Volume 567 Issue 7746, 7 March 2019

Nature welcomes a registry that supports experiments to improve refereeing.

Health authorities are overlooking risks to systems and society in their evaluations of new digital technologies, says Melanie Smallman.

Beloved fruit has a tangled family tree — but owes much of its fragrance and sweetness to just one ancestor.

Technique ties up an innocuous protein before it gathers into dangerous clumps.

The planet’s distant hydrogen veil billows much further than scientists suspected.

Glass that quickly becomes opaque could reduce the need for air conditioning in buildings and vehicles.

Chemical evidence suggests that the Phoenicians had spread to the Iberian Peninsula by the ninth century bc.

Channel design allows fluid droplets to self-propel in a controlled manner.

Catching up on sleep over the weekend doesn’t undo the negative metabolic effects of sleep deprivation.

The week in science: 1–7 March 2019.

The experiment is a test for a plan to extract rock from a buried mountain range.

One in two female respondents to a national poll has been sexually harassed at work.

University of California system and Dutch publisher fail to strike deal that would allow researchers to publish under open-access terms.

The particles bind to photoreceptors in the eyes and convert infrared wavelengths to visible light.

eLife’s prototype lets scientists modify the software underlying figures to validate, build on, or better understand the work.

As departure day approaches, chief of top UK lab says he fears science will drop off the government’s agenda.

Palaeontologists have been urged to share 3D scans of fossils online, but a Nature analysis finds that few researchers do so.

Jamie Morin sets out the elements required to track satellites and avoid crashes.

Ann Finkbeiner reviews a study weighing up whether Mileva Marić contributed to her husband’s epochal theories.

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

Ann Aerts lauds a taut account of a battle against an ancient disease.

Observer of fast reactions in the laboratory and in life.

Faced with mountains of image and audio data, researchers are turning to artificial intelligence to answer pressing ecological questions.

University careers advisory services can connect PhD students with employers and guide them to the right role.

Briana Konnick liked helping graduate students and postdocs to plan their careers more than she enjoyed her lab work.

A study of a cuckoo species that usually shows cooperative nesting behaviour, but sometimes cheats at parenthood by laying eggs in others’ nests, reveals the benefits that have shaped the evolution of this parasitic tactic.

How bat influenza viruses infect cells has been unclear. The discovery that they bind to a cell receptor that is present in many different species raises concerns about their potential risk to humans.

The delocalization of information in interacting quantum systems seems to play a key part in their evolution. A method has been developed that could enable the dynamics of this process to be directly probed in experiments.

A global biodiversity crash 251.9 million years ago has revealed how ecosystems respond to extreme perturbation. The finding that terrestrial ecosystems were less affected than marine ones is unexpected.

Four studies demonstrate the vast opportunities provided by stacking pairs of monolayer materials and changing the resulting optical properties by twisting one material with respect to the other.

How Nature reported a chalk ‘mammoth’ in 1919, and musical physics in 1969.

Faulty DNA replication can make genomes unstable. It now seems that, in mice, severe disruption of DNA replication triggers inflammation in the placenta, and female embryos are more sensitive to this than are male ones.

Islet non-β-cells from non-diabetic and diabetic human donors are modified via the transcription factors PDX1 and MAFA to produce and secrete insulin in response to glucose.

Profiling of single epithelial cells in healthy and inflamed colons identifies specialized cellular subpopulations, including a type of goblet cell that secretes the antibacterial protein WFDC2, which preserves the integrity of the epithelial barrier layer.

The X-ray structure of the hexameric complex of interferon-γ bound to its receptors is solved at 3.25 Å resolution, providing a basis for engineering variants of interferon-γ that enable decoupling of its immunomodulatory functions.

A quantum circuit in an ion-trap quantum computer provides a positive test for the scrambling features of a given unitary process.

The trapping of interlayer valley excitons in a moiré potential formed by a molybdenum diselenide/tungsten diselenide heterobilayer with twist angle control is reported.

Multiple interlayer exciton resonances in a MoSe₂/WSe₂ heterobilayer with a small twist angle are attributed to excitonic ground and excited states confined within the moiré potential.

Moiré superlattice exciton states are observed in WSe₂/WS₂ heterostructures with closely aligned layers.

Excitonic bands in MoSe₂/WS₂ heterostructures can hybridize, resulting in a resonant enhancement of moiré superlattice effects.

Pressure-driven transport of aqueous salts through ångström-scale channels created from two-dimensional materials shows a transistor-like effect in which applying a tiny bias voltage can increase transport by up to 20 times.

Wetlands exposed to rapid sea-level rise over the late Holocene contain more soil carbon than those that experienced a long period of sea-level stability.

Mixed-effects logistic regression modelling of a dataset of individual reproductive behaviours shows fitness pay-offs of cooperative versus mixed cooperative and parasitic reproductive strategies are approximately equal in female greater anis (Crotophaga major).

A transient circuit that links cholinergic neuromodulation and inhibition is responsible for the dendritic compartmentalization of evoked responses in the mouse visual cortex during the critical period of robust plasticity.

Genomic instability, caused by MCM mutations, results in embryonic lethality that disproportionally affects female mouse embryos and is rescued by testosterone or ibuprofen treatment, both of which ameliorate inflammatory effects.

The DR isotype of the human leukocyte antigen of the MHC class II—or its homologues in bats, pigs, mice and chickens—is an essential cell entry determinant for bat influenza A viruses.

The interphase centrosome protein AKNA is necessary and sufficient for the organization of centrosomal microtubules, mediates delamination in the formation of the subventricular zone and regulates exit from this zone.

The authors find that loss of squalene monooxygenase expression alters the lipid metabolism of cancer cells, which confers protection from ferroptotic cell death and thus promotes tumour growth.

Genetic engineering of yeast enables the production of cannabinoids and cannabinoid analogues from the simple sugar galactose, without the need to cultivate Cannabis.

X-ray crystallography, electron microscopy and functional experiments reveal the details of how KCTD proteins interact with GABA_B receptors and desensitize G-protein-coupled inwardly rectifying potassium channels.