bodies are among the planet’s least understood.

Many hope that the new president will restore research funding and environmental protections.

Descendants of Omicron are proliferating worldwide — and the same mutations are coming up again and again.

Two hotly debated lawsuits argue that race-conscious admissions discriminate against white and Asian American applicants.

Arab governments are ramping up their green ambitions ahead of the COP27 climate summit, but show few signs of reining in fossil-fuel exports.

Kathleen Folbigg has spent 19 years in prison and was dubbed ‘Australia’s worst female serial killer’. Now, an inquiry into her case will look at clinical genetics in a whole new way.

Pressure is mounting to downgrade GDP or improve it so economic growth is not the only game in town.

Governments should provide for digital public information infrastructure — but how?

A multigenerational biography illuminates a dynasty’s vexed influence on science and society.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

As the crisis at the Zaporizhzhia plant worsens, international agreements need to be extended to ensure nuclear safety during war.

As interest in academia fades, scholars in PhD and master’s programmes are dubious about the value of their degree in advancing their professional lives, finds Nature survey.

Lynne Quick sifts through piles of ancient animal dung and dried urine to find signs of past climates in preserved pollen and charcoal.

Human DNA from the Middle Ages reveals that natural selection occurred at pace in survivors of a bubonic plague pandemic, perhaps leaving their descendants at increased risk of autoimmune diseases.

A fluid of ultracold atoms has exhibited quantum dynamics similar to those thought to have existed moments after the Big Bang — ushering in a new era of laboratory exploration of the early Universe.

A field experiment provides a new way to investigate the mechanisms by which grazing, fertilizer use and light availability can affect the biodiversity of a grassland plant community.

Two groups have visualized actin — the protein polymer that gives cells their shape — at high resolution. The structures provide in-depth views of the polymer as it adopts fleeting states and undergoes conformational changes.

Molecules of heavy water contain the deuterium isotope of hydrogen and have been impossible to separate from ordinary water. Nanoporous materials with flexible apertures in their structures point the way to a solution.

The processes that distributed life-forming volatile elements throughout the early Solar System and how they then became incorporated into planetary building blocks are reviewed.

The early stages of a lensed supernova at redshift 3 are found in images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, with observations beginning from around 5.8 hours after the explosion.

The behaviour of quantum fields in curved spacetime is simulated using a two-dimensional trapped quantum gas of potassium atoms with a configurable trap and adjustable interaction strength.

Measurements of the proton’s electromagnetic structure show enhancement of its electric generalized polarizability compared with theoretical expectations, confirming the presence of a new dynamical mechanism not accounted for by current theories.

A reaction is described combining oxidative polymerization and in situ reductive n-doping to yield poly(benzodifurandione), a facilely synthesized stable n-type conducting polymer with ultrahigh conductivity, with applications in organic electronics.

A reactive surface engineering approach is used to produce an inverted perovskite solar cell that reaches a power conversion efficiency of 25% and has good operational stability.

Nanometre-sized ‘nanoglue’ islands of CeO_x on high-surface-area SiO₂ are shown to suppress sintering and confine on average one Pt atom per island, leading to stable single-atom catalysts under oxidizing and reducing environments.

The authors demonstrate efficient separation of water isotopologues at room temperature using two porous coordination polymers that amplify their diffusion-rate difference.

The Pacific cold tongue is shown to possess two distinct annual cycles with complex interference effects, calling for a reassessment of its seasonal dynamics and re-evaluation of tropical Pacific palaeoclimate records of annual cycle phase changes.

Competition for light can cause plant diversity loss in grassland ecosystems when fertilized or herbivores are excluded, and experimentally restoring light can mitigate this biodiversity loss.

Morphological diversification in living birds is analysed, with substantial variation in evolutionary modes among subgroups and skeletal parts found, along with an important role for environmental divergence in structuring the radiation of crown-group birds.

Klunk and colleagues identify signatures of natural selection imposed by Yersinia pestis and demonstrate their effect on genetic diversity and susceptibility to certain diseases in the present day.

Synaptotagmin-3 is identified as the presynaptic high-affinity calcium sensor to rapidly replenish synaptic vesicles to maintain steady synaptic transmission.

We identified Tad1, a large family of phage-encoded proteins that inhibit Thoeris immunity, and define the chemical structure of a central immune signalling molecule, showing a new mode of action by which pathogens can suppress host immunity.

A diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries provides health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help to bring this public health threat to an end.

Mice bearing different variants of APOE exhibit different COVID-19 outcomes, with APOE2 and APOE4 associated with more severe disease, and this relationship between APOE genotype and disease severity is supported by clinical data in humans.

 Among naturally occurring antibodies that have adapted to antigen, those with similar heavy chains usually have similar light chains.

PD-L1 expression by senescent cells renders them resistant to clearance by CD8 T cells, suggesting PD-L1 as a target for mitigating the effects of ageing.

Elevated viscosity counterintuitively increases the motility of various cell types in vitro and imprints mechanical memory to tumour cells, which enables them to disseminate more efficiently in vivo.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of skeletal F-actin show solvent-driven rearrangements governing actin filament assembly and aging with potential application in design of drugs and small molecules for imaging and therapy.

The nucleotide state of actin modulates F-actin structural transitions evoked by bending forces.

Extensive genomic analyses of the chromatin architecture in acute myeloid leukaemia reveals several characteristics, including subtype-specific distal enhancers and silencers, that may represent new anticancer therapeutic targets.

The cryo-EM structure of the yeast SEA complex suggests that SEACAT functions as a scaffold for binding TORC1 regulators.

Melanoma cells interact with pain-mediating sensory neurons by increasing their release of the neuropeptide CGRP, which increases the exhaustion of CD8⁺ T cells and thus promotes the survival of cancer cells.