Contents
Vol 359, Issue 6378
Contents
This Week in Science
Editorial
Editors' Choice
Products & Materials
- New Products
A weekly roundup of information on newly offered instrumentation, apparatus, and laboratory materials of potential interest to researchers.
In Brief
In Depth
- Europe's first artists were Neandertals
Spanish cave paintings date to before modern humans arrived in region.
- Worms living in your veins? Seventeen volunteers said ‘OK’
A controversial study infects people with schistosomiasis to speed up drug and vaccine development.
- Bringing an Iranian oasis back from the dead
Water crisis and rising air pollution are stoking regional tensions.
- Biologist unveils China's first private research university
Venture aims to fill gap in higher education landscape.
- Ocean array alters view of Atlantic conveyor
First data from subpolar moorings show surprising current strengths east of Greenland.
- 'Extinct' Caribbeans have living descendants
Ancient DNA from Taino woman shows kinship to modern genomes.
Feature
- Just add science
Scientists hit the campaign trail in hopes of making Congress work better.
Working Life
Letters
Books et al.
- Earthquake or atomic bomb?
A seismologist reflects on his role in the contentious politics of nuclear weapon test bans
- Reason (and science) for hope
An optimistic treatise celebrates the enlightened thinking that has made us happier, healthier, and safer than ever
Policy Forum
Perspectives
- Keeping watch on the ocean
Monitoring of fisheries fleets provides crucial data for sustainable use of ocean resources
- Cancer detection: Seeking signals in blood
Combining gene mutations and protein biomarkers for earlier detection and localization
- Unnaturally aglow with a bright inner light
A bioluminescent system enables imaging single cells deep inside small animals
- Toward nitrogen-fixing plants
A concerted research effort could yield engineered plants that can directly fix nitrogen
- Boron compounds tackle dinitrogen
A borylene compound can match transition metals by activating the strong N2 bond
Association Affairs
- New AAAS president emphasizes science as public service
Margaret Hamburg's humanitarian impulses started early
Research Article
- BAK/BAX macropores facilitate mitochondrial herniation and mtDNA efflux during apoptosis
Mitochondrial DNA is released from mitochondria in apoptotic cells as a result of BAK/BAX-induced mitochondrial herniation.
Reports
- Soliton microcomb range measurement
Optical microresonators can be used for light detection and ranging as well as tracking fast-moving objects.
- Ultrafast optical ranging using microresonator soliton frequency combs
Optical microresonators can be used for light detection and ranging as well as tracking fast-moving objects.
- Infrared hyperbolic metasurface based on nanostructured van der Waals materials
Directional propagation of polaritons is observed in a patterned layer of hexagonal boron nitride.
- Nitrogen fixation and reduction at boron
A boron compound reduced by potassium can bind N2 in a motif reminiscent of transition metal complexes.
- Breakup of last glacial deep stratification in the South Pacific
The glacial southern South Pacific was strongly stratified at the end of the last glacial period.
- Tracking the global footprint of fisheries
More than half of the ocean is exposed to industrial fishing activities.
- Coral reefs will transition to net dissolving before end of century
Some coral reefs have begun to lose more calcium carbonate than they are producing.
- U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art
Data from three ancient sites suggest that Neandertals were making cave paintings in Europe more than 64 thousand years ago
- Molecular structure of human P-glycoprotein in the ATP-bound, outward-facing conformation
The structure of a key drug-efflux membrane protein reveals features that enable substrate translocation and release.
- Patient-derived organoids model treatment response of metastatic gastrointestinal cancers
Organoids can recapitulate patient responses in the clinic, with potential for drug screening and personalized medicine.
- Detection and localization of surgically resectable cancers with a multi-analyte blood test
A blood test that combines protein and DNA markers may allow earlier detection of eight common cancer types.
- Structural principles that enable oligomeric small heat-shock protein paralogs to evolve distinct functions
Small heat-shock proteins avoid dysfunctional coassembly by using mechanisms that cause minimal disruption to their conserved interfaces.
- Single-cell bioluminescence imaging of deep tissue in freely moving animals
A bioengineered light source allows in vivo imaging of individual cells.
- Structures of human PRC2 with its cofactors AEBP2 and JARID2
Structural analysis provides a framework to understand Polycomb repressive complex regulation by cofactors, histone tails, and RNA.
Technical Comments
About The Cover

COVER A painting in La Pasiega cave in Cantabria, Spain. Carbonate crusts on top of paintings were dated with the U-Th method to provide minimum ages for the underlying art. The scalariform (ladder shape) composed of vertical and horizontal red lines (center left) is at least 64,000 years old. This is one of three cave paintings in Spain shown to be of Neandertal origin. See pages 852 and 912 and a related paper in Science Advances (10.1126/sciadv.aar5255).
Photo: C. D. Standish, A. W. G. Pike, and D. L. Hoffmann