This special issue of Nature examines one of the most misunderstood aspects of human life: adolescence. In two News Features, we explore the neuroscience of risk-taking and rebellion, and look at how the boundaries of adolescence are widening. In a Comment article, developmental psychologist Candice Odgers tackles the relationship between young people and digital technology. And a second Comment piece sees social scientists Jo Boyden and Robert Blum stress the importance of understanding the daily lives of adolescents in low- and middle-income countries. The Feinberg hypothesis, which posits that abnormal pruning of neural connections in adolescence leads to schizophrenia, is reappraised in a News & Views. And a Careers Feature looks at scientists who give teenagers jobs in the lab. Three reviews explore some paradoxes of adolescence. Paediatrician Ronald Dahl and his colleagues review the evidence for adolescence as a physical, cognitive and socio-emotional growth spurt. Epidemiologist George Patton and his colleagues explore how factors that harm adolescent health can affect the next generation. And anthropologists Carol Worthman and Kathy Trang analyse historical changes in the timing of puberty, and shifting cultural definitions of and influences on adolescence. These pieces are part of a collection on adolescence from nine journals in the Nature family and its sister publication, Scientific American. Cover image: Eric Nyquist

The cover shows the Amundsen Sea, offshore of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. As Tyler Jones and his colleagues reveal in this issue, this region experienced a large change in year-to-year climate variability some 16,000 years ago. The Last Glacial Maximum saw ice cover vast areas of the Northern Hemisphere and this significantly influenced the climate of the Southern Hemisphere. The brightness and high altitude of the ice sheets altered the atmospheric pathways linking the tropics to West Antarctica by moving the location of tropical convection. Using water isotope data from a West Antarctic ice core, Jones and his colleagues traced the effects of this influence. They find that the interannual and decadal climate variability at high southern latitudes was almost twice as high during the Last Glacial Maximum as during the past 11,700 years of the warmer Holocene epoch. Through this they reveal the intimate climate linkages between the high latitudes, and the key role of the tropics as a climate mediator between the hemispheres. Cover image: Bradley R. Markle

The cover shows a model of a solar eruption in progress. In this week's issue, Tahar Amari and his colleagues suggest that one phenomenon could control the nature and behaviour of all such eruptions. There are two types of eruption: eruptive, which result in coronal mass ejections, and confined, which do not. The exact origin of confined eruptions has been hotly debated between two alternatives: topological complexity in the magnetic structure above the Sun's surface, or an unstable twisted magnetic flux rope. Amari and his team show that the latter process is more likely. To study this, the researchers focused on an eruption that took place in October 2014, predicting its evolution using a two-stage model. Their work reveals a strong multilayer magnetic cage (orange) in which a twisted flux rope (blue) develops. The magnetic energy of the rope increases over the course of several hours before the eruption, but is still not enough to break all of the layers of the cage. However, the twist in the rope is enough to trigger an instability that results in partial destruction of the cage. The resistance of the cage to the assault from the rope determines the type and amount of energy released in the eruption. If the rope is stronger than the cage and can break free, the result is eruptive; if the cage is stronger than the rope, the eruption is confined. Understanding the conditions that lead to solar eruptions may help to predict the events that might affect satellites, communications and ground-based power generation. Cover image: Tahar Amari/Centre de Physique Théorique, CNRS-Ecole Polytechnique

In this issue, Elly Tanaka, Eugene Myers and their colleagues report the 32-billion-base genome of the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), a model organism for developmental, regeneration and evolutionary studies. The team overcame the challenges of sequencing and assembling this large and complex genome, which features many lengthy repetitive regions, by using long-read sequencing, optical mapping and a new computer algorithm known as MARVEL. The researchers estimate that the genome contains around 23,000 protein-coding genes and note that the gene Pax3, which is essential in many animals for development, is absent. Gene editing of the related gene, Pax7, showed that it steps into the breach for some functions. The assembled genome should offer fresh opportunities for the study of evolution, development and regeneration. Cover image: Avalon/Photoshot/Alamy