Volume 580 Issue 7805, 30 April 2020

A massive assessment of education shows that only 61% of children worldwide will complete secondary education.

Africa is boosting its capacity to respond to COVID-19, but lack of solidarity will cost lives, warns Africa CDC head John Nkengasong.

The natural cavern might have inspired the layout of Teotihuacan, one of the biggest cities in the ancient world.

Airway inflammation improves in mice dosed with a protein from an intestinal parasite.

The supermassive black hole at the core of the Milky Way adds to support for general relativity.

If allowed to soar unchecked, greenhouse-gas emissions will interfere with people’s ability to think.

The latest science news, in brief.

Touted as society’s way out of widespread lockdowns, scientists say the true potential of these rapidly developed tests is still unknown.

With politicians touting the potential benefits of malaria drugs to fight COVID-19, some people are turning away from clinical trials of other therapies.

The American Physical Society held its massive April Meeting online because of coronavirus — and registrations soared.

Anders Tegnell talks to Nature about the nation’s ‘trust-based’ approach to tackling the pandemic.

Eight ways in which scientists hope to provide immunity to SARS-CoV-2 .

Researchers warn production constraints and hoarding could limit SARS-CoV-2 vaccine supplies.

As COVID-19 exacerbates inequalities, Thomas Piketty’s analysis reads as timely, but inadequate. By Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven.

Spectacular alchemical scrolls record ideas of flux in times of massive upheaval — medical, social, economic and political. By Jennifer Rampling.

Astronomer and co-discoverer of evidence that elements are made in stars.

Palaeontologist who described how vertebrates moved from water to land.

Countries must join forces to avert a global food crisis from COVID-19.

In the face of COVID-19 restrictions on daily life, scientist-parents describe their efforts to balance family and work duties.

Jukka Pätynen aims to ‘transport’ listeners through his room and wall designs.

Tools have been developed to project inequalities in education around the world to 2030. They reveal that overall inequality will decline, but that all world regions will fall short of achieving universal secondary education.

The addition of a methyl group to a drug molecule can greatly alter the drug’s pharmacological properties. A catalyst has been developed that enables this ‘magic methyl effect’ to be rapidly explored for drug discovery.

The mammalian gut must defend against a variety of infectious agents. Neurons, cells not usually thought of as first-responders during infection, are now found to aid the gut’s barrier function and stop bacteria from spreading elsewhere.

A study of cancer-associated mutations in normal endometrial glands of the uterus has now been performed using whole-genome sequencing. The analysis sheds light on the early changes that lead to invasive disease.

Absorption lines of iron in the dayside atmosphere of an ultrahot giant exoplanet disappear after travelling across the nightside, showing that the iron has condensed during its travel.

Interactions between light and an ensemble of strontium atoms in an optical cavity can serve as a testbed for studying dynamical phase transitions, which are currently not well understood.

Room-temperature electrical switching of a topological antiferromagnetic state in polycrystalline Mn₃Sn thin films is demonstrated using the same protocol as that used for conventional ferromagnetic metals.

An epitaxial growth strategy that improves the stability of two-dimensional halide perovskites by inhibiting ion diffusion in their heterostructures using rigid π-conjugated ligands is demonstrated, and shows near-atomically sharp interfaces.

A manganese-catalysed oxidative C(sp³)–H methylation method allows a methyl group to be selectively installed into medicinally important heterocycles, providing a way to improve pharmaceuticals and better understand the ‘magic methyl effect’.

Observed reversals in GNSS surface motions suggests greatly enhanced slab pull in the months preceding the great subduction earthquakes in Maule (Chile, 2010) and Tohoku-oki (Japan, 2011) of moment magnitudes 8.8 and 9.0.

Great progress toward the education-related SDG targets has been made; however, global estimates of within-country distributions of education reveal gender disparities and high levels of total inequality in many parts of the world.

Whole-genome sequencing of normal human endometrial glands shows that most are clonal cell populations and frequently carry cancer driver mutations that occur early in life, and that parity has a protective effect.

The sensing of DNA damage by the AIM2 inflammasome promotes the death of central nervous system cells and is required for normal brain development.

Mutations in genes involved in immune signalling and vesicle trafficking cause defects in the leaf microbiome of Arabidopsis thaliana that result in damage to leaf tissues, suggesting mechanisms by which terrestrial plants control the level and diversity of endophytic phyllosphere microbiota.

The authors report near-atomic resolution structures of the R-type bacteriocin from Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the pre-contraction and post-contraction states, and these structures provide insight into the mechanism of action of molecular syringes.

VirtualFlow, an open-source drug discovery platform, enables the efficient preparation and virtual screening of ultra-large ligand libraries to identify molecules that bind with high affinity to target proteins.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the DNA-binding domains of the pioneer transcription factor SOX2 and its close homologue SOX11 elucidate the role of these factors in initiating chromatin opening and nucleosome remodelling.