Volume 586 Issue 7830, 22 October 2020

Plan now for decisions on which vaccines should go to whom, when and how often.

Future climate change could slow the eruptions of the legendary volcanic spring.

Scientists find that strong winds constrain tropical forest height, but island’s gentle breezes allow trees to stretch tall.

Laser light helps to build a miniature ‘gear’ system and provides energy to turn it.

The insects savour blood meals with the help of specialized nerve cells in their biting apparatus.

The latest science news, in brief.

Unchecked ivermectin use in the region is making it difficult to test the anti-parasite drug’s effectiveness against the coronavirus.

Our special report examines the role of renewables, nuclear power and carbon capture in reaching this ambitious goal.

OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully executes a nail-biting manoeuvre to scoop up rock samples from the asteroid Bennu and send them back to Earth.

A tight-knit team of scientists worked feverishly to identify the deadly virus. Only one of them was awarded the Nobel.

From Germany to India, researchers are grappling with how to run labs and lessons under extraordinary restrictions.

Researchers fear that vaccines might not be as effective in people who are obese, a population already highly vulnerable to COVID-19.

Case studies show that efforts to address equity in science are doomed if they don’t learn from past mistakes.

World wars, cold wars, cyberwars — marking a century of state surveillance at GCHQ.

Pioneer of biodiversity accounting who overhauled the Red List of threatened species.

Banning fishing in warming coastal waters and limiting tourism and construction on land will help to protect marine mammals and seabirds.

Face masks are vital to containing the spread of COVID, but lecturers and universities must find ways to be inclusive, say Olivier Pourret and Elodie Saillet.

A childhood diagnosis of type 1 diabetes taught Olivia Favor about the importance of meticulous record-keeping and other skills that proved useful in the lab.

Artificial intelligence and improved microscopy make it feasible to map the nervous system at ever-higher resolution.

Molecular immunologist Audrey Teh is passionate about converting plants into pharmaceutical producers.

Leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates have progressed through laboratory tests at record speed. Two early clinical trials suggest that immunization delivers a favourable immune response and safety profile, but questions remain.

Intriguing structures have been observed that link sections of the diabolical ironclad beetle’s amazingly crush-resistant armour. These findings suggest fresh approaches for making tough, reliable joints for use in engineering.

Sequencing the genomes of individual skin cells called melanocytes has revealed a rich landscape of DNA changes. These insights shed light on the origins of melanoma, an aggressive type of cancer.

An analysis of seismic data reveals the location and quantity of melted rock, known as melt, in Earth’s upper mantle. The results show how these factors are correlated with the movement of the planet’s tectonic plates.

The findings of a World Health Organization expert working group that is developing animal models to test vaccines and therapeutic agents for the treatment of COVID-19, and their relevance for preclinical testing, are reviewed.

The development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 is reviewed, including an overview of the development process, the different types of vaccine candidate, and data from animal studies as well as phase I and II clinical trials in humans.

The architecture of planetary systems is shown to be strongly affected by stellar clustering in position-velocity phase space; hot Jupiters occur preferentially at high density, suggesting that their extreme orbits originate from environmental perturbations.

Scalable optics co-fabricated with a cryogenic surface-electrode ion trap are used to drive high-fidelity multi-ion quantum logic gates, demonstrating a route to simultaneously scale and reduce errors in quantum processors.

A surface-electrode ion-trap chip is demonstrated, which delivers all the wavelengths of light required for the preparation and operation of ion qubits.

A jigsaw-style configuration of interlocking structures identified in the elytra of the remarkably tough diabolical ironclad beetle, Phloeodes diabolicus, is used to inspire crush-resistant multilayer composites for engineering joints.

Investigation of a chromium-based metal–organic framework shows that the location of added TiO₂ inside specific mesopores strongly affects the ability of the material to catalyse photoreduction of CO₂.

Analysis of global three-dimensional shear attenuation and velocity models implies that partial melting in the seismic low-velocity zone enables motion of oceanic plates by reducing the viscosity of the asthenosphere.

A model in mouse using a species-adapted virus recapitulates features of SARS-CoV-2 infection and age-related disease pathogenesis in humans, and provides a model system for rapid evaluation of medical countermeasures against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

mRNA-1273, an mRNA vaccine that encodes a stabilized prefusion-state severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein, elicits robust immune responses and protects mice against replication of SARS-CoV-2 in the upper and lower airways.

A recombinant vaccine that targets the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 induces a potent antibody response in immunized mice, rabbits and non-human primates, and protects primates from infection with the virus.

The ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 induces an immune response in rhesus macaques and leads to reduced SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in respiratory tissues and an absence of pneumonia, but not to a reduction in nasal virus shedding, compared with unvaccinated animals.

The protective efficacy of a single dose of adenovirus serotype 26 (Ad26) vector-based vaccine expressing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in non-human primates is demonstrated.

In a dose-escalation study of the COVID-19 RNA vaccine BNT162b1 in 45 healthy adults, RBD-binding IgG concentrations and SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing titres in sera increased with dose level and after a second vaccine dose.

In a phase I/II dose-escalation clinical trial, the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b1 elicits specific T cell and antibody responses that suggest it has protective potential.

A combination of clonal expansion and DNA amplification is used to sequence genetic material from individual melanocytes, shedding light on the mutational landscape of these cells and the development of melanomas.

Metabolically-mature human islet-like organoids generated from induced pluripotent stem cells are able to recapitulate insulin-responsive pancreatic islet function and avoid immunologic cell death in diabetic mouse transplantation models.

Single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis of embryogenesis and X chromosome inactivation in the opossum (Monodelphis domestica) resolves the developmental trajectory of a marsupial, and sheds light on the evolution of embryogenesis in mammals.

Reconstitution of the activation of the MLH1–MLH3 endonuclease shows how crossovers are formed during meiosis.

A new mechanism explaining how double Holliday junctions are specifically resolved into crossovers during meiosis is shown that resembles the initiation of DNA mismatch repair.