Contents
Vol 363, Issue 6434
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
- Natural history museums face their own past
Curators confront colonial-era exploitation in the acquisition of dinosaurs, other specimens.
- Wave of horse deaths on famed racetrack poses puzzle
Scientists suspect track surface at Santa Anita may be to blame, but tests have come up empty so far.
- Israeli lander demonstrates a cut-rate route to the moon
Other private missions spawned by Lunar XPrize competition are not far behind.
- Researchers probe jail before trial
Efforts to reform U.S. detention policies highlight a shortage of robust studies.
- University fights restrictive law on fetal tissue research
Indiana law upheld by federal court faces new appeal.
- Cancer immunotherapy may have a dark side
In some patients, checkpoint inhibitors seem to fuel tumor "hyperprogression."
Feature
- Taste for danger
A mystery for almost a century, tuft cells turn out to use chemical sensors to detect pathogens and sound the alarm.
- Saving fossil hill
An Australian farmer safeguards a time capsule of the world's first complex life.
Working Life
Letters
Books et al.
- AI for the M.D
Deep learning could give doctors of the future more time for the human aspects of health care
- Deconstructing the academic caste system
It's time to rethink universities' growing reliance on contingent faculty
Policy Forum
- Don't abandon evidence and process on air pollution policy
Who decides how to establish causality?
Perspectives
- A deadly amphibian disease goes global
Chytrid infection is linked to the decline of more than 500 amphibian species
- Neural representations across species
Nonspatial cognitive factors modulate the firing of spatially tuned neurons
- New plant breeding technologies for food security
Improved crops can contribute to a world without hunger, if properly managed
- A rights revolution for nature
Introduction of legal rights for nature could protect natural systems from destruction
- How to better control polymer chemistry
A catalytic method yields a strong, adhesive polymer with controlled stereochemistry
- Potassium shapes antitumor immunity
Can potassium provide a tool for better cancer immunotherapy?
- The construction of supramolecular systems
Self-assembly must be transformed into multistep synthesis to create complex structures
Association Affairs
- Societies take a stand against harassment with new initiative
Attendees propose actions to make science safer and more diverse
- AAAS connects human rights groups with science experts
On-call Scientists consults on projects around the world
Research Articles
- T cell stemness and dysfunction in tumors are triggered by a common mechanism
Potassium in the tumor microenvironment metabolically reprograms tumor-infiltrating immunological T cells.
- Designer membraneless organelles enable codon reassignment of selected mRNAs in eukaryotes
Orthogonal translation of specific proteins is enabled by a phase-separated synthetic organelle in eukaryotic cells.
- Bacteriophage trigger antiviral immunity and prevent clearance of bacterial infection
Bacteriophage enhance bacterial virulence by confusing the immune response.
- Packing of apolar side chains enables accurate design of highly stable membrane proteins
Precise packing of amino acid side chains plays an important role in membrane protein folding and stability.
- Cross-boundary human impacts compromise the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem
Human impacts at the edges of a protected area lead to pronounced changes in the ecological function at its core.
- Photocatalytic decarboxylative alkylations mediated by triphenylphosphine and sodium iodide
A cheap combination of sodium iodide and triphenylphosphine can act as an electron-transfer catalyst under visible light.
Review
Reports
- Chirally coupled nanomagnets
Magnetic regions engineered in Pt/Co/AlOx trilayers interact laterally creating 2D magnetic patterns.
- Catalyst-controlled stereoselective cationic polymerization of vinyl ethers
A chiral phosphoric acid biases polymerization of vinyl ethers so the side chains all face the same way.
- The entorhinal cognitive map is attracted to goals
Goal learning in rats leads to a local distortion of grid cell rate maps, suggesting a complex code beyond simply encoding space.
- Remembered reward locations restructure entorhinal spatial maps
Different navigational strategies drive the emergence of discrete entorhinal maps in foraging rats.
- Human impact erodes chimpanzee behavioral diversity
Living close to humans alters chimpanzee behavior and culture.
- Optogenetic manipulation of stomatal kinetics improves carbon assimilation, water use, and growth
Increasing the speed of plant leaf stomatal responses using an engineered ion channel can increase productivity with fluctuating natural light.
- Amphibian fungal panzootic causes catastrophic and ongoing loss of biodiversity
A quantitative assessment reveals the effects of chytridiomycosis on amphibian communities worldwide.
- Slide-seq: A scalable technology for measuring genome-wide expression at high spatial resolution
An RNA sequencing technique is developed that can measure genome-wide gene expression in complex tissues at 10-micrometer resolution.
About The Cover

COVER T cells (specialized immune cells that can destroy tumors) may lose functionality during development, depicted here as balls rolling down sloped tracks. High levels of potassium (orange) preserve T cells in a "stem-like" state that maintains their ability to persist, divide, and fight tumors. The presence of tumor-specific T cells with stem cell–like properties helps to explain the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapies and guides the design of improved treatments. See pages 1395 and 1417.
Illustration: V. Altounian/Science