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As a meteorologist, Kelvin Droegemeier specialized in the study of extreme weather events.Credit: Stephen Voss

Five months into the job, meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier tells Nature what it’s like to work with US President Donald Trump. “I think the president tweets what he tweets,” says Droegemeier. “As president that’s his thing.”

Nature | 9 min read

The China National Space Administration is planning a robotic mission that would return samples from an asteroid and visit a comet — and it has invited international researchers to take part. The ten-year mission would collect material from the asteroid 2016 H03 (also known as Kamo‘oalew), a ‘quasi-satellite’ of Earth that loops around the planet as it orbits the Sun, and then head out beyond Mars to study comet 133P/Elst–Pizarro.

Nature | 3 min read

The US National Academy of Sciences’ governing council has voted to amend its bylaws so that it can “rescind membership for the most egregious violations to a new Code of Conduct, including for proven cases of sexual harassment”. The academy has come under pressure in recent years to address sexual harassment and misconduct by its members, who are elected for life. Next on the agenda: a final vote by its 2,380 members.

Nature | 6 min read

FEATURES & OPINION

The Belt and Road Initiative, China’s mega-plan for global infrastructure, is profoundly changing how science happens in low- and middle-income countries. In the first instalment of a five-part series, discover the full scope of the vast project and how it’s powering China’s rise as a science-development superpower.

Nature | 14 min read

Sources: World bank: go.nature.com/2ddj42p; Road and rail lengths: go.nature.com/2xspngh; Biodiversity: go.nature.com/2vbnbzq

For researchers in the United States who become mothers, the most physically and emotionally demanding times of motherhood — pregnancy, delivery and recovery, and breastfeeding — often coincide with their most intense push up the career ladder. Nature explores how stronger national and institutional policies would help to level the playing field for scientists and pay dividends for science.

Nature | 13 min read