Volume 577 Issue 7788, 2 January 2020

A US–Chinese team shows how sustainability metrics can be improved.

Let 2020 be the year in which we value those who ensure that science is self-correcting.

The return is part of a groundbreaking approach that could inspire other institutions grappling with how to use historical samples ethically in research.

Government spending deal includes $25 million for studies of firearms safety.

The organizers of an international biology meeting asked psychologists to assess their attempts at retaining the advantages of traditional conferences.

National initiative aims to develop practical technologies that could mine databases and create ultra-secure communication networks.

A Mars invasion, a climate meeting and human–animal hybrids are set to shape the research agenda.

Joelle Pineau is leading an effort to encourage artificial-intelligence researchers to open up their code.

Paints, plastics and even wood can be engineered to stay cool in direct sunlight — but their role in displacing power-hungry air conditioners remains unclear.

The new uncanny valley, 50 years of Earth Day and the troubled future of elephants. Nicola Jones reports on what’s coming in 2020.

There is no room for squeamishness in the face of the world’s growing water shortage — three steps could vastly improve the image of reused water for drinking.

Experienced scientists reveal how to avoid application pitfalls to submit successful proposals.

Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute in London, likes to think amid the hustle and bustle of the institute’s bright and lively atrium.

A widely used vaccine against tuberculosis has now been shown to provide almost complete protection when injected intravenously. This is a striking improvement over vaccination through the typical intradermal route.

Knowing how dietary fibre nourishes gut microorganisms might suggest ways to boost health-promoting bacteria. A method developed to pinpoint bacteria that consume particular types of dietary fibre could advance such efforts.

The reliance of infrared spectroscopy on light transmission limits the sensitivity of many analytical applications. An approach that depends on the emission of infrared radiation from molecules promises to solve this problem.

Could artificial intelligence improve the accuracy of screening for breast cancer? A comparison of the diagnostic performance of expert physicians and computers suggests so, but the clinical implications are as yet uncertain.

Observations of a distant cluster of galaxies suggest that star formation began there only 370 million years after the Big Bang. The results provide key details about where and when the first stars and galaxies emerged in the Universe.

The redshift of a seemingly mature galaxy cluster has been confirmed spectroscopically to be about 2 and photometry indicates that star formation began in the galaxies of the cluster at a redshift of about 12.

A superposition of tunable photonic lattices is used to create optical moiré patterns and demonstrate the resulting localization of light waves through a mechanism based on flat-band physics.

The labyrinthine domain patterns formed in ultrathin films of ferroelectric oxides by subcritical quenching undergo an inverse phase transition to the less-symmetric parallel-stripe domain structure upon increasing temperature.

A vibrational spectroscopy technique that measures the electric field emitted from organic molecules following infrared illumination allows their molecular fingerprints to be separated from the excitation background, even in complex biological samples.

Real-space imaging of the edge structures and growth of a two-dimensional ice on a gold substrate is achieved using noncontact atomic-force microscopy with a carbon monoxide tip.

The pore space in the metal–organic framework Zr₆O₄(OH)₄(bpydc)₆ can be used as a scaffold to grow precisely defined atomically thick sheets of metal halide materials, taking advantage of multiple binding sites to direct complexation of the metal ions; these metal halide nanosheets fill the size gap between discrete molecular magnets and bulk magnetic materials, with potentially unusual magnetic properties arising from this size regime.

An analysis based on Landsat imagery shows that the extent of river ice has declined extensively over past decades and that this trend will continue under future global warming.

Systematic methods for evaluating progress towards the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are developed and tested using 119 indicators at China’s national and subnational levels during 2000–2015, showing improvement overall.

The genome of the tropical blue-petal water lily Nymphaea colorata and the transcriptomes from 19 other Nymphaeales species provide insights into the early evolution of angiosperms.

RITF1, a newly identified plant transcription factor, links signalling through the peptide hormone RGF1 to the balance of reactive oxygen species and thereby enhances the stability of another transcription factor, PLETHORA2, a master regulator of root stem cells.

An artificial intelligence (AI) system performs as well as or better than radiologists at detecting breast cancer from mammograms, and using a combination of AI and human inputs could help to improve screening efficiency.

The delivery route and dose of the BCG vaccine profoundly alters the protective outcome after Mycobacterium tuberculosis challenge in non-human primates.

Heterozygous mutateons in the caspase-8 cleavage site of RIPK1 cause a range of autoinflammatory symptoms in humans, and caspase-8 cleavage of RIPK1 in a mouse model limits TNF-induced cell death and inflammation.

A dominantly inherited human autoinflammatory disease caused by mutations in RIPK1 is identified, and RIPK1 mutations that prevent caspase-8 cleavage sensitize cells to apoptosis, necroptosis and inflammation.

Differences in MCT1 function among melanoma cells confer differences in oxidative stress resistance and metastatic potential.

The histone-acetylation-reader protein ENL is mutated in a paediatric kidney cancer in such a way that it clusters at target genes, increasing the recruitment of the transcriptional machinery, enhancing transcription and deregulating cell fate during development.

Chaperones interact with a canonical motif in α-synuclein, which can be prevented by phosphorylation of α-synuclein at Tyr39, whereas inhibition of this interaction leads to the localization of α-synuclein to the mitochondria and aggregate formation.