Volume 556 Issue 7701, 19 April 2018

Nature authors say a reproducibility checklist is a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done.

A new set of ethics principles should help researchers and funders do justice to the interests of those involved with Africa’s genomics research.

Institutions could do more to support researchers who have disabilities, says Aaron Schaal.

Fluid build-up after a slow quake raises the risk of massive rupture.

Mice that hit the running wheel have brainier pups than sedentary rodents do.

A carefully manipulated crash shows what happens when atoms collide in the cold.

Early chromosomal disruption can set the stage for kidney cancer decades later.

A molecule boosts generosity in birds but doesn’t make them altruistic.

Molecular device stays on the straight and narrow.

Mouse experiments show how noroviruses do their dirty work.

Particles’ obliteration may boost semiconductor luminescence.

Parenting methods of elusive caecilians are described.

The week in science: 13–19 April 2018.

One-third of reefs in the world’s largest coral system were transformed by warmed waters, finds comprehensive underwater and aerial survey.

Rapid rise in number of infections concerns researchers.

The Environmental Defense Fund is working with researchers at Harvard University on the probe.

Low-income sub-Saharan countries bear a high burden of air pollution, but are nearly unrepresented in the research on its health impacts.

Researchers deliver 280,000-signature campaign to parliament protesting decade of drastic cuts — but a budget hike might be in their sights.

Nations seek to better address future chemical-weapons threats.

Supernova simulations are resolving a 50-year-old mystery about stellar death throes.

Synchronizing drug delivery with a patient’s body clock can yield clear benefits. But will the data be enough to overcome long-standing hurdles?

Companies that manufacture and distribute the precursors to lethal agents must be open to surveillance and inspections, argues Leiv K. Sydnes.

Define an international doctrine for cyberspace skirmishes before they escalate into conventional warfare, urge Mariarosaria Taddeo and Luciano Floridi.

Robert Costanza applauds Mariana Mazzucato’s call for more-productive, equal and sustainable economies.

Ron Cowen weighs up Brian Keating’s call to reform the most coveted award in physics.

Mary Craig rounds up the highlights of this season’s releases.

Stuart Pimm on the tragic tale of a hobbyist, a heist and a great scientific legacy.

Andrew Jaffe probes Carlo Rovelli’s study arguing that physics deconstructs our sense of time.

Alex Haslam appraises an account of key experiments on the psychology of conflict and cooperation.

Tor Wager lauds a book on the hunt for an elusive root of sensory suffering.

Video is an engaging way to make your research more accessible, says Adrian A. Smith.

Meteorologist Insa Thiele-Eich is training to become Germany’s first female astronaut.

Make-up of academic workforce is skewed compared with other sectors.

Recipients of postdoc fellowship are more likely to secure further agency cash.

The brain’s resident immune cells retain a long-lasting memory of peripheral inflammation. This memory can influence the response to stroke and the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in mouse models.

The growth of gold nanoparticles has been manipulated using amino acids and peptides to produce twisted structures that alter the rotation of light. The method could simplify the development of optical devices.

There are striking differences between the male and female forms of some species. A study of marine fossils finds that such differences come at the cost of an increased risk of extinction.

A method for integrating photonic devices with state-of-the-art nanoelectronics overcomes previous limitations. The approach shows promise for realizing high-speed, low-power optoelectronic technology.

The full list of weapons used by bacteria against viruses is not known. A computational approach has uncovered nine previously unidentified antiviral systems, encoded by genes near known defence genes in bacterial genomes.

X-ray observations have revealed a dozen stellar-mass black holes at the centre of the Galaxy, implying that there are thousands more to be found. The discovery confirms a fundamental prediction of stellar dynamics.

Laser spectroscopy is used to investigate the hyperfine structure and determine the fundamental nuclear properties of the isomer 229mTh, the strongest candidate for the realization of a nuclear clock.

Galanin-expressing neurons in the medial preoptic area coordinate different aspects of motor, motivational, hormonal and social behaviour associated with parenting by projecting to different brain regions depending on the type of behaviour and sex and reproductive state of mice.

Peripheral stimuli can induce acute immune training and tolerance in the brain and lead to long-lasting epigenetic reprogramming of microglia; these changes alter pathology in mouse models of stroke and Alzheimer’s pathology .

Whole-genome sequencing of 1,011 natural isolates of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae reveals its evolutionary history, including a single out-of-China origin and multiple domestication events, and provides a framework for genotype–phenotype studies in this model organism.

Observations of NGC 6240 show two differently driven outflows of different gases with a combined outflow rate comparable to the star formation rate, suggesting possible negative feedback on star formation.

A way of integrating photonics with silicon nanoelectronics is described, using polycrystalline silicon on glass islands alongside transistors on bulk silicon complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor chips.

Molten-salt-assisted chemical vapour deposition is used to synthesize a wide variety of two-dimensional transition-metal chalcogenides.

Chirality can be ‘encoded’ into gold nanoparticles by introducing chiral amino acids or peptides during the growth process, leading to the formation of helicoid morphologies.

Ostracod species (small, bivalved crustaceans) with high sexual dimorphism, and therefore high male investment, had markedly higher extinction rates than low-investment species, indicating that sexual selection can be a substantial risk factor for extinction.

In a ferret model, the microcephaly-associated gene Aspm regulates cortical expansion by controlling the transition of ventricular radial glial cells to more differentiated cell types.

Loss of the ribosome-rescue factor Pelo in a subset of mouse epidermal stem cells results in hyperproliferation and altered differentiation of these cells.

Non-lysine ubiquitination activity of the E3 ubiquitin ligase MYCBP2 is identified by activity-based profiling; biochemical and structural analysis of MYCBP2 suggests the basis for its mechanism and specificity.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the evolutionarily conserved core of a fungal INO80 complex bound to the nucleosomal substrate reveal the mechanism underlying nucleosome sliding and histone editing used by this ATP-dependent chromatin remodeller.

Cryo-electron microscopy structure of the human INO80 chromatin remodeller in complex with a bound nucleosome reveals that its motor domains are located at the DNA wrap around the histone core.