Volume 595 Issue 7869, 29 July 2021

Archives, libraries, photo agencies and publishers need to do better to reflect science’s true past and present.

The wealthy world must rally or nations will collapse across Africa.

Humans first began cultivating cannabis, a source of both fibres and drugs, some 12,000 years ago.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos are the first parrots known to have complex culture centred on food-gathering.

The trailblazing collaboration that first imaged a black hole turns its sights on a nearby black-hole jet.

Just 5% of the world’s power plants account for almost three-quarters of carbon emissions from electricity generation.

Out-of-home dining accounts for some of the nation’s wasted food, but much more is lost during food storage and processing.

Tollund Man, who lived more than 2,000 years ago, ate well before he was hanged.

Snacks of faeces help the pocket-sized mammals survive the cold and wind atop a vast plateau that abuts the Himalayas.

The latest science news, in brief.

The investments are promising but won’t fix the primate shortage, experts say.

AlphaFold neural network produced a ‘totally transformative’ database of more than 350,000 structures from Homo sapiens and 20 model organisms.

Researchers say they have discovered unique and exciting DNA strands in the mud — others aren’t sure of their novelty.

Experts welcome the trading scheme, but question whether it is up to the task of helping China achieve its climate goals.

With vaccination campaigns under way in some countries while others weigh the options, Nature looks at the evidence for vaccinating younger people.

Studies find that overall risk of death or severe disease from COVID-19 is very low in kids.

Scientists are unpicking the life cycle of SARS-CoV-2 and how the virus uses tricks to evade detection.

Nobel prizewinner who revolutionized nuclear magnetic resonance.

To conserve global biodiversity, countries must forge equitable alliances that support sustainability in traditional pastoral lands, fisheries-management areas, Indigenous territories and more.

Researchers with children or carer roles have struggled more than others during the pandemic, amplifying existing inequalities, argue Edyta Swider-Cios and colleagues.

Computational chemist Mona Minkara simulates the molecular dynamics required for lung function and boosts access for visually impaired chemists.

In a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, interleukin-3 protein released by cells called astrocytes activates microglia, the immune cells of the brain. These then cluster around disease-associated protein aggregates and help to clear them.

Compounds called borylated azines have untapped potential for organic synthesis, but have faced problems associated with their preparation, stability and reactivity. A new class of these compounds provides a solution.

Activation of the CatSper membrane ion channel triggers enhanced sperm motility, and this protein complex is required for male fertility. Structural data now provide insights into the channel, and offer a few surprises, too.

An analysis of the Val d’Agri oil field in Italy provides insight into how processes associated with wastewater disposal trigger earthquakes — and how such effects can be reduced to maintain the economic viability of mature oil fields.

One of the key predictions of general relativity, the bending of light around massive, compact objects, is observed for a supermassive black hole in the galaxy I Zwicky 1.

Measurements of high-field magnetotransport in overdoped cuprates indicate that the strange-metal regime exists beyond the critical doping, and that it has both coherent and incoherent contributions.

Angle-dependent magnetoresistance measurements of a strange-metal phase of a hole-doped cuprate show a well defined Fermi surface and an isotropic linear-in-temperature scattering rate that saturates at the Planckian limit.

Spectroscopic measurements confirm that when water is adsorbed on drops of an alkali alloy at low pressure a gold-coloured metallic layer forms as electrons rapidly move from the drop into the water.

Selective borylation of azines—nitrogen-containing aromatic heterocycles used in the synthesis of many pharmaceuticals—is made possible by forming a radical from an aminoborane using a photocatalyst.

A multidisciplinary method for managing triggered seismicity is developed using detailed subsurface information to calibrate geomechanical and earthquake source physics models, and is applied to the Val d’Agri oil field in seismically active southern Italy.

Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex represents threat and defensive action initiation, and the dynamic interplay between those representations dictates the temporal evolution of avoidance response to threats.

In response to food cues, a hypothalamic circuit in the mouse brain transiently inhibits neurons expressing agouti-related peptide, and this promotes learning of cue-initiated food-seeking tasks.

Interleukin-3 signalling from astrocytes to microglia readies microglia to defend against Alzheimer’s disease.

Analysis of the spread of the 20E (EU1) variant of SARS-CoV-2 through Europe suggests that international travel and insufficient containment, rather than increased transmissibility, led to a resurgence of infections.

In many European countries, more than half of the SARS-CoV-2 lineages circulating in late summer 2020 resulted from new introductions, highlighting the threat of viral dissemination when restrictions are lifted.

An engineered IgM antibody administered intranasally in mice shows high prophylactic efficacy and therapeutic efficacy against SARS-CoV-2, and is also effective against multiple variants of concern that are resistant to IgG-based therapeutics.

Enzymes in the cytidine diphosphate–ethanolamine metabolic pathway, which promotes de novo synthesis of phosphatidylethanolamine, are shown to act as post-transcriptional mediators of the differentiation of T follicular helper (T_FH) cells, by regulating the chemokine receptor CXCR5.

EGFR inhibition and lenvatinib treatment of liver cancer cells in vitro and in in vivo mouse models has potent anti-proliferative effects, and lenvatinib plus gefitinib treatment of 12 patients with advanced liver cancer resulted in meaningful clinical responses.

Disruption of a promoter can release its partner enhancer to activate other promoters in the same contact domain, and this process, named ‘enhancer release and retargeting’, can often lead to gene alterations that cause disease.

Cryo-electron microscopy and single-molecule fluorescence methods are used to elucidate the mechanism of early translocation events on the bacterial ribosome.

A structure of the sperm-specific CatSper complex features a number of additional components; together, these components and the CatSper complex are termed the CatSpermasome.