Volume 538 Issue 7623, 6 October 2016

Awards week shows the value of a strong brand identity.

Lengthening our lives will come at a cost.

‘Academic capitalism’ contributed to the mishandling of the Macchiarini case by officials at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, argues Olof Hallonsten.

The week in science: 30 September–6 October 2016

Craft sends back wealth of images in 19-kilometre descent.

Design flaw may have doomed machine at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab.

Ancient genes will soon be available to researchers again, but the move poses its own challenges.

Panel will focus on the implications of gene editing in human reproduction and livestock.

British-born theorists recognized for work on topological phases.

Japanese biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi recognized for work on autophagy.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. But before scientists trust it, they first need to understand how machines learn.

Matthew Hansen uses satellites to spot deforestation as it happens.

Agree on definitions and baselines to track investments in decarbonizing the world's energy system, urge Lucien Georgeson, Mark Maslin and Martyn Poessinouw.

Launch a global clean-energy initiative to set priorities that galvanize researchers to deliver breakthroughs, write Alan Bernstein and colleagues.

Robert P. Crease weighs up a theoretical-physics study that cracks open a strange vista.

Highlights of this season's releases

Dave Reay enjoys a wry history of US climate-science obfuscation.

Werner Heisenberg's wartime letters to his wife record scientific and personal privations, finds Ann Finkbeiner.

Richard Dawid examines a critique of quantum mechanics, string theory and inflationary cosmology.

Paul Weindling ponders a study of drug use among the Nazi leadership and military.

Manuel Blum examines a biography of cybernetics pioneer Warren McCulloch and his revolutionary times.

Epidemiologist who led the effort to eradicate smallpox.

Solid cobalt-based catalysts are used commercially to convert carbon monoxide and hydrogen into synthetic fuels. It emerges that much more valuable chemicals can be produced by using a different form of cobalt catalyst. See Letter p.84

Underactivity of the transcription factor p53 can lead to tumour development. The discovery that the SET protein binds to and inhibits p53 points to a way to unleash the tumour suppressor's activity. See Letter p.118

A database of the carbon-isotope 'fingerprints' of methane has been used to constrain the contributions of different sources to the global methane budget. The surprising results have implications for climate prediction. See Letter p.88

Neutrinos are much lighter than the other constituents of matter. One explanation for this could be that neutrinos are their own antiparticles and belong to a new class of 'Majorana' particle. An experiment sets strong constraints on this scenario.

The human dispersal out of Africa that populated the world was probably paced by climate changes. This is the inference drawn from computer modelling of climate variability during the time of early human migration. See Letter p.92

Weber and Dan review our understanding of the neural circuits controlling sleep, focusing on the advances in measurement and manipulation of neuronal activity and circuit tracing from genetically defined cell types.

Structural studies shed light on the function and stoichiometry of the Ton complex, which harnesses the proton motive force across the bacterial inner membrane to transduce energy to the outer membrane.

Structures of the human P2X₃ receptor in its open, closed, desensitized and antagonist-bound states show the receptor’s gating mechanism and the basis of antagonist binding.

The COSIMA mass spectrometer on the Rosetta spacecraft has analysed the solid organic matter found in dust particles emitted by comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko; this matter is similar to the insoluble organic matter extracted from carbonaceous chondrites such as the Murchison meteorite, but is perhaps more primitive.

A hitherto unrecognized type of fermionic excitation in metals is described, which forms a chain of connected loops in momentum space (a nodal chain) along which conduction and valence bands touch.

Surface patterning of nanoparticles with polymer patches is achieved in a poor solvent for the polymer by controlling the ratio between the sizes of polymer molecules and nanoparticles.

Lower olefins are hydrocarbons that are widely used in the chemical industry, and can be generated from syngas by the ‘Fischer–Tropsch to olefins’ process; here, a new catalyst is described that can generate lower olefins from syngas with high selectivity, with little formation of undesirable methane.

Revisions in isotopic source signatures reveal that global total fossil fuel methane emissions from industry plus natural geological seepage are much larger than thought.

The dispersal of Homo sapiens across the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant during the last glacial period was not a single event, but occurred in four astronomically-paced migration waves.

In the neocortex, sensory information flows into areas specific for a particular modality through parallel thalamocortical circuits, consisting of first order and higher order nuclei connecting to primary and secondary cortical areas, respectively; here, the authors identify common developmental genetic programs that organize these conserved features in parallel sensory pathways.

Live fluorescent imaging of murine hippocampal slices shows that NMDAR-dependent glutamate signalling leads to postsynaptic BDNF release, with associated signalling of its receptor, TrkB, on the same dendritic spine, suggesting autocrine BDNF signalling.

The three small GTPases Rac1, RhoA and Cdc42 are differentially involved in structural long-term potentiation of rodent dendritic spines, simultaneously ensuring signal specificity and also priming the system for plasticity.

Attenuating the lipolysis pathway in Drosophila melanogaster by modulation of the COP1–Arf1 signalling complex induced necrosis in stem cells and led to their engulfment by differentiated cells.

A multi-genomic approach identifies the addiction of KRAS-mutant lung cancer cells to XPO1-dependent nuclear export, offering a new therapeutic opportunity.

The acidic domain of SET binds and represses unacetylated p53, but this interaction is prevented by cellular-stress-induced p53 CTD acetylation.

Gene-editing technology and large-scale proteomics are used to provide insights into the modular assembly of the human mitochondrial respiratory chain complex I, as well as identifying new assembly factors.

Scientists are turning to a software–development site to share data and code.

Having an impressive CV is one thing, but a well-written covering letter can really make you stand out from the crowd.

When space is limited, make every word count, advises Ingrid Eisenstadter.

Early career support programme aims to help women and under-represented minorities.

An online tool aims to help early career scientists find more and more-relevant advisors

A question of survival.