Volume 600 Issue 7890, 23 December 2021

To speed research, express conclusions as testable statements, and incorporate testing into training.

A stringed instrument more than 1,000 years old found in what is now Kazakhstan is nearly identical to one from the Sutton Hoo ‘ship burial’ in Britain.

When tested in monkeys, a lipid-rich molecule drove the concentration of an HIV-like virus below detectable levels.

Eruption from a star called EK Draconis was observed along with a gargantuan stellar explosion.

The gigantic flying reptile Quetzalcoatlus northropi, which lived in the age of the dinosaurs, could also walk and even run, with the help of ‘ski pole’ front limbs.

Arctic waters have notched a growing number of extreme events called marine heatwaves, raising fears for the region’s more heat-sensitive sea creatures.

Model further challenges the idea that pedestrians walking in step caused the oscillation of London’s Millennium Bridge.

Mother birds on the Galapagos Islands that hunker down in their nests are the best at warding off the bloodthirsty parasite.

The latest science news, in brief.

As cases spread and countries plan their response, researchers await crucial data on the severity of the disease caused by the coronavirus variant.

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has pledged to revise equity and diversity policies after a review highlighted racial inequality among students and staff.

Researchers are rapidly sequencing the genomes of virus samples worldwide, but shortcomings in the global surveillance system make the task a challenge.

The extraordinary vaccination of more than four billion people, and the lack of access for many others, were major forces this year — while Omicron’s arrival complicated things further.

A helicopter on Mars, human–monkey embryos, volcanic ash and more.

An Omicron investigator, a Mars explorer and an AI ethics pioneer are some of the people behind the year’s big research stories.

Nanotechnologist who built the first self-assembling DNA structures.

The impact on careers of a lingering pandemic and industrial unrest were among the challenges faced by working scientists in the past 12 months

A wave of stem-cell systems are enabling researchers to unpick what happens after an embryo implants in the uterus.

As part of his PhD research into the effects of farming and hunting on endangered bird populations in Spain, Xabier Cabodevilla tracked birds and collected faecal samples from roosting sites.

Standard quantum theory contains square roots of negative numbers. But how essential are these ‘imaginary’ numbers? A way of disproving analogous theories that omit them has been proposed — and confirmed experimentally.

Harnessing immune cells to target tumours is a growing trend. The results of a clinical trial combining such treatment with other standard therapies for gastric cancer have altered medical practice — and more changes are to come.

An optical device designed to control the properties of electron waves inside an electron microscope demonstrates that clever platforms for integrated photonics need not be powered by expensive laser systems.

Research has uncovered factors that underlie the weight gain associated with cessation of smoking. Here, scientists consider the implications of this finding from the perspectives of gut biology and of smoking.

The inclusion of nitrogen atoms stabilizes the zigzag edges of carbon-based nanoribbons, enabling the ribbons to be decoupled from a substrate and providing a probe for their unconventional magnetism.

Increasing the sample size of a survey is often thought to increase the accuracy of the results. However, an analysis of big surveys on the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines shows that larger sample sizes do not protect against bias.

Highlights from News & Views published this year.

Two very-high-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (at 2,132 Hz and 4,250 Hz) are detected within the initial hard spike of a magnetar giant flare originating from the galaxy NGC 253, and detailed temporal and spectral analyses are performed.

A Bell-like experiment that discriminates between real-number and complex-number multipartite quantum systems could disprove real quantum theory.

The reported network of connectivity between atomic ensembles is entirely programmable and independent of its geometrical arrangement, because of the interaction with an optical cavity.

Inelastic neutron scattering measurements show that superconductivity in UTe₂ is associated with a resonance near antiferromagnetic order that suggests an unexpected spin-singlet component to the electron pairing.

An electric-field-induced topological phase transition from a Mott insulator to a quantum anomalous Hall insulator in near-60-degree-twisted (or AB-stacked) MoTe₂/WSe₂ heterobilayers is reported.

Decoupling spin-polarized edge states using substitutional N-atom dopants along the edges of a zigzag graphene nanoribbon (ZGNR) reveals giant spin splitting of a N-dopant edge state, and supports the predicted emergent magnetic order in ZGNRs.

A silicon nitride microresonator is used for coherent phase modulation of a transmission electron microscope beam, with future applications in combining high-resolution microscopy with spectroscopy, holography and metrology.

An electrochemical process stimulates the progression toward the electrode of isolated or ‘dead’ lithium in a battery, recovering its electrical connection, and the effect is demonstrated by increased cycle life.

A study reports and characterizes a high-entropy electrocaloric polymer that switches under low fields, and discusses its potential suitability for use in caloric heat pumps.

Microbial methanogenesis converts up to 19% of the carbon dioxide injected into an oil field to methane, suggesting that microbial methanogenesis may be a globally important subsurface process.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis study of blood lipid levels in roughly 1.6 million individuals demonstrates the gain of power attained when diverse ancestries are included to improve fine-mapping and polygenic score generation, with gains in locus discovery related to sample size.

Genetic manipulation of skin peripheral sensory neurons in mice shows that cortical neuron responses to touch reflect subcortical mixing of signals from both rapidly adapting and slowly adapting low-threshold mechanoreceptors.

A mechanism of mechanosensation and transduction in the presynaptic boutons is identified, in which sensing of fine pressure leads to enhanced neurotransmitter release.

The neural crest of Xenopus laevis self-generates a stiffness gradient in the adjacent placodal tissue and follows this gradient by durotaxis.

An analysis of three surveys of COVID-19 vaccine behaviour shows that larger surveys overconfidently overestimated vaccine uptake, a demonstration of how larger sample sizes can paradoxically lead to less accurate estimates.

An observational study of more than 13,000 healthcare workers shows that a prime–boost vaccine regimen of AstraZeneca ChAdOx1-S-nCoV-19 with Pfizer BNT162b2 provides enhanced protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with two doses of BNT162b2.

A subset of inflammatory group 3 innate lymphoid cells, here termed iILC3s, infiltrate the central nervous system and promote neuroinflammation and disease progression in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis.

A study of mice exposed to cigarette smoke suggests that smoking-cessation-induced weight gain is associated with a dysbiotic state that is driven by smoking-related metabolites.

Hormonal FABP4 is discovered to be a pivotal regulator of an adipose–beta-cell endocrine axis that coordinates energy status and metabolic organ function, and targeting this axis improved metabolic outcomes.

Interim analysis of a phase III clinical trial of HER2-positive gastric adenocarinoma shows pembrolizumab plus trastuzumab and chemotherapy improves response rates compared with trastuzumab and chemotherapy alone.

Extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) congregates in clusters called ecDNA hubs that promote intermolecular interactions between gene-regulatory regions and thereby amplify the expression of oncogenes such as MYC in cancer cell lines.

Following global DNA demethylation, mouse gonadal primordial germ cells undergo remodelling of repressive chromatin modifications, resulting in a sex-specific signature that is required to safeguard the transcriptional program.

A conserved mechanism for the regulation of replisome disassembly in eukaryotes is shown using cryo-electron microscopy, revealing a role for DNA in the preservation of replisome integrity.

Centromeres are able to recruit the homologous recombination machinery during G1 via CENP-A and HJURP, thereby preserving centromeric integrity even in the absence of a sister chromatid.

β-Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide is used as a building block in secondary metabolite biosynthetic pathways for a novel class of natural products.

Crystal structures of the σ₂ receptor are determined and used to perform a docking screen of nearly 500 million molecules, identifying σ₂-selective ligands and providing insight into the role of σ₂ in neuropathic pain.