Volume 612 Issue 7938, 1 December 2022

The UK’s statistics agency has changed the way it calculates business research spending. It’s hard to tell whether this provides a more accurate picture or an excuse to cut funding.

Scientists raced to gather the strongest ever biodiversity evidence base. Time is running out to use it.

People in the United States tend to associate with others who hold views that are similar to their own — but more radical.

The collection of 1,500 rapidly changing segments is rich in sequences associated with brain development and disease.

Ancient chefs made bitter plants taste better with techniques such as grinding and soaking.

Such interventions could greatly reduce accidental catches of threatened species.

Understanding the weather pattern known as the Indian Ocean Dipole might help to predict lack of rainfall in countries such as Kenya.

A brain—machine interface allows people with paralysis in all four limbs to navigate a real-world environment.

The film’s flexibilty, rare in ‘thermoelectric’ materials, could make it useful for powering wearable devices.

The latest science news, in brief.

Ground-breaking observations by the James Webb Space Telescope reveal clouds and chemical reactions on a world outside our Solar System.

Researchers are frustrated at the glacial pace of decarbonization — but cheered the commitment to create a ‘loss and damage’ fund.

How, and whether, to keep atomic time in sync with Earth’s rotation is still up for debate.

The strategy has been shown to reduce STIs, but could increase antimicrobial resistance.

Phages probably picked up DNA-cutting systems from microbial hosts, and might use them to fight other viruses.

The question of how to preserve athletic performance amid extreme heat is pressing as climate change bites.

A Nigerian disease-surveillance expert and a US epidemiologist have been tracking monkeypox for years. Can their insights help to stop its spread and prevent future outbreaks?

The refugee phage pioneer was denied a passport for championing peace and freedom.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Incoming policies will cause the European Union to harvest more wood, shift one-fifth of cropland to bioenergy and outsource deforestation, analysis shows.

Enough of silos: develop a joint scientific agenda to understand the intertwined global crises of the Earth system.

Gaining access to Indigenous communities and offering health care in a decolonizing way can take years of respectful collaboration.

Institutions must change the reward structure to value a wider range of perspectives.

Funders and universities should move beyond talk to actions.

Indigenous communities’ knowledge and approaches enrich studies.

Prevent ‘equity washing’ by making research collaborations with level partnerships.

Palaeoclimatologist Chenxi Xu traces the sources of water in annual growth rings to identify periods of heavy rainfall or drought over centuries.

A 67-million-year-old fossil bird found in Europe provides evidence suggesting that scientists should reconsider centuries-old ideas about the nature of the ancestral avian beak.

Seasonal variation in tropical sea surface temperatures doubled during an abrupt warming event 11,700 years ago. This shows that seasonal changes must be considered when inferring past climatic events, and predicting those to come.

Mounting evidence suggests that developing neurons and metastatic cancer cells migrate through similar mechanisms. Characterization of a previously unknown complex involved in cell migration confirms this idea.

Structural insights into a long-studied folate-transport protein provide evidence that might lead to entirely new targeted anticancer treatments, or boost the success of immunotherapy approaches to tackling tumours.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

A system of nine quantum bits has been used to simulate a state known as a holographic wormhole, a concept that features in attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics with the general theory of relativity.

The concept of dendrocentric learning artificial intelligence is proposed to replace synaptocentric learning, reducing the energy use requirement and removing the thermal constraint.

A sparsified SYK model is constructed using learning techniques and the corresponding traversable wormhole dynamics are observed, representing a step towards a program for studying quantum gravity in the laboratory.

By using Si₃N₄ photonic integrated circuits on a silicon chip, a continuous-travelling-wave parametric amplifier is shown to yield a parametric gain exceeding both on-chip propagation loss as well as fibre–chip–fibre coupling losses.

A meta-imaging sensor detects an extra-fine 4D light field distribution using a vibrating microlens array, enabling high-resolution 3D photography up to a gigapixel with fast aberration correction, demonstrated on a telescope aimed at the Moon.

A new methodology for the discovery of chalcogenides by tuning the temperature and flux ratios of systems using mixed fluxes is demonstrated, leading to the synthesis of 30 new and unreported compounds or compositions.

A molecular ratchet, in which a crown ether is pumped from solution onto an encoded molecular strand by a pulse of chemical fuel, opens the way for the reading of information along molecular tapes.

Modelling shows that a globalized solar photovoltaic module supply chain has resulted in photovoltaic installation cost savings of billions of dollars.

Mass spectrometry imaging of long-chain alkenones in sediments from the Cariaco Basin shows that average temperatures remained stable during the Younger Dryas to Holocene transition but seasonality more than doubled and interannual variability intensified.

Geochemical proxies from 360,000-year-old sediment cores and numerical simulations are used to show that the upper ocean heat content of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool greatly affects the Asian monsoon hydroclimate.

A new taxon of toothed Late Cretaceous ornithurine preserving a pterygoid is reported, overturning assumptions about the nature of the ancestral crown bird skull.

Single-cell whole-genome sequencing shows that 'foreground' cell-to-cell structural variation and alterations in copy number are associated with genomic diversity and evolution in triple-negative breast and high-grade serous ovarian cancers.

Drosophila are shown to have retinal muscles that allow them to smoothly track visual motion and also to make rapid eye movements, and the associated functions and mechanisms involved are discussed.

Medin promotes the formation of vascular aggregates with amyloid-β in mouse models and in human patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and is associated with vascular defects and cognitive decline.

Genetic, biochemical and structural studies provide insights into the function of Escherichia coli CapRel^SJ46 as a fused anti-phage toxin–antitoxin system that binds SECΦ27 Gp57 capsid protein.

Tumour-associated neutrophil populations enriched in the myeloid-cell-enriched tumour immune microenvironment subtype are associated with unfavourable prognosis in humans and mice with liver cancer.

MYC dissociation from active promoters alters its interactions with proteins involved in transcription termination and RNA processing, influencing DNA repair and thus, potentially, tumour cell growth.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the mouse class M immunoglobulin B cell receptor complex provide insight into B cell receptor subunit assembly, domain architecture and signalling mechanism.

Structural insights into the poly-ADP-ribosyltransferase tankyrase reveal its filamentous architecture and illustrate how assembly controls catalytic and non-catalytic functions.

Two cyclic dinucleotide molecules bind within the cavity of human SLC19A1 as a compact dual-molecule unit, whereas folate and antifolate bind to SLC19A1 as a monomer and occupy a distinct pocket of the cavity.