Volume 574 Issue 7778, 17 October 2019

The world’s food system costs trillions in poor health and ecological damage. On World Food Day, governments and researchers must commit to more-regular audits of these unseen expenses.

The humble census risks becoming a casualty of the rush to embrace big data. But it has the potential to save lives.

To save young lives, governments must support families, respect women and tackle inequality, says Michelle Bachelet.

Carefully chosen questions prompt non-Muslims to assign less ‘collective blame’ to Muslims for violent attacks.

Shallow-water residents have nearly smooth skin, but their deep-living brethren are covered in lumps and bumps.

The burden of the ‘urban heat-island’ effect falls most heavily on economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Viral genomes suggest that rabies strains carried by vampire bats travel from South America to North America, and vice versa.

An analysis of sound waves from Mount Etna showcases a method that could aid volcano monitoring worldwide.

The neural cells called astrocytes feed the brain’s own fat to metastatic cancer cells.

Stable cadmium nuclei can change shape even when their energies are low.

The week in science: 11–17 October 2019.

Confusion reigns as researchers sort through the complex US e-cigarette market.

Genealogies gleaned from ancient human DNA are set to transform archaeology.

The deadly virus is one of five that have been brought to a secure laboratory.

Researchers rapidly corrected finding through discussions on social media and preprints.

John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino receive the prize for their development of lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.

To fight cancer and ageing, biologists are looking at how cells evict, kill or cannibalize less-fit rivals.

Scientists long assumed that new genes appear when evolution tinkers with old ones. It turns out that natural selection is much more creative.

How did data get so big? Through political, social and economic interests, shows Sabina Leonelli, in the fourth essay on how the past 150 years have shaped the science system, marking Nature’s anniversary.

Diane Coyle compares three tomes by big thinkers on prosperity, justice and environmental health.

Laura Spinney weighs up Frank Snowden’s sweeping history charting the impact of infectious diseases on society.

Mary Craig reviews the highlights of this season’s releases.

David E. Nye examines two volumes on the complex history of lighting technologies.

Two timely, urgent books offer different takes on the state of the seas. Boris Worm lauds both.

Chris Lintott’s chronicle of the booming citizen-science project Zooniverse is inspirational, finds Michael West.

Angela N. H. Creager is inspired by the life of the Nobel laureate who discovered deuterium.

Genetically encoded voltage indicators change colour in real time when neurons transmit electrical information, offering unprecedented insight into neural activity.

The Pulitzer prizewinner shares his advice for pleasing readers, editors and yourself.

Sam Illingworth explains how poetry can help to communicate and celebrate your science.

The discovery of a signalling axis that connects nicotine responses in the brain with glucose metabolism by the pancreas sheds light on why cigarette smoking increases the risk of diabetes.

The body’s circadian clock ensures the rhythmic expression of some genes across the day. The catalogue of genes under circadian control changes in an aggressive brain cancer — a discovery that might open up a new avenue for treatment.

Signals emanating from the nervous system are potent modulators of longevity. It now seems that overall neural excitation is also a key determinant of lifespan.

The rapid return of mosquitoes to African semi-desert regions when the dry season ends was an unsolved mystery. A surprising solution to the puzzle is the long-range migration of mosquitoes on high-altitude winds.

Ultracold gases of dipolar atoms can exhibit fluid and crystalline oscillations at the same time, illuminating the ways in which different kinds of sound propagate in the quantum state of matter known as a supersolid.

The processes that control the movement of carbon from microfossils on the seafloor to erupting volcanoes and deep diamonds, in a cycle driven by plate tectonics, are reviewed.

A high-resolution, global atlas of mortality of children under five years of age between 2000 and 2017 highlights subnational geographical inequalities in the distribution, rates and absolute counts of child deaths by age.

Studies of humans, mice and nematodes reveal a conserved role of neural activity and the transcription factor REST in extended longevity.

Single-cell transcriptomic profiling of fetal liver, skin, kidney and yolk sac reveals the differentiation trajectories of human haematopoietic stem cells and multipotent progenitors, which are validated to produce an integrated map of fetal liver haematopoiesis.

The transcription factor TCF7L2 mediates two important responses to nicotine in the medial habenula region of the rodent brain: aversion to nicotine, and regulation of blood sugar levels through a polysynaptic habenula–pancreas circuit.

Three-dimensional gas velocities in the gapped disk around the young star HD 163296 show meridional flows from the surface of the disk towards its midplane at gap locations.

Two distinct compressional oscillation modes are characterized in a dipolar Bose–Einstein condensate; this demonstrates the breaking of two symmetries owing to the coexisting superfluid and crystal properties of a supersolid.

Observation of the collective mode responding to the superfluid stiffness—the low-energy Goldstone mode—provides direct evidence for phase rigidity, which is a key signature of supersolidity in an ultracold quantum gas.

A six-coordinate transition-metal complex with a hexagonal planar geometry is isolated and characterized.

The crosslinking of oligomeric precursors, controlled by a capping agent, enables the production of moulded crystalline calcium carbonate with continuous structures.

Widespread formation of new particles from condensable vapours observed in the tropical upper troposphere is an important source of cloud condensation nuclei in the lower troposphere, affecting cloud properties.

Aerial sampling in the Sahel of Mali reveals large numbers of windborne malaria mosquitoes that had recently fed on blood and could cover hundreds of kilometres in a single night.

CRISPR–Cas9 engineering of the Drosophila Atpα gene (encoding the α-subunit of the sodium pump) is used to study the ability of mutations that evolved independently in several insect orders to confer resistance to keystone plant toxins.

A genetically encoded fluorescent voltage indicator, SomArchon, is used to image changes in membrane voltage from many neurons simultaneously in multiple brain regions of awake, behaving mice.

Species comparisons using single-cell transcriptomics and accessible chromatin profiling in stem cell-derived cerebral organoids are used to map dynamic gene-regulatory changes that are unique to humans.

The histidine–aspartate kinase Sln1 acts as a molecular sensor of turgor in appressoria of the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae, enabling penetration of the host leaf cuticle and plant infection.

Caspase-8 suppresses apoptosis and necroptosis in embryonic mice by cleaving RIPK1.

A range of SF3B1 mutations promote tumorigenesis through the repression of BRD9, a core component of the non-canonical BAF complex, and correcting BRD9 mis-splicing in these SF3B1-mutant cells suppresses tumour growth.