Volume 554 Issue 7691

Editorials

p.145

Artificial intelligence is driving the next wave of innovations in the semiconductor industry.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01683-1

p.145

Hundreds of academics and scientists are caught up in political crackdowns in the wake of petitions for peace.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01677-z

p.146

New categories of mathematics will be added to the 2020 update of the standard mathematical taxonomy.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01690-2

News

p.153

Some researchers say that statistical prediction of the ancestral blossom yielded an unlikely structure.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01539-8

p.154

Researchers sought to boost their children’s chances in university admissions.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01512-5

p.155

Governments are slowly advancing efforts to reduce climate and health impacts of soot.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01556-7

p.156

The trading bloc has withheld two-fifths of its expected grants.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01374-x

p.157

DNA analysis suggests the self-cloning species is a genetic hybrid that emerged in an aquarium in the 1990s.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01624-y

News Features

p.159

A generation of black scientists is gearing up to transform the research landscape.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01696-w

News & Views

p.172

An improved method for compressing wood substantially increases its strength and stiffness, opening up the possibility of applications in engineering for which natural wood is too weak.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01371-0

p.173

When abnormality in a gene is linked to cancer and a drug targets the encoded protein, how can the patients who will respond to the drug be identified if the gene is mutated in many different ways in many different cancers?

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01312-x

p.175

Many governments subsidize the production and consumption of fossil fuels. Contrary to expectation, a study finds that removing these subsidies would only modestly reduce global carbon dioxide emissions.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01495-3

p.176

Remote-sensing data for wild animals such as lions reveal that predators and prey optimize manoeuvrability rather than speed during the hunt.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01278-w

p.178

In 2017, gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation were detected from the merger of two stellar remnants called neutron stars. An observational analysis reveals how this radiation was released from the merger.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01570-9

p.179

An experimental technique allows packets of light called solitons to maintain their shape in all three dimensions as they travel through a material. Such wave packets could find applications in optical information processing.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01470-y

p.180

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick proposed that rarely formed isomers of DNA bases cause spontaneous mutations to occur during the copying of DNA. Sixty-five years later, it looks as though they were right.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-00418-6

Articles

p.183

Analysis and modelling of locomotor characteristics of two pursuit predator–prey pairs show that hunts at lower speeds enable prey to use their maximum manoeuvring capacity and favour prey survival.

doi: 10.1038/nature25479

p.189

In a basket trial design, the efficacy of the pan-HER kinase inhibitor neratinib is tested in patients with 21 different tumour types, and responses are determined by mutation and tissue type, and are restricted to HER2-mutant cancers.

doi: 10.1038/nature25475

p.195

A kinetic model is proposed to predict the probability of dG•dT misincorporation across different polymerases, and provides mechanisms for sequence-dependent misincorporation.

doi: 10.1038/nature25487

p.202

Cryo-electron microscopy and single-molecule studies reveal that the adaptors BICDR1 and HOOK3 recruit two dynein molecules to dynactin and thereby increase the force and speed of the dynein–dynactin microtubule motor.

doi: 10.1038/nature25462

Letters

p.207

The observed electromagnetic emission from GW170817 suggests that a ‘cocoon’ of mildly relativistic material was released as a jet transferred its energy to the neutron-rich dynamical ejecta from the merger.

doi: 10.1038/nature25452

p.211

Measurements and modelling of a large confined eruption on the Sun show that its evolution is controlled by a multilayer magnetic cage containing a twisted flux rope, which can sometimes be ejective.

doi: 10.1038/nature24671

p.216

Experimental evidence is presented for isomer depletion through nuclear excitation by electron capture in molybdenum-93 nuclei.

doi: 10.1038/nature25483

p.219

Many-body two- and three-string states are realized experimentally in the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg–Ising chain SrCo2V2O8 in strong longitudinal magnetic fields.

doi: 10.1038/nature25466

p.224

A process is described for the transformation of bulk wood into a low-cost, strong, tough, lightweight structural material, by the partial removal of lignin and hemicellulose followed by hot-pressing to densify the natural wood.

doi: 10.1038/nature25476

p.229

Contrary to the hopes of policymakers, fossil fuel subsidy removal would have only a small impact on global energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions and would not increase renewable energy use by 2030.

doi: 10.1038/nature25467

p.234

A dated phylogeny and spatial distribution data for Chinese angiosperms show that eastern China has tended to act as a refugium for older taxa whereas western China has acted as a centre for their evolutionary diversification.

doi: 10.1038/nature25485

p.239

Gene enhancer knockout phenotypes and analysis of enhancer activity patterns show that developmental genes are regulated by multiple redundant enhancers in mouse embryos.

doi: 10.1038/nature25461

p.244

The activity of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta before movement initiation affects the probability and vigour of future movements.

doi: 10.1038/nature25457

p.249

To facilitate clinical trials of disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer’s disease, which are expected to be most efficacious at the earliest and mildest stages of the disease, supportive biomarker information is necessary. The only validated methods for identifying amyloid-β deposition in the brain—the earliest pathological signature of Alzheimer’s disease—are amyloid-β positron-emission tomography (PET) imaging or measurement of amyloid-β in cerebrospinal fluid. Therefore, a minimally invasive, cost-effective blood-based biomarker is desirable. Despite much effort, to our knowledge, no study has validated the clinical utility of blood-based amyloid-β markers. Here we demonstrate the measurement of high-performance plasma amyloid-β biomarkers by immunoprecipitation coupled with mass spectrometry. The ability of amyloid-β precursor protein (APP)669–711/amyloid-β (Aβ)1–42 and Aβ1–40/Aβ1–42 ratios, and their composites, to predict individual brain amyloid-β-positive or -negative status was determined by amyloid-β-PET imaging and tested using two independent data sets: a discovery data set (Japan, n = 121) and a validation data set (Australia, n = 252 including 111 individuals diagnosed using 11C-labelled Pittsburgh compound-B (PIB)-PET and 141 using other ligands). Both data sets included cognitively normal individuals, individuals with mild cognitive impairment and individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. All test biomarkers showed high performance when predicting brain amyloid-β burden. In particular, the composite biomarker showed very high areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) in both data sets (discovery, 96.7%, n = 121 and validation, 94.1%, n = 111) with an accuracy approximately equal to 90% when using PIB-PET as a standard of truth. Furthermore, test biomarkers were correlated with amyloid-β-PET burden and levels of Aβ1–42 in cerebrospinal fluid. These results demonstrate the potential clinical utility of plasma biomarkers in predicting brain amyloid-β burden at an individual level. These plasma biomarkers also have cost–benefit and scalability advantages over current techniques, potentially enabling broader clinical access and efficient population screening.

doi: 10.1038/nature25456

p.255

Distinct populations of lymphocytes act sequentially during development to direct maturation of the mammalian gut microbiota.

doi: 10.1038/nature25437

p.260

Analysis at high temporal and spatial resolution shows that the number and dynamics of SNARE proteins available during exocytosis determines the size and stability of fusion pores.

doi: 10.1038/nature25481