Volume 577 Issue 7789, 9 January 2020

Protect time for deep thinking — it is crucial for productivity in a world of constant interaction, urges Heidi Rehm.

The explosive outburst in what is now Peru was much bigger than scientists had realized.

A small, fully automated assembly line can produce 4,800 tablets an hour and could make drugs more widely available.

Endangered primate cannot leap between isolated clumps of rainforest but can easily navigate artificial walkways.

A power imbalance can undercut the advantages that women might reap from access to electricity.

Archaeologists link a site in southern Mexico to a royal centre long known from Mayan inscriptions.

Vaccine drives growth of T cells engineered to attack cancer cells, according to experiments in mice.

Even light drinking could contribute to atrial fibrillation, a fluttery heartbeat with potentially grave consequences.

The latest science news, in brief.

Last year’s fire at Paris’s beloved cathedral shocked the world. Now, researchers are making use of the unprecedented opportunity to study its innards.

Chinese court sends strong signal by punishing He Jiankui and two colleagues.

As the first clinical-trial results trickle in, researchers look ahead to more sophisticated medical applications for genome editing.

Wanda Diaz Merced is a blind astronomer who says that converting astronomical data into sound could bring discoveries that conventional techniques miss.

From a painful pinch to a soft caress, scientists are zooming in on the pressure-sensitive proteins that allow cells to detect tension and pressure.

A sumptuous book explores how the insect finds its way. By William A. Foster

The long-awaited novel from science-fiction giant William Gibson forces us to think about what future we wish for. By Liesbeth Venema

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

A tool that focuses on papers — not researcher behaviour — can help readers, editors and institutions assess which publications to trust.

Working alongside physicists made me a better science communicator, says Ken Kosik, and helped me to clarify knowledge gaps in my own field.

The fastest way to become fluent in the language of a new scientific discipline is to embed yourself inside it and use it regularly, says Sarah Bohndiek.

Martyn Poliakoff’s toys, puzzles and periodic-table-themed curios help him to lighten up and boost his creative thinking.

Semiconductors known as halide perovskites have remarkable optoelectronic properties, but their structural instability limits practical applications. A solution has been found that involves squeezing the compounds’ crystal lattices.

A combination of laboratory experiments and mathematical and statistical analysis provides an affirmative answer to a decades-old question — can a predator and its prey coexist indefinitely?

The slipperiness of ice is poorly understood at a microscopic level. Experiments that probe how the surface of ice melts and flows in response to wear help to explain the exceptionally low friction that underpins winter sports.

The brain fluctuates between different internal states, each of which drives particular behaviours. Brain-wide imaging reveals the internal states that help zebrafish larvae to choose between exploring and hunting.

Astronomical signals called fast radio bursts remain enigmatic, but a key discovery has now been made. A second repeating fast radio burst has been traced to its host galaxy, and its home bears little resemblance to that of the first.

This Review describes progress in the study of human genetics, in which rapid advances in technology, foundational genomic resources and analytical tools have contributed to the understanding of the mechanisms responsible for many rare and common diseases and to preventative and therapeutic strategies for many of these conditions.

Only one repeating fast radio burst has been localized, to an irregular dwarf galaxy; now another is found to come from a star-forming region of a nearby spiral galaxy.

Microwave-mediated coupling of electron spins separated by more than 4 mm is demonstrated, suggesting the possibility of using photons at microwave frequencies to create long-range two-qubit gates between distant spins.

The synthesis of surprisingly stable, free-standing single layers of amorphous carbon and their analysis by atomic-resolution imaging could settle a debate about their atomic arrangement and offer unusual electronics applications.

A growth process in which protons decouple graphene from the underlying substrate greatly reduces the number of wrinkles that usually degrade large graphene films grown by chemical vapour deposition.

A method of deposition of mixed-cation hybrid perovskite films as lattice-mismatched substrates for an α-FAPbI₃ film is described, giving strains of up to 2.4 per cent while also stabilizing the metastable α-FAPbI₃ phase for several hundred days.

A random heteropolymer based on four monomers can facilitate proton transport across lipid bilayers almost as rapidly as natural ion channels and with high selectivity over other ions.

A reconstruction of permafrost dynamics using speleothems from a Siberian cave indicates that Siberian permafrost is robust to warming when Arctic sea ice is present, but vulnerable when it is absent.

The potential for infinite persistence of planktonic predator and prey cycles is experimentally demonstrated and these cycles show resilience in the presence of stochastic events.

High-resolution subnational mapping of child growth failure indicators for 105 low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017 shows that, despite considerable progress, substantial geographical inequalities still exist in some countries.

Analyses of the proportions of individuals who have completed key levels of schooling across all low- and middle-income countries from 2000 to 2017 reveal inequalities across countries as well as within populations.

During foraging for live prey, zebrafish larvae alternate between persistent exploitation and exploration behavioural states that correlate with distinct patterns of neuronal activation.

The jumbo phage ΦKZ constructs a proteinaceous nucleus-like compartment around its genome that protects phage DNA from degradation by DNA-targeting immune effectors of the host, including CRISPR–Cas and restriction enzymes.

IL-17a induced by immune activation affects cortical neural activity and promotes social interaction in a mouse model of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Whole-exome sequencing of colon organoids derived from patients with ulcerative colitis identifies somatic mutations in components of the IL-17 signalling pathway, which may confer a growth advantage to cells under inflammatory conditions.

In patients with ulcerative colitis, chronic inflammation can lead to remodelling of the colorectal epithelium through positive selection of clones with mutations in genes related to IL-17 signalling, which, however, might be negatively selected during colitis-associated carcinogenesis.

The MYST acetyltransferase HBO1 is a critical regulator in maintaining leukaemia stem cells, and a small-molecule inhibitor of HBO1 is developed that shows efficacy against a range of acute myeloid leukaemia cells.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the TniQ–Cascade complex encoded by the Vibrio cholerae Tn6677 transposon reveal the mechanistic basis of the functional association of CRISPR- and transposon-associated machineries.

A cryo-electron microscopy reconstruction shows the ring-shaped structure of the polymerase and capping domains of the L protein bound to a tetramer of phosphoprotein P of the human metapneumovirus.