Volume 580 Issue 7801, 2 April 2020

This year’s event was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Next year, we need to hear about more scientists, clinicians and engineers.

Unheeded lessons from simulations of health and other disasters could still assist recovery.

Supple, unobtrusive sensors can provide valuable data on a newborn’s health.

The sound of ice hitting water can help scientists to monitor a dwindling ice mass.

The gene-editing system could target a broad swathe of the genome with the help of versatile enzymes.

Marine creatures send signals to each other by combining bioluminescence and skin pigments.

A study of nearly 5,000 people found a link between higher scores on the step counter and lower death risk over a given time period.

Simple snares aimed at catching African game for the table take a huge toll on carnivores, too.

Waves that travel through an egg’s outer membrane echo those seen in physical systems at much smaller — and much larger — scales.

The latest science news, in brief.

Studies grind to a halt as fears of health-care shortages and risk of exposure put the brakes on clinical research.

New York City researchers hope antibody-rich plasma can keep people out of intensive care.

Radical proposal to conduct ‘human challenge’ studies could dramatically speed up vaccine research.

Close confines help the virus to spread, but closed environments are also an ideal place to study how the new coronavirus behaves.

Cold temperatures and a strong polar vortex allowed chemicals to gnaw away at the protective ozone layer in the north.

As universities scale back operations and scientists observe stay-at-home orders, many are struggling to protect their research and the animals that power it.

Several cancer and HIV drugs have come from marine organisms, but scientists worry that a new agreement to save species could hinder some research.

A history of the metaphors behind brain research faces a dark past and disquieting future. By Stephen Casper.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the week’s best science picks.

Exploitation and degradation of the mysterious layer between the sunlit ocean surface and the abyss jeopardize fish stocks and the climate.

Productivity coaches, boot camps and online meet-ups teach researchers to avoid distractions and negative thoughts to get their writing projects done.

A growing suite of tools allows teams of researchers to work collectively to edit scientific documents.

Maria Josefa Verdugo ships into the bitter cold of far-northern waters to measure ice-core properties as part of a year-round climate project.

An electrically neutral radical has been found to be a potent chemical reducing agent when excited by light. Remarkably, it is produced from a positively charged precursor that has long been used as a strong excited-state oxidizing agent.

Visualization of the rhythmic oscillations of the mouse and human segmentation clocks, which are crucial to spine development, is now possible thanks to the development of sophisticated cell-culture systems.

Satellite tracking of marine predators in the Southern Ocean has revealed key ecological areas under disproportionate pressure from human activities. These results show the value of tracking data for informing conservation efforts.

Cell death by a process called apoptosis inhibits inflammation in surrounding tissue. The finding that dying apoptotic cells release a tailored cocktail of metabolite molecules reveals a way in which they influence their living neighbours.

The principle of mirror symmetry, which states that nuclear structure remains the same when protons are swapped for neutrons and vice versa, has been found to be broken in the lowest-energy forms of a mirror pair of nuclei.

Analyses of the recovery of marine populations, habitats and ecosystems following past conservation interventions indicate that substantial recovery of the abundance, structure and function of marine life could be achieved by 2050 if major pressures, including climate change, are mitigated.

Observations of the decay of ⁷³Sr, when compared to its mirror nucleus ⁷³Br, indicate that the spin assignment of their ground states differ, demonstrating mirror-symmetry violation.

Coupling the spins of many nitrogen–vacancy centres in a trapped diamond to its orientation produces a spin-dependent torque and spin-cooling of the motion of the diamond.

A solid-state spin memory is used to demonstrate quantum repeater functionality, which has the potential to overcome photon losses involved in long-distance transmission of quantum information.

Using a spectroscopic technique based on scanning tunnelling microscopy, the superconducting energy gap modulations in a copper oxide are visualized, demonstrating that a pair-density-wave state coexists with superconductivity.

All possible chemical transformations between amine and carboxylic acid groups are mapped using an automated string-based combinatorics method, showing that the properties and functions of the products vary considerably over all plausible reactions.

Photoexcited acridine radical catalysts are found to have redox potentials more reducing than lithium, which is attributed to the population of higher-energy doublet excited states via a twisted intramolecular charge-transfer species.

Multi-proxy core data and model simulations support the presence of temperate rainforests near the South Pole during mid-Cretaceous warmth, indicating very high CO₂ levels and the absence of Antarctic ice.

Tracking data from 17 marine predator species in the Southern Ocean are used to identify Areas of Ecological Significance, the protection of which could help to mitigate increasing pressures on Southern Ocean ecosystems.

Genomic, transcriptomic and DNA methylation data from tissue samples from 208 Chinese patients with prostate cancer define the landscape of alterations in this population, and comparison with data from Western cohorts suggests that the disease may stratify into different molecular subtypes.

A microscopy system that enables simultaneous recording from hundreds of neurons in the mouse visual cortex reveals that the brain enhances its coding capacity by representing visual inputs in dimensions perpendicular to correlated noise.

CEP83-mediated anchoring of the centrosome to the apical membrane in radial glial progenitor cells regulates their mechanical properties and thereby influences the size and configuration of the mammalian cortex.

Human presomitic mesoderm cells derived in vitro demonstrate oscillations of the segmentation clock, thus providing a window into an otherwise inaccessible stage of human development.

Monitoring cells of the mouse presomitic mesoderm using the Achilles reporter fused to HES7 sheds light on the mechanisms that underpin synchronous oscillations in the expression of clock genes between neighbouring cells.

A system involving in vitro induction of presomitic mesoderm recapitulates oscillatory expression of core segmentation clock genes and travelling-wave-like gene expression, suggesting that this system can be used to study the human segmentation clock and provide insights into diseases associated with human axial skeletogenesis.

Apoptotic cells communicate with neighbouring cells by the regulated release of specific metabolites, and a cocktail of select apoptotic metabolites reduces disease severity in mouse models of inflammatory arthritis and lung transplant rejection.

CRISPR screens in a 3D spheroid cancer model system more accurately recapitulate cancer phenotypes than existing 2D models and were used to identify carboxypeptidase D, acting via the IGF1R, as a 3D-specific driver of cancer growth.

Single-cell allelic HiC analysis, combined with allelic gene expression and chromatin states, reveals parent-of-origin-specific dynamics of chromosome organization and gene expression during mouse preimplantation development.

Long noncoding RNAs and certain unstable transcripts tend to localize to chromatin, in a process that is shown here to depend on an RNA motif that recognizes the small nuclear ribonuclear protein U1, and to rely on transcription.