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Volume 533 Issue 7601, 5 May 2016

Many chemical reactions never make it into the methods sections of journal articles because they are deemed ‘unsuccessful�. However, such reactions still provide valuable information about the bounds on reaction conditions needed for product formation. Alexander Norquist and colleagues have taken a set of such ‘dark reactions� from laboratory notebooks � specifically for the formation of templated vanadium selenites � and enriched the data with chemical information and properties. They then used a machine-learning algorithm trained on the dark reactions dataset to predict reaction outcomes. The algorithm was able to predict reaction successes or failures with greater accuracy than human intuition. This demonstrates both the value of wider dissemination of unsuccessful syntheses, and the possibility of using machine learning to arrive at potential synthetic routes faster than by traditional means. Cover: Nik Spencer/Nature

Editorial

  • The final stages of a dispute over an ancient Native American skeleton signal the need for clearer oversight of such human remains.

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  • China is vigorously promoting nuclear energy, but its pursuit of reprocessing is misguided.

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  • Humans’ exceptional ability to burn through calories fuels our evolution.

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World View

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Research Highlights

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Seven Days

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News

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Comment

  • Tadataka Yamada, V. Ayano Ogawa and Maria Freire call for research and development funding and coordination to counter global infectious-disease threats.

    • Tadataka Yamada
    • V. Ayano Ogawa
    • Maria Freire
    Comment
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Books & Arts

  • Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

    • Barbara Kiser
    Books & Arts
  • Robert P. Crease assesses Sean Carroll's attempt to construct morality out of quantum field theory.

    • Robert P. Crease
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Correspondence

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News & Views

  • Design rules for exotic materials known as polar metals have been put into practice in thin films. The findings will motivate studies of how a phenomenon called screening can be manipulated to generate new phases in metals. See Letter p.68

    • Marjana Ležaić
    News & Views
  • Insects readily evolve resistance to insecticidal proteins that are introduced into genetically modified crop plants. Continuous directed evolution has now been used to engineer a toxin that overcomes insect resistance. See Article p.58

    • Daniel Dovrat
    • Amir Aharoni
    News & Views
  • Certain sequence variants of the α-synuclein gene are linked to the risk of Parkinson's disease. An analysis of these variants using gene-editing technology provides a possible explanation for this increased risk. See Letter p.95

    • Asa Abeliovich
    • Herve Rhinn
    News & Views
  • The microorganisms that colonize pregnant mice have been shown to prime the innate immune system in newborn offspring, preparing them for life in association with microbes.

    • Mihir Pendse
    • Lora V. Hooper
    News & Views
  • A protein in the pathogenic bacterium Legionella pneumophila has been found to attach the modifying molecule ubiquitin to human proteins, using a mechanism that, surprisingly, does not involve cellular E1 and E2 enzymes. See Letter p.120

    • Sagar Bhogaraju
    • Ivan Dikic
    News & Views
  • The highly precise atomic clocks used in science and technology are based on electronic transitions in atoms. The discovery of a nuclear transition in thorium-229 raises hopes of making nuclear clocks a reality. See Article p.47

    • Marianna Safronova
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Article

  • Direct detection of the 229Th nuclear clock transition has been achieved, placing direct constraints on transition energy and half-life; these results are a step towards a nuclear clock, nuclear quantum optics and a nuclear laser.

    • Lars von der Wense
    • Benedict Seiferle
    • Peter G. Thirolf
    Article
  • Recordings from cat visual cortex show that the cortical maps for stimulus orientation, direction and retinal disparity depend on an organization in which thalamic axons with similar retinotopy and light/dark responses are clustered together in the cortex.

    • Jens Kremkow
    • Jianzhong Jin
    • Jose M. Alonso
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Letter

  • Ultraluminous X-ray sources are thought to be powered by accretion onto a compact object; now the discovery of X-ray emission lines and blueshifted absorption lines in the high-resolution spectra of ultraluminous X-ray sources NGC 1313 X-1 and NGC 5408 X-1 shows that in each case the compact object is surrounded by powerful winds with an outflow velocity of about 0.2 times that of light.

    • Ciro Pinto
    • Matthew J. Middleton
    • Andrew C. Fabian

    Collection:

    Letter
  • Ab initio calculations are used to identify the structural conditions under which a polar state in metals might be stabilized; this information is used to guide the experimental realization of new room-temperature polar metals.

    • T. H. Kim
    • D. Puggioni
    • C. B. Eom
    Letter
  • Failed chemical reactions are rarely reported, even though they could still provide information about the bounds on the reaction conditions needed for product formation; here data from such reactions are used to train a machine-learning algorithm, which is subsequently able to predict reaction outcomes with greater accuracy than human intuition.

    • Paul Raccuglia
    • Katherine C. Elbert
    • Alexander J. Norquist
    Letter
  • An electrochemical C–H oxidation strategy that exhibits broad substrate scope, operational simplicity and high chemoselectivity is described; it uses inexpensive and readily available materials and represents a scalable allylic C–H oxidation that could be adopted in large-scale industrial settings without substantial environmental impact.

    • Evan J. Horn
    • Brandon R. Rosen
    • Phil S. Baran
    Letter
  • High-precision analysis of magmatic gas from the Eifel volcanic area in Germany suggests that the light xenon isotopes reflect a chondritic primordial component that differs from the precursor of atmospheric xenon, consistent with an asteroidal origin for the volatile elements in the Earth’s mantle.

    • Antonio Caracausi
    • Guillaume Avice
    • Bernard Marty
    Letter
  • Vertebrate and invertebrate cartilage share structural and biochemical properties, and their development is controlled by a highly conserved genetic circuit, suggesting that a deeply homologous mechanism underlies the parallel evolution of cartilage in Bilateria.

    • Oscar A. Tarazona
    • Leslie A. Slota
    • Martin J. Cohn
    Letter
  • Fatal Ebola virus disease is characterized by a high proportion of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells expressing the inhibitory molecules CTLA-4 and PD-1, correlating with high virus load; individuals who survive the infection exhibit lower expression of these inhibitory molecules and generate Ebola-specific CD8+ T cells, suggesting that dysregulation of the T cell response is a key component of Ebola virus disease pathophysiology.

    • Paula Ruibal
    • Lisa Oestereich
    • César Muñoz-Fontela
    Letter
  • An unprecedented mechanism of ubiquitination that is independent of E1 and E2 enzymes, instead relying on activation of ubiquitin by ADP-ribosylation, and which is mediated by members of the SidE effector family encoded by the bacterial pathogen Legionella pneumophila, establishes that ubiquitination can be carried out by a single enzyme.

    • Jiazhang Qiu
    • Michael J. Sheedlo
    • Zhao-Qing Luo
    Letter
  • A CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing framework has been developed that allows controlled introduction of mono- and bi-allelic sequence changes, and is used to generate induced human pluripotent stem cells with heterozygous and homozygous dominant mutations in amyloid precursor protein and presenilin 1 that have been associated with early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

    • Dominik Paquet
    • Dylan Kwart
    • Marc Tessier-Lavigne
    Letter
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Corrigendum

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Toolbox

  • Experiments that generate millions of images have forced scientists to find new ways to store and share terabytes of experimental data.

    • Jeffrey M. Perkel

    Collection:

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Feature

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Career Brief

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Futures

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Outlook

  • University research powers innovation and economic development. Countries with intensive research and development (R&D) programmes differ in their approach to turning lab studies into commercial enterprises. By Alla Katsnelson, infographic by Mohamed Ashour.

    • Alla Katsnelson

    Nature Outlook:

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  • The value that Australia places on publication quality over quantity has elevated it into the top echelon of science. Can it now improve its flagging track record in commercialization?

    • Bianca Nogrady

    Nature Outlook:

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  • After starting one of Germany's first biotech companies, biochemist Horst Domdey co-founded BioM, a non-profit organization that has managed and developed Munich's biotechnology cluster since 1997. He talks to Nature about nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit in “a country of competitions”.

    • Chelsea Wald

    Nature Outlook:

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  • When it comes to translating its own research into practical applications, China falls short. A forum in Shanghai put the spotlight on ambitious plans to accelerate the process.

    • Nicky Phillips

    Nature Outlook:

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  • For the past decade, venture philanthropists have been working to propel promising therapies and vaccines into the clinic, with some success.

    • Cassandra Willyard

    Nature Outlook:

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  • Austrian social scientist Helga Nowotny was president of the European Research Council between 2010 and 2013. Now a professor emerita of ETH Zurich and author of The Cunning of Uncertainty (Polity, 2015), Nowotny discusses the growing pressure to capitalize on academic research, and how countries can get it right in the absence of a universal recipe.

    • Chelsea Wald

    Nature Outlook:

    Outlook
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