Volume 635 Issue 8037, 7 November 2024

Uncertainty is a core tenet of science — researchers should be supported so they can communicate it with confidence to the public.

When research on an intriguing material called for hundreds of samples, secondary-school students, teachers and technicians stepped up.

At major computer-science publication venues, up to 17% of the peer reviews are now written by artificial intelligence. We need guidelines before things get out of hand.

Comparison of the hairless animals’ genomes with those of several other mammals shows low activity of certain sequences.

Study of thousands of people in rural communities shows that many do not experience a slump in well-being during their forties and fifties.

Sea-surface data show that the average sea-level rise in 2023 was more than double that in 1993.

Survey pinpoints pyramids, rural settlements and a large city in an unstudied stretch of Mexico.

Analysis of a clade Ia strain of the virus circulating in Central Africa shows genetic mutations indicative of sustained human-to-human spread.

Charting the evolution of cancer at single-cell resolution could open up avenues for early diagnosis and treatment.

Anti-immigration parties are pushing policies that are hostile or indifferent towards science.

John Hopfield has had a varied career and delights in working in the cracks between disciplines.

Giving faecal transplants to children born by caesarian section is promising, early clinical trial results show.

A heart attack unleashes immune cells that stimulate sleep neurons, leading to restorative slumber.

Contracts with Google and Amazon could help, but bringing new types of reactor online will take larger investments — and time.

Models suggest societal upheaval from anti-obesity medicines — but impacts are hard to predict.

Poorly performing antibodies have plagued biomedical sciences for decades. Several fresh initiatives hope to change this.

In a beguiling work, a geologist–poet finds solace after bereavement as he walks along California’s infamous fault line.

An eloquent requiem for nature risks leaving the reader feeling helpless rather than energized.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Making payments directly to farmers can encourage them to use fertilizer more wisely, thereby improving soil health, yields and the environment.

Five researchers from around the world share advice for helping students and their mentors benefit from short-term internships.

Tools such as Rosetta and AlphaFold have redefined the protein-engineering landscape. But some problems remain out of reach — for now.

Ornithologist Ana Gonzalez studies migration patterns and works with local scientists to protect threatened birds.

Smashing uranium-238 ions together proves to be a reliable way of imaging their nuclei. High-energy collision experiments reveal nuclear shapes that are strongly elongated and have no symmetry around their longest axis.

Powerful bursts of radio waves from distant galaxies are typically linked to young celestial objects. But observations reveal that they are more likely to occur in rarer, more massive galaxies, offering clues to their enigmatic origins.

Analyses of ancient DNA from aurochs — large, wild cattle that co-existed with humans for millennia — reveals how early humans tamed these beasts and bred them with domesticated cattle for strength and resilience.

A garden spider innovates to prevent web destruction by gusts of wind, and researchers call for a multidisciplinary approach to teaching science, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive.

After a heart attack, immune cells are recruited to the brain to induce sleep, which suppresses inflammation in the heart and aids recovery. But if sleep is disrupted, excess inflammation worsens cardiac function and slows healing.

Multicellular species of animals and plants differ in form but look similar when their body plan is established — described as an hourglass-like pattern of development. Independently evolved brown algae develop this way, too.

Methods to manufacture layered hybrid superlattices composed of alternating crystalline atomic layers and self-assembled atomic or molecular interlayers are described, to make use of their combined strengths and produce designable quantum solids.

Analysis of the stellar population properties of 30 host galaxies of fast radio bursts (FRBs) suggests an abundance of FRBs in massive star-forming galaxies, and implies that the formation of FRB sources—magnetars—is linked to core-collapse supernovae of stellar merger remnants.

The collective-flow-assisted nuclear shape-imaging method images the nuclear global shape by colliding them at ultrarelativistic speeds and analysing the collective response of outgoing debris.

A broadband hyperspectral image sensor fabricated using photolithography maintains high throughput with high spatial–temporal–spectral resolution, and has demonstrated wide applications including chlorophyll and sugar quantification, blood oxygen and water quality monitoring, textile classification, apple bruise detection, and remote lunar detection.

Suppressing surface Cs⁺ accumulation in methylammonium-free α-FA_1−xCs_xPbI₃ perovskite with an intermediate phase-assisted strategy enables high-efficiency and thermally stable photovoltaics.

Zwitterionic additives composed of a ‘soft’ organic cation and a ‘hard’ anion enable homogeneous halide cycling in aqueous halide redox flow batteries, resulting in improved cycling life and stability.

A polyamine-functionalized covalent organic framework, COF-999, can be used as a material for direct air capture of CO₂ from open air.

When used in its phase-pure form, iron carbide catalyses the conversion of syngas to linear α-olefins with high activity and selectivity under industrially relevant conditions.

Analysis of bedrock elastic deformation using high-resolution observations from 22 Greenland GNSS Network stations shows that the Greenland ice sheet buffers enough summer meltwater englacially to cause subsidence of about 5 mm during the melt season.

Geochemical data and geodynamic modelling suggest that the rapid increase of convergence rate between India and Eurasia about 65 million years ago can be explained by changes in sediment subduction.

A large-scale evaluation of the long-term effects of tropical cyclones on human mortality in the contiguous United States estimates that the average tropical cyclone results in 7,000–11,000 excess deaths, far exceeding previous estimates.

Similar to other eukaryotes, brown algae exhibit transcriptome conservation that is consistent with the molecular hourglass model during differentiation in embryonic development.

An analysis of 38 ancient genomes from the aurochs, the extinct ancestor of modern cattle, provides insight into the population ancestry and domestication of this species.

Peripheral and central circuit adaptations can be flexibly coordinated in Drosophila, and such a modular circuit organization may facilitate the evolution of mate recognition systems by allowing novel sensory modalities to become linked to male arousal.

Induction of behavioural time scale plasticity leads to dendritic, delayed and stochastic Ca²⁺/calmodulin-dependent kinase II activation, findings that clarify the mechanisms that underlie place cell formation.

Single-neuron recordings from intracranial electrodes inserted into human brains for clinical reasons suggest that the temporal structure of human experience is encoded in human hippocampal and entorhinal neurons.

Studies in humans and mice show that myocardial infarction recruits monocytes to the brain’s thalamus, promoting sleep, which in turn restricts cardiac inflammation and sympathetic signalling and assists healing.

‘Hardy’ Helicobacter pylori ecospecies shares the ancestry of ‘Ubiquitous’ H. pylori from the same region in most of the genome but has nearly fixed single-nucleotide polymorphism differences in 100 genes.

The leading region of plasmids is a hotspot for many anti-defence systems, encoding anti-CRISPR, anti-restriction and other counter-defence proteins; focusing on this region could lead to the discovery of diverse anti-defence genes, and improve strategies for the design of plasmid-based delivery systems for diverse microbial ecosystems.

A study examines the diversity of extrachromosomal DNA elements in cancer, and provides details on the frequency and origin of extrachromosomal DNA and its role in the development of different types of cancer.

Cooperative species of extrachromosomal DNAs are coordinately inherited through mitotic co-segregation.

Extrachromosomal DNA makes cancerous tumours resistant to treatment, but this research demonstrates that increasing transcription–replication conflict allows for targeted elimination of cancer cells containing extrachromosomal DNA, and thus sustained tumour regression in mice.

Whole-genome sequencing of matched serial tumours from patients identifies two key mutagenic factors (APOBEC3 and chemotherapy) and extrachromosomal DNA-forming structural variants that drive treatment resistance in urothelial cancer.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the Thermococcus kodakarensis transcription pre-termination complex suggest a mechanism by which the archaeal termination factor FttA applies mechanical force to a transcription elongation complex to trigger termination, and reveal similarities in factor-dependent termination in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes.

The structure of a human exosome–ribosome supercomplex reveals the mechanisms behind the formation of active cytoplasmic exosomes and their role in co-translational RNA decay.