Volume 617 Issue 7962, 25 May 2023

Research will satisfy Africa’s demand for energy — but only if the continent is allowed to invest more in its science and innovation.

A robust strategy to slash the IPCC’s carbon emissions would be a testbed for international climate policy — and serve as an example of effective action.

Levels of protective antibodies decline faster in people with a very high body mass index.

Prehistoric engravings depict vast hunting traps with extraordinary precision.

Fossils show that extinct marine beasts called pliosaurs might have grown to be nearly as large as a sperm whale.

Stitching material made from cell-free gut tissue is not only strong but can also be used to sense inflammation.

Industrial releases of bromoform, an ozone-depleting compound that is also emitted by seaweed, are much higher than expected.

Tiny atmospheric particles from gargantuan wildfires that began in late 2019 helped to trigger La Niña conditions in 2020.

Collisions between ring-shaped vortices create a floating island of turbulence in a water tank.

The state-of-the-art centre will help to enforce a near-universal ban on certain chemicals and train analysts from around the world.

Regulation aims to reduce facilities’ emissions of climate-altering gases — a goal that could require carbon burial.

Genetic resilience found in a person predisposed to early-onset dementia could potentially lead to new treatments.

Immune genes could play a part in the risk of needing intensive care when infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers worry that certain regions, including Africa, will suffer if global attention moves away from the outbreak.

It pays to be an warm hunter in the cold ocean depths, so the animals shut down oxygen intake to conserve heat.

Specialists speculate that it might be similar to a US spaceplane, and it could have research or military uses.

With researchers reporting high rates of anxiety and depression, calls are growing to fundamentally change science before it’s too late.

Data torturing, cherry-picking, P-hacking and the invention of tools such as ChatGPT — when it comes to assisting the spread of disinformation science is its own worst enemy, argues a new book.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

From underground exploration to brain science and air-traffic control, the sensing potential of quantum devices is enormous. But they must first get out of the laboratory.

A growing number of PhD programmes and postdoc positions combine academic questions and industry resources.

Libin Zhang aims to restore sea-cucumber populations to rebalance ocean ecosystems and so that people can use their beneficial compounds.

Inorganic phosphate is an essential mineral for cellular metabolism and signalling. It emerges that a fruit-fly organelle can store this chemical in the form of phospholipids, releasing it in times of need.

A long-sought photon that is emitted by the nucleus of a thorium isotope has now been observed. The feat is a key step in efforts to build a nuclear clock, a device that is precise enough to probe the Universe’s best-kept secrets.

The processing of messenger RNA during splicing requires the activity of a complex of RNAs and proteins termed the spliceosome. Structural data shed light on previously mysterious aspects of splicing in humans.

A limit on the resolution of optical-microscopy techniques has been broken by using a mixture of tags to label copies of target molecules in a sample, opening the way to better views of molecular organization in cells.

In the earliest stages of mammalian development, individual cells possess the unrestricted potential to form a new organism. Researchers are closing in on the goal of growing these cells in the laboratory.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Muscle loss during chronic disease is a life-threatening condition for which there is no effective treatment. The identification of an underlying molecular mechanism might offer new therapeutic targets.

An analysis of chemical processes to immobilize lead from perovskite solar cells is presented, highlighting the need for a standard lead-leakage test and mathematical model to reliably evaluate the potential environmental risk of perovskite optoelectronics.

The authors report observations of recently formed dust and molecular gas in the atmosphere of IRC+10°216 and interpret HCN, SiS and SiC₂ lines as large convective cells in the photosphere, as seen in Betelgeuse.

The authors report on a temperate Earth-sized planet orbiting the cool M6 dwarf LP 791-18 with a radius of 1.03 ± 0.04 R_⊕ and an equilibrium temperature of 300–400 K, with the permanent night side plausibly allowing for water condensation.

The authors report on the radiative decay of a low-energy isomer in thorium-229 (^229mTh), which has consequences for the design of a future nuclear clock and eases the search for direct laser excitation of the atomic nucleus.

The authors introduce a single-molecule DNA-barcoding method, resolution enhancement by sequential imaging, that improves the resolution of fluorescence microscopy down to the Ångström scale using off-the-shelf fluorescence microscopy hardware and reagents.

Modules of foldable crystalline silicon solar cells retain their power-conversion efficiency after being subjected to bending stress or exposure to air-flow simulations of a violent storm.

A study using a copper-in-silver dilute alloy catalyst in a high-pressure gas flow reactor reports highly selective electrosynthesis of acetate from carbon monoxide.

The authors report a transition-metal-catalysed protocol for recovery of polymer building block bisphenol  A and intact fibres from epoxy composites, demonstrating that chemical recycling approaches for thermoset epoxy resins and composites are achievable.

An analysis of data from urban and rural areas shows that in wet climates the net effect of temperature and humidity in urban areas is an increase in heat stress.

By combining geophysical and geodetic constraints for different models of the internal structure of the Moon, evidence is provided supporting the lunar mantle overturn scenario and the existence of a solid inner core.

After 600 rounds of selection, anaerobic snowflake yeast evolved to be macroscopic, becoming around 20,000 times larger (approximately mm scale) and about 10,000-fold more biophysically tough, while retaining a clonal multicellular life cycle.

An analysis of models of human populations in Africa, using some newly sequenced genomes, finds that human origins in the continent can best be described by a weakly structured stem model.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

Feedback influence from a higher visual area to primary visual cortex in mice engages nonlinear dendritic integration.

Multisensory learning improves subsequent memory performance, even for individual sensory cues, in Drosophila.

Complementary single-cell and single-nucleus transcriptomic analyses of Zea mays, Sorghum bicolor and Setaria viridis root cells provide insights into the evolution of cell types and gene modules that control key traits in these important crop species.

Under chemically defined conditions, mouse pluripotent stem cells can be induced to closely resemble authentic totipotent stem cells that can differentiate to both embryonic and extraembryonic lineages.

PXo bodies, non-canonical multilamellar organelles, serve as a reservoir for intracellular inorganic phosphate and are a critical regulator of both cytosolic phosphate levels and tissue homeostasis.

Tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes from glioblastoma can recognize bacterial and gut microbial peptides.

Glioblastoma stem cells co-opt lysine uptake and degradation to shunt the production of crotonyl-CoA, remodelling the chromatin landscape to evade interferon-induced intrinsic effects on glioblastoma stem cell maintenance and extrinsic effects on immune response.

Gene expression analysis in muscle tissues showed upregulation of ectodysplasin A2 receptor in tumour-bearing mice and patients with cachectic cancer, and thus therapeutic targeting of relevant pathways may be beneficial in prevention of muscle loss.

Systematic alteration of HIV-1 TAR RNA and quantitative determination of its propensity to bind to the Tat protein establish a key role role for a rare and short-lived RNA state in Tat-dependent transactivation in cells.

Cryogenic electron microscopy images of a spliceosome complex undergoing catalytic activation provide mechanistic insight into how the two ATP-dependent RNA helicases involved in this process, PRP2 and Aquarius, work together.