Editorials
Dialogue with the public requires a nuanced approach and a willingness to accept uncomfortable truths.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03388-x
The mathematics of Joseph Fourier, born 250 years ago this week, shows the value of intellectual boldness.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03389-w
Transdisciplinary programme explores the pervasive presence of symmetry violations.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03254-w
News
Reforms put in place after Ebola epidemic in West Africa have built Nigeria's capacity to diagnose diseases and track their spread.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03171-y
Blacklists that warn against questionable publishers are in demand.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-02921-2
Physicist and icon of science dies aged 76.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-02957-4
Excavations in Kenya suggest improvements in stone tools and other human changes are linked to variations in climate.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03244-y
Overhaul prompts fears of an erosion in funding for basic science.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03246-w
News Features
After 20 years of hope, promise and controversy, human embryonic stem cells are reshaping biological concepts and starting to move into the clinic.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03268-4
Commonly prescribed drugs called fluoroquinolones cause rare, disabling side effects. Researchers are struggling to work out why.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03267-5
News & Views
Brain tumours are often classified by visual assessment of tumour cells, yet such diagnoses can vary depending on the
observer. Machine-learning methods to spot molecular patterns could improve cancer diagnosis.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-02881-7
Applications for masers — the microwave equivalent of lasers — have been hindered by their extreme operating conditions and the inability to produce continuous emissions. A diamond maser overcomes these limitations.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03215-3
Low-complexity protein aggregates are a hallmark of neurodegeneration. High-resolution snapshots of the structure of one such aggregate offer an unprecedented view of how these proteins disrupt crucial cellular functions.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03000-2
The calcium-isotope composition of planetary bodies in the inner Solar System correlates with the masses of such objects. This finding could have implications for our understanding of how the Solar System formed.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03144-1
Two groups have sequenced RNA from thousands of single cells, making the deepest ventures yet into the origins of neuronal diversity in the neocortex of the developing mammalian brain.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-02539-4
Water-conducting tissues inside plant roots are surrounded by impermeable cells. This protective barrier is punctured by ‘passage cells’, which are thought to regulate nutrient uptake. How these cells form has now been revealed.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-02861-x
Articles
The embryonic emergence of interneuron subtypes in mice is revealed by integrated single-cell transcriptomic analysis along a developmental time course.
doi: 10.1038/nature25999
Analysis of embryonic lethal and sub-viable mouse knockout lines reveals that ablation of many genes affects placental development, and that the occurrence of placental defects is co-associated with abnormal brain, heart and vascular system development.
doi: 10.1038/nature26002
An online approach for the DNA methylation-based classification of central nervous system tumours across all entities and age groups has been developed to help to improve current diagnostic standards.
doi: 10.1038/nature26000
The structure of the yeast nuclear pore complex, determined with sub-nanometre precision using an integrative approach that combines a wide range of data, reveals details of its architecture, transport mechanism and evolutionary origins.
doi: 10.1038/nature26003
Letters
The massive relic galaxy NGC 1277 has few blue globular clusters, indicating that it has undergone little mass accretion and is a candidate ‘red nugget’ in the nearby Universe.
doi: 10.1038/nature25756
Image reconstruction is reformulated using a data-driven, supervised machine learning framework that allows a mapping between sensor and image domains to emerge from even noisy and undersampled data, improving accuracy and reducing image artefacts.
doi: 10.1038/nature25988
The maser—the microwave progenitor of the optical laser—has been confined to relative obscurity owing to its reliance on cryogenic refrigeration and high-vacuum systems. Despite this, it has found application in deep-space communications and radio astronomy owing to its unparalleled performance as a low-noise amplifier and oscillator. The recent demonstration of a room-temperature solidstate maser that utilizes polarized electron populations within the triplet states of photo-excited pentacene molecules in a p-terphenyl host1–3 paves the way for a new class of maser. However, p-terphenyl has poor thermal and mechanical properties, and the decay rates of the triplet sublevel of pentacene mean that only pulsed maser operation has been observed in this system. Alternative materials are therefore required to achieve continuous emission: inorganic materials that contain spin defects, such as diamond4–6 and silicon carbide7, have been proposed. Here we report a continuous-wave room-temperature maser oscillator using optically pumped nitrogen–vacancy defect centres in diamond. This demonstration highlights the potential of room-temperature solid-state masers for use in a new generation of microwave devices that could find application in medicine, security, sensing and quantum technologies.
doi: 10.1038/nature25970
Modifying the surfaces and grain boundaries of perovskites with passivating potassium halide layers can mitigate non-radiative losses and photoinduced ion migration, increasing luminescence yields and improving charge transport and interfaces with device electrodes.
doi: 10.1038/nature25989
A lithium–oxygen battery, comprising a lithium carbonate-based protected anode, a molybdenum disulfide cathode and an ionic liquid/dimethyl sulfoxide electrolyte, operates in a simulated air atmosphere with a long cycle life of up to 700 cycles.
doi: 10.1038/nature25984
The mass-independent calcium isotope composition of inner-Solar-System bodies is correlated with their masses and accretion ages, indicating a rapid growth for the precursors of Earth and the Moon during the protoplanetary disk’s lifetime.
doi: 10.1038/nature25990
Youngest Toba Tuff glass shards found together with evidence of human occupation at two archaeological sites from the southern coast of South Africa indicate that early modern humans thrived in this region despite the eruption of the Toba supervolcano about 74,000 years ago.
doi: 10.1038/nature25967
In situ carbon dioxide enrichment experiments show that ocean acidification poses a threat to coral reefs by reducing the saturation state of aragonite and the concentration of carbonate ions and that this impairs community calcification.
doi: 10.1038/nature25968
A multi-tissue gene expression resource representative of the genotypic and phenotypic diversity of modern inbred maize reveals the effect of rare alleles and evolutionary history on the regulation of gene expression.
doi: 10.1038/nature25966
Analysis of gene expression at single-cell resolution in the developing prefrontal cortex of the human embryo reveals a diversity of cell types, elucidates cell lineages and identifies signalling pathways that regulate development.
doi: 10.1038/nature25980
In an Arabidopsis model, repression of cytokinin in the root meristem produces a distinct population of xylem-pole endodermal cells, which resist suberization to become passage cells that enable transport across the otherwise-impermeable endodermis.
doi: 10.1038/nature25976
Phytotransferrin, a functional analogue of transferrin, has an obligate requirement for carbonate to bind iron, which suggests that acidification-driven declines in the concentration of seawater carbonate ions may negatively affect diatom iron acquisition.
doi: 10.1038/nature25982
An improved assay for chromatin accessibility at single-cell resolution in Drosophila melanogaster embryos enables identification of developmental-stage- and cell-lineage-specific patterns of chromatin-level transcriptional regulation.
doi: 10.1038/nature25981