Volume 573 Issue 7774, 19 September 2019

A new type of computing could provide an energy-efficient way of dealing with big data and a chance to ease computing’s environmental impact.

Policymakers battling water shortages and land degradation need independent scientific advice.

Now maybe we’ll mobilize technology and policy at the necessary scale, says Paul Gilding.

The age of a giant star is one of its most difficult traits to measure, but a new method tells all.

Thanks to a catalyst, a crucial chemical process no longer requires an explosive ingredient.

A bacterial protein in disguise works to squelch an infected host’s immune system.

Craters on Saturn’s largest moon could have resulted from nitrogen blasting from below ground.

A protein called YAP might help to convey messages from a cell’s internal framework.

Rocks preserve prehistoric tracks that resemble those made by two modern sea-turtle species.

People who can manipulate objects with their feet illustrate the brain’s adaptability.

The week in science: 13–19 September 2019.

From Death Valley to Antarctica, the science of temperature records is hotting up as the planet warms.

Studying ecosystems affected by climate change takes an emotional toll on researchers.

Early-warning systems to identify areas at risk top countries’ wishlist.

From raging wildfires to melting ice in Greenland, the top of the world is screaming for help.

First major result from South Africa’s pioneering MeerKAT radiotelescope reveals remnants of energetic explosions at Galaxy’s centre.

A set of troubling charts shows how little progress nations have made toward limiting greenhouse-gas emissions.

Investments need to ramp up to keep global warming within safe thresholds.

An approach that tackles the underlying causes of coral-reef decline could be applied to other habitats, argue Tiffany H. Morrison, Terry P. Hughes and colleagues.

Lawyer Farhana Yamin explains what drove her to civil disobedience after three decades of environmental advocacy for the IPCC, the United Nations and more.

Michael E. Mann examines Naomi Klein’s collection on the proposed US policy aiming to curb climate change.

Ruth A. Morgan lauds a book chronicling the evolution of Earth-systems science through the stories of its luminaries.

Kathleen Jamie’s lens on human and planetary crossroads bends time and illuminates place, finds Barbara Kiser.

Vaclav Smil’s latest book investigates the cost of energy use on a planet with finite resources. Melanie Moses praises the result.

Pat Wongpan explains why polar research must incorporate diverse views, including those of Indigenous peoples and communities affected by climate change.

Researchers should learn to travel better to mitigate their climate impacts. Institutions can help by facilitating and rewarding sustainable travel behaviour, rather than fuelling the pressure to attend conferences, say Olivier Hamant, Timothy Saunders and Virgile Viasnoff.

Researchers and policymakers rely on computer simulations called integrated assessment models to determine the best strategies for tackling climate change. Here, scientists present opposing views on the suitability of these simulations.

An innovative microfluidic device has enabled the modelling of the events that occur in human embryos when they implant in the wall of the uterus. It could be used to help understand early pregnancy loss.

Circuits based on the stochastic evolution of nanoscale magnets have been used to split large numbers into prime-number factors — a problem that only quantum computers were previously expected to solve efficiently.

How Nature reported hominid remains in 1969 and sea-fishery investigations in 1919.

How cancer cells migrate to a secondary site and become established there is not fully understood. An analysis of mouse and human cancer cells could help settle the debate about the role of the protein E-cadherin in this process.

A galaxy has been seen producing strong, regular bursts of X-rays that recur on timescales of hours. The eruptions imply that the matter flowing onto the galaxy’s central black hole undergoes repeated restructuring.

Histone proteins pack DNA into a condensed form called chromatin. Detailed structures of the MLL family of histone-modifying protein complexes have been defined, shedding light on how they operate.

Fundamental value judgments about acceptable maximum levels of climate change and future reliance on controversial technologies can be made explicitly in climate scenarios, thereby addressing the intergenerational bias present in the scenario literature.

A US national experiment showed that a short, online, self-administered growth mindset intervention can increase adolescents’ grades and advanced course-taking, and identified the types of school that were poised to benefit the most.

In the brains of embryonic mice, some types of progenitor (apical progenitors) can revert to earlier molecular, electrophysiological and neurogenic states when transplanted into younger hosts, whereas others cannot, highlighting progenitor-type-specific differences in fate plasticity.

The cryo-electron microscopy structures of an early spliceosome complex in yeast reveal a unified mechanism for defining introns and exons and also for back-splicing to generate circular RNA.

Galaxy GSN 069 has unprecedented eruptions of X-ray light every nine hours, which indicate fast transitions between cold and warm states and may shed light on black hole accretion.

Quantum critical behaviour at the many-body localization transition in a disordered Bose–Hubbard system of bosonic rubidium atoms in an optical lattice is observed, connecting the macroscopic phenomenology of the transition to the system’s microscopic quantum correlations.

A probabilistic computer utilizing probabilistic bits, or p-bits, is implemented with stochastic nanomagnetic devices in a neural-network-inspired electrical circuit operating at room temperature and demonstrates integer factorization up to 945.

Organic photovoltaic cells containing an intrinsically stable organic absorber layer that are likely to be stable for many decades under illumination are demonstrated.

A route to the synthesis of hindered ethers is developed, in which electrochemical oxidation is used to liberate high-energy carbocations that are then captured by an alcohol.

Observations and regional climate models show that the increasing coverage of ice slabs on the Greenland ice sheet could lead to a global sea-level rise of up to 74 millimetres by 2100.

Scenarios that model a realistic phase-out of fossil fuels find no substantial near-term increase in the rate of warming, and suggest benefits for climate change mitigation and air quality at essentially all timescales.

Yilingia spiciformis, a bilaterian dating to the Ediacaran period, is described from body fossils associated with trails produced by the animal, shedding light on the origins of segmentation and motility in bilaterian animals.

Whole-genome sequencing of the strains of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene-knockout collection reveals the effects of the deletion of non-essential genes on genome stability.

Landmarks of early stages of human embryogenesis can be recapitulated in a highly controllable and scalable fashion by culturing human pluripotent stem cells in a microfluidic device.

The cellular degradative machinery can be asymmetrically inherited upon haematopoietic-stem-cell division, which predicts the future metabolic and translational activation of their daughter cells.

Adoptive transfer of CAR T cells against the fibroblast marker FAP reduces cardiac fibrosis and restores function after cardiac injury in mice, providing proof-of-principle for the development of immunotherapeutic treatments for cardiac disease.

A genome-wide CRISPR-interference screen is used to identify the reduced folate carrier SLC19A1 as the major transporter of cyclic dinucleotides in human cells, with potential roles in immunotherapeutic treatment of cancer, immune responses to pathogens and inflammatory diseases.

Although E-cadherin loss promotes tumour-cell invasion in mouse and human models of invasive ductal carcinoma, E-cadherin expression prevents oxidative-stress-mediated apoptosis during detachment and is essential for metastasis.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of mixed-lineage leukaemia methyltransferases 1 and 3 associated with unmodified or mono-ubiquitinated nucleosome reveal the structural basis for the activity specificity and regulation of these enzymes.