Contents
Vol 354, Issue 6308
Special Issue
GENES AND ENVIRONMENT
Reviews
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
- Battle over rare disease drug ensnares NIH
Firms and parents of kids with fatal condition clash over drug delivery and role of agency.
- Nobel honors discoveries in how cells eat themselves
Cellular sanitation helps keep diseases at bay.
- Trio wins Nobel for effects of topology on exotic matter
Work presaged research revolution in topological insulators.
- European XFEL to shine as brightest, fastest x-ray source
Free electron laser's rapid-fire pulses will probe free-floating molecules in their natural habitat.
- U.S. charges journal publisher with misleading authors
OMICS Group Inc. has drawn numerous complaints about allegedly shady editorial practices and meetings.
- First Polynesians launched from East Asia to settle Pacific
“Game-changing” study of ancient genomes traces Polynesian roots solely to East Asian farmers.
Feature
- Rescuing the guardian of the genome
New drugs combat cancer by propping up a mutated tumor-fighting protein.
Working Life
Letters
Books et al.
- The folly of fashionable thinking
A physicist casts a critical eye on popular ideas in cosmology, quantum mechanics, and string theory
- Quantifying culture
A humanist's ode to mathematics reveals how numbers underlie literature, art, and music
Policy Forum
- Social norms as solutions
Policies may influence large-scale behavioral tipping
Perspectives
- Growing a synthetic mollusk shell
Three-dimensional organic templates control calcium carbonate precipitation
- A pragmatic way forward?
Training of informal providers may improve the quality of primary health care in rural India
- Cold atoms twisting spin and momentum
Ultracold atoms can simulate complex quantum systems
- The MIFstep in parthanatos
Preventing cells from killing themselves may save tissues from damage during disease
- Human brains teach us a surprising lesson
Young interneurons continue migrating to the frontal lobe during the first few months of life
- Apes know what others believe
Understanding false beliefs is not unique to humans
- Roger Y. Tsien (1952–2016)
An exceptionally creative scientist shed light (of many colors) on biological mysteries
Research Articles
- A nuclease that mediates cell death induced by DNA damage and poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1
An endonuclease that functions in a disease-associated form of cell death is identified.
- Extensive migration of young neurons into the infant human frontal lobe
Neurons are still finding their places as inhibitory circuits are established in the developing postnatal brain.
- The impact of training informal health care providers in India: A randomized controlled trial
Training helped informal providers deliver better care for angina, diarrhea, and asthma.
- Realization of two-dimensional spin-orbit coupling for Bose-Einstein condensates
Rubidium atoms are used to demonstrate a spin-orbit coupling scheme that is tunable between the 1- and 2D limits.
Introduction to special issue
Reports
- Localized seismic deformation in the upper mantle revealed by dense seismic arrays
Dense seismic arrays detect localized earthquakes that may track rock deformation in the ductile region of Earth.
- Quantum dot–induced phase stabilization of α-CsPbI3 perovskite for high-efficiency photovoltaics
The cubic crystalline phase of CsPbI3, which has a more favorable band gap for solar cells, is stabilized as a nanomaterial.
- Ultrafast many-body interferometry of impurities coupled to a Fermi sea
Precise manipulation of interactions between impurity and majority atoms gives insight into polaron formation.
- MoS2 transistors with 1-nanometer gate lengths
Molybdenum disulfide transistors with carbon nanotube gate electrodes have channel lengths below the silicon scaling limit.
- An artificial metalloenzyme with the kinetics of native enzymes
Replacing the iron in cytochrome P450 with iridium expands the range of reactions the enzyme can catalyze.
- Synthetic nacre by predesigned matrix-directed mineralization
A consecutive assembly-and-mineralization process leads to synthetic nacre, which strongly resembles natural nacre.
- Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs
Apes recognize that others may have false beliefs.
- The methanogenic CO2 reducing-and-fixing enzyme is bifunctional and contains 46 [4Fe-4S] clusters
The structural details of a CO2 reducing enzyme reveal long-distance coupling of active sites and tungsten redox centers.
From the AAAS Office of Publishing and Member Services
About The Cover

COVER A Sherpa porter at the base of the Khumbu Ice Fall, Mount Everest. Some human populations exhibit greater tolerance for high elevation, due to genetic variants that likely mitigate the deleterious effects of low oxygen concentrations at altitude. Genetic and epigenetic changes shape our response to the environment and may play a role in disease. For more on the interactions between genes and the environment, see page 52
Photo: Max Lowe/National Geographic Creative