Volume 535 Issue 7612, 21 July 2016

Scientists are urging Pokémon Go fanatics to keep an eye out for new species.

Basic bike design has been unchanged for a century — but science is finally finding out how to make bicycles better.

Dry cell biologists, who bridge computer science and cell biology, should have a pivotal role in driving effective team science, says Assaf Zaritsky.

Turkey purges all university deans after failed coup; engineered mosquitos show apparent success against dengue; and Romania joins CERN.

Reshuffled UK administration signals change for research and science policy.

European Investment Bank provides surprise loan to halt startling brain drain.

Court decision escalates tensions in ecologically sensitive region, but may also push nations to cooperate.

Genetics study confirms social cycle that helps infection to spread.

'Black and Bloom' project explores how microorganisms help to determine the pace of Arctic melting.

Chemist Claudio Bifano tells Nature about daily life in a country gripped by hunger, scarcity and violence.

Jim Papadopoulos has spent a lifetime pondering the maths of bikes in motion. Now his work has found fresh momentum.

The soaring popularity of gene editing has made celebrities of the principal investigators who pioneered the field — but their graduate students and postdocs are often overlooked.

Tech giants moving into health may widen inequalities and harm research, unless people can access and share their data, warn John T. Wilbanks and Eric J. Topol.

Record-breaking harmful algal blooms and other severe impacts are becoming more frequent. We need to understand why, says Anna M. Michalak.

John Harris probes a study on the science and ethics of genome editing.

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

W. Bernard Carlson hails a life of driven communications pioneer Guglielmo Marconi.

Ecologist who established concept of keystone species.

The Antarctic Peninsula has been warming for many decades, but an analysis now reveals that it has cooled since the late 1990s. Inspection of the factors involved suggests that this is consistent with natural variability. See Letter p.411

Organic molecules called coenzymes are central to metabolism, but have also been found to act as components of RNA in bacteria. A study reveals how coenzymes are incorporated into RNA. See Letter p.444

A global study has identified coral reefs with greater fish biomass than would be predicted given human and environmental pressures. These outliers might teach us something about sustainable coral-reef management. See Letter p.416

Electrons repel each other because they are negatively charged. An experiment now confirms a fifty-year-old theory that electrons can also attract one another as a result of repulsion from other electrons. See Letter p.395

A field study of methane emissions from wetlands reveals that more of the gas escapes through diffusive processes than was thought, mostly at night. Because methane is a greenhouse gas, the findings have implications for global warming.

Two analyses of insulin-producing β-cells reveal differences in what has long been considered a homogeneous population. These differences might reflect changes during maturation or ageing, or distinct cell lineages. See Letter p.430

A high-resolution gene expression atlas of prenatal and postnatal brain development of rhesus monkey charts global transcriptional dynamics in relation to brain maturation, while comparative analysis reveals human-specific gene trajectories; candidate risk genes associated with human neurodevelopmental disorders tend to be co-expressed in disease-specific patterns in the developing monkey neocortex.

Increased potential for branched-chain amino acid and lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis in the gut microbiome of insulin-resistant individuals suggests that changes in the serum metabolome induced by dysbiosis, and driven by only a handful of species, contribute to the development of diabetes.

Protection of nascent DNA from degradation provides a mechanism that can promote synthetic viability and drug resistance in Brca-deficient cells without restoring homologous recombination at double-strand breaks.

Observations of reverberation arising from gravitationally redshifted iron Kα photons reflected off the inner accretion flow in a tidal disruption event demonstrate that X-rays originate from a region very close to the central black hole and not from a relativistic jet, as previously thought.

The widespread rimmed grooves, lineations and elongate craters extending from the Imbrium impact basin on the Moon, termed the Imbrium Sculpture, includes a non-radial component that is used to infer that the Imbrium impactor was the size of a proto-planet—about half the diameter of Vesta.

Experimental demonstration of excitonic attraction between two electrons is achieved in quantum devices made from carbon nanotubes, where the interaction between two electrons is reversed from repulsive to attractive owing to their strong Coulomb interaction with another electronic system.

The incorporation of large numbers of chemically diverse functional components into microfabricated structures at precise locations is challenging; now the precision placement of DNA origami by directed self-assembly is shown to overcome this problem for the purpose of reliably and controllably coupling molecular emitters to photonic crystal cavities.

A co-catalyst system for electrochemical alcohol oxidation composed of a bipyridine copper catalyst and an electron-proton-transfer mediator called TEMPO operates at much lower potential and is faster than TEMPO alone.

Here it is shown that the late twentieth century warming trends in the Antarctic Peninsula have ceased, with the Peninsula having instead been cooling for most of the twenty-first century, underscoring the considerable internal variability within the Antarctic climate system.

Data from over 2,500 reefs worldwide is used to identify 15 bright spots—sites where reef biomass is significantly higher than expected—and surveys of local experts in these areas suggest that strong sociocultural institutions and high levels of local engagement are among the factors supporting higher fish biomass.

In the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, expression of conditioned fear is causally related to the organization of neurons into functional assemblies, defining tight temporal control of this behaviour.

Adaptive immune dysfunction, in particular interferon-γ, is implicated in disorders characterized by social dysfunction and suggests interferon-γ signalling may provide a co-evolutionary link between social behaviour and an anti-pathogen immune response.

Mature pancreatic β-cells can be distinguished from proliferating ones by expression of the Fltp reporter gene, which is triggered by Wnt signalling and β-cell polarization and islet compaction.

Mobile genes, which can be transferred between bacterial species in the microbiome to impart properties such as antibiotic resistance, are reflective of human activity and local diets.

Neurotrophic factors produced by enteric glia in response to microbiota and alarmin cues regulate IL-22 production by group 3 innate lymphoid cells in the gut; disruption of this pathway leads to impaired clearance of Citrobacter rodentium and defects in epithelial integrity in a model of intestinal inflammation.

RNA caps other than the 7-methylguanylate modification are generated by a distinct mechanism in which caps are added during, not after, transcription initiation through the use of non-canonical initiating nucleotides by RNA polymerases, a finding which has functional consequences.

Stabilization of an active and inactive conformation of the β₂-adrenergic receptor by allosteric nanobodies reveals differential ligand-dependent regulation of receptor states to control G-protein-coupled receptor activation.

Research into ageing requires patience, but a small cadre of scientists is angling to speed up answers by developing the flamboyant, short-lived turquoise killifish as a new model.

How to manage the research-paper deluge? Blogs, colleagues and social media can all help.

Small steps to freedom.