Researchers have sequenced the complete genomes of six ape species, helping uncover the evolutionary history of our closest relatives and offering insights into what makes humans human. The genomes of chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan and siamang have been sequenced end-to-end, filling in gaps that have long eluded researchers.

Research Article: Yoo et al.

News and Views: Complete ape genomes offer a close-up view of human evolution

News: What makes us human? Milestone ape genomes promise clues

How sunflower stars are evading a mysterious epidemic, and how solar panels made of moon dust could power lunar bases.

Research Highlight: Revealed: where rare and giant starfish hide from an enigmatic killer

Research Highlight: Solar cells made of Moon dust could power up a lunar base

After decades of research, physicists have demonstrated that, in principle, an alternative kind of particle accelerator can work just as well as more conventional designs. Many particle accelerators that power huge experiments like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN are radio-frequency accelerators, but they are large and limited in how strong their magnetic fields can be. The new work shows that accelerators that instead use plasma to accelerate particles could be a viable alternative and could be built at much smaller scales.

Research article: Winkler et al.

A drug that makes blood poisonous to mosquitoes, and how an AI worked out how to solve key challenges in Minecraft by ?imagining? solutions.

Science Alert: Drug For Rare Disease Turns Human Blood Into Mosquito Poison

Nature: AI masters Minecraft: DeepMind program finds diamonds without being taught

Vote for How whales sing without drowning, an anatomical mystery solved

Vote for What's in a name: Should offensive species names be changed? The organisms that honour dictators, racists and criminals

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Science writer and New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer's latest book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life we Breathe dives into the invisible maelstrom of microbial life swirling in the air around us ? examining how it helped shape our world, and the implications that breathing it in can have on human health. Carl joined us to discuss historical efforts to show that diseases could spread large distances through the air, the staunch resistance to this idea, and what the rivalry between these two groups meant for public health.

Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe Carl Zimmer Dutton (2025)

Music supplied by SPD/Triple Scoop Music/Getty Images

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In this Podcast Extra, we hear the latest on how decisions by the Trump administration are affecting science in the US. Most recently, a purge of National Institutes of Health (NIH) leadership has seen the chiefs of multiple institutes and centres removed from their posts.

Plus, after cancelling nearly all NIH projects studying transgender health, the White House has directed the agency to focus on studying ?regret? after a person transitions to align their body with their gender identity.

News: ?One of the darkest days?: NIH purges agency leadership amid mass layoffs

News: Exclusive: Trump White House directs NIH to study ?regret? after transgender people transition

News: Are the Trump team?s actions affecting your research? How to contact Nature

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Researchers have developed a tiny, temporary pacemaker that dissolves when no longer needed, helping to overcome some of the challenges associated with current devices. Temporary pacemakers are often required after heart surgery but implanting them can require invasive procedures. This new device is injectable, requires no external power and is controlled using light shone through the skin. The tiny pacemaker has shown promise in animal and heart models, and the team think it could also be used in other situations where electrical stimulation is needed, like the brain.

Research Article: Zhang et al.

Measurements show that global warming is causing lakes to lose their oxygen, and a massive, 30-year analysis showing that a diet of plant-rich foods is associated with healthy ageing

Research Highlight: Life-giving oxygen is wafting out of lakes worldwide

Research Highlight: The best foods for healthy ageing ? and the worst

A large-scale population study suggests that getting a shingles vaccine reduces the probability of someone getting dementia by around one-fifth. By taking advantage of the way a shingles vaccine was rolled out in Wales, a team were able to compare dementia outcomes in vaccine-eligible people to those born just a few weeks earlier who were ineligible. Although more tests will be needed to confirm this finding and to understand the mechanisms behind it, the team hope that vaccination against this viral infection could represent a cost-effective way to for preventing or delaying dementia.

Research article: Eyting et al.

Data suggests that racial profiling plays a role in whether someone receives a traffic citation or fine, and studies suggest that paying researchers who review manuscripts could speed up the peer-review process, without affecting the quality of reviews.

Ars Technica: Study of Lyft rideshare data confirms minorities get more tickets

Nature: Publishers trial paying peer reviewers ? what did they find?

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With money pouring in and an unprecedented level of public attention and excitement, scientists are publishing a steady stream of papers on ways to measure how rapidly a person?s body is declining.

However, there are mixed feelings of enthusiasm and apprehension among researchers about efforts to develop tests that measure the impact of ageing on the body, as they are often interpreted and presented without a full reckoning of the uncertainties that plague them.

This is an audio version of our Feature: How quickly are you ageing? What molecular ?clocks? can tell you about your health

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Researchers have identified a new molecule with antibiotic activity against a range of disease-causing bacteria, including those resistant to existing drugs. The new molecule ? isolated from soil samples taken from a laboratory technician?s garden ? is called lariocidin due to its lasso-shaped structure. The team say that in addition to its potent antibiotic activity, the molecule also shows low toxicity towards human cells, making it a promising molecule in the fight against drug-resistant infections.

Research Article: Jangra et al.

A reduction in ships' sulfur emissions linked to a steep drop in thunderclouds, and the epic sea-voyage that let iguanas reach Fiji.

Research Highlight: Ship-pollution cuts have an electrifying effect: less lightning at sea

Research Highlight: Iguanas reached Fiji by floating 8,000 kilometres across the sea

13:54 Assessing the nuances of humans? biodiversity impacts

A huge study analysing data from thousands of research articles has shown that the human impacts on biodiversity are large but are in some cases context dependent. The new study reveals that at larger scales, communities of living things are becoming more similar due to human influence, but at the smaller scale they are becoming more different. "These are generally unwanted effects on biodiversity," says study author Florian Altermatt, "this is one more very strong argument that stopping and reducing these pressures to halt and reverse biodiversity declines is needed."

Research article: Keck et al.

How a proposed green-energy facility in Chile could increase light pollution at one of the world?s most powerful telescopes, and how a calving Antarctic iceberg revealed an unseen aquatic ecosystem.

Nature: Light pollution threatens fleet of world-class telescopes in Atacama Desert

Scientific American: Stunning Antarctic Sea Creatures Discovered after Iceberg Breaks Away

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A tiny satellite has enabled quantum-encrypted information to be sent between China and South Africa, the farthest distance yet achieved for quantum communication. Using a laser-based system, a team in the city of Hefei was able to beam a ?secret key? encoded in quantum states of photons, to their colleagues over 12,000 km away. This key allowed scrambled messages to be decrypted ? including one containing a picture of the Great Wall of China. The team?s system is drastically smaller and cheaper that previous attempts, and they think it represents a big step towards the creation of a global network of secure, quantum communication.

Research Article: Li et al.

News: Mini-satellite paves the way for quantum messaging anywhere on Earth

How storms known as ?atmospheric rivers? could replenish Greenland?s ice, and a prosthetic hand that can distinguish objects by touch almost as well as a human.

Research Highlight: Mega-storm dumps 11 billion tonnes of snow ? and builds up a melting ice sheet

Research Highlight: Robotic fingers can tell objects apart by touch

Researchers have created an AI system called TextGrad which can provide written feedback on another AI?s performance. This feedback is interpretable by humans, which could help researchers tweak the incredibly complicated, and sometimes inscrutable models that underpin modern AIs. ?Previously optimising machine learning algorithms requires quite a lot of human engineering,? says James Zou, one of the team behind this work, ?but with TextGrad, now the AI is able to self-improve to a large extent.?

Research Article: Yuksekgonul et al.

The first two months of Donald Trump?s presidency has seen swingeing cuts to US federal funding for research, particularly to research associated with DEI. We hear the latest on these cuts and their impact from reporter Max Kozlov.

Nature: ?My career is over?: Columbia University scientists hit hard by Trump team?s cuts

Nature: How the NIH dominates the world?s health research ? in charts

Nature: ?Scientists will not be silenced?: thousands protest Trump research cuts

Nature: Exclusive: NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants

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Taking inspiration from industrial forging, researchers have demonstrated a way to squeeze molten metals into atomically-thin layers, creating relatively large flakes of 2D metals. Using a hydraulic press containing two sapphire anvils, a team was able to create sub-nanometer thick sheets of different metals ? these sheets had diameters exceeding 0.1 mm, orders of magnitude larger than other methods have achieved. 2D metals have been theorized to possess several useful properties not seen in their larger, 3D counterparts, but have been difficult to make at scale, something this method may help overcome.

Research Article: Zhao et al.

News and Views: Metals squeezed to thickness of just two atoms

The discovery of ancient puppets on remains of a large pyramid offers a glimpse into rituals in Mesoamerica, and how the presence of a certain pattern of sleep brainwaves might help predict which people will recover from an unresponsive state.

Research Highlight: Ancient puppets that smile or scowl hint at shared rituals

Research Highlight: Who?s likely to wake up from a coma? Brainwaves provide a clue

SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, has become one of the most closely examined viruses on the planet. In the five years since the pandemic, over 150,000 articles have been written about it, and 17 million genome sequences have been generated. We discuss the lessons virologists have learnt from this intense study of a single organism, and how these might help the world prepare for future pandemics.

News Feature: Four ways COVID changed virology: lessons from the most sequenced virus of all time

How an AI alert-system could help researchers train their telescopes on a neutron star collision, and how expiration dates on plastic food-waste helped biologists age birds? nests.

Nature: How AI could let us watch epic star collisions in real time

Science: Plastic waste in bird nests can act like a tiny time capsule

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A 1.5-million-year-old cache of animal-bone tools reveals that ancient humans systematically crafted with this material much earlier than previously thought. Researchers uncovered 27 bone artefacts in Tanzania honed into sharp tools almost 40 cm long. This discovery pushes back the dedicated manufacture of bone tools by around a million years and could have helped these early humans develop new kinds of technology. ?This raises a lot of interesting questions,? says study author Ignacio de la Torre.

Research Article: de la Torre et al.

Cane toads? remarkable homing abilities, and evidence that the block of rock that makes up southern Tibet originated in what is now Australia.

Research Highlight: Take me home, country toads

Research Highlight: Lhasa?s rocks reveal an Australian birthplace

To help protect against infection, cells in the body will selectively cut proteins to produce molecules known as antimicrobial peptides, according to new research. A team has found that many potential peptides appear to be locked up within proteins ? to get them out, cells shift the activity of a waste-disposal system called the proteasome, known for its role in protein degradation and recycling. In tests, one of these peptides showed efficacy at protecting mice from infection, indicating that these molecules could one day have therapeutic potential.

Research Article: Goldberg et al.

News and Views: Protein waste turned into antibiotics as a defence strategy of human cells

An update on two missions heading to the Moon to look for water, and why fears that a crucial ocean-current system will collapse in the face of climate change may be incorrect.

Nature: Meet the ice-hunting robots headed for the Moon right now

Nature: Iconic ocean-current system is safe from climate collapse ? for now

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Over the past two decades, research has emerged showing that opportunities for risky play are crucial for children's healthy physical, mental and emotional development. However, because play is inherently free-form it has been difficult to study. Now, scientists are using innovative approaches, including virtual reality, to probe the benefits of risky play, and how best to promote it.

This is an audio version of our Feature: Why kids need to take more risks ? science reveals the benefits of wild, free play

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Google researchers have developed an AI for a smartwatch that will call for help if its wearer is having a cardiac arrest. Trained, in part, on data gained when patients had their hearts deliberately stopped during a medical procedure, the team?s machine learning algorithm can automatically detect the telltale signs of cardiac arrest. The team think this system could save lives, although more testing is required. "Our hope is that as these capabilities expand it provides a new way to keep people safer,? says Jake Sunshine, one of the researchers behind the study.

Research Article: Shah et al.

Evidence that a low dose of yellow fever vaccine might be enough to provide lasting immunity, and the odd umbrella-shaped tree fossil that suggests that early plants may have been more complex than previously thought.

Research Article: Kimathi et al.

Research Article: Gastaldo et al.

Microsoft?s new AI that helps create video game ?worlds?, and why dogs blink more when other dogs do the same.

Nature: Microsoft builds AI that creates ?impressive? video-game worlds

Science: Dogs, like people, may use blinking to bond

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A study of almost 70,000 ratings showed that racial discrimination could be eliminated from an online platform by switching from a five-star rating system to a thumbs up or down. The platform connected customers to workers who performed home repair jobs, and prior to the shift people categorised by the study authors as ?non-white? had lower ratings and got paid less than their white counterparts. Through follow up studies the authors also showed that the five-star system allowed people to impart their personal opinions, whereas a thumbs up or down just focused them on whether a job was good or bad. The team hopes this could be an easy-to-implement shift to tackle racial discrimination.

Research Article: Botelho et al.

News and Views: Racial bias eliminated when ratings switch from five stars to thumbs up or down

Experimental evidence that cockatoos like flavouring their food, and the harsh climate of sixteenth century Transylvania.

Research Highlight: Gourmet cockatoos like to fancy up their food

Research Highlight: Transylvanian diaries reveal centuries-old climate extremes

A Nature investigation has revealed where the most retractions come from, with hospitals in China and institutions in India and Pakistan topping the list. Retractions are a normal part of science and may be a sign of necessary scrutiny, but they can also signal misconduct and use of paper mills. Features Editor Richard Van Noorden joins us to discuss what this means for science and tackling sloppy research.

Nature: Exclusive: These universities have the most retracted scientific articles

Layoffs in the US?s Environmental Protection Agency, reactions to the DEI purge at NASA, and what RFK Jr.?s role as secretary of Health and Human Services could mean for health research.

Nature: ?Targeted and belittled?: scientists at US environmental agency speak out as layoffs begin

Nature: NASA embraced diversity. Trump?s DEI purge is hitting space scientists hard

Nature: Vaccine sceptic RFK Jr is now a powerful force in US science: what will he do?

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In this episode:

An enormous array of detectors, deep under the Mediterranean Sea, has captured evidence of the highest-energy neutrino particle ever recorded, although researchers aren?t sure exactly where in the cosmos it originated. Calculations revealed this particle had over 30 times the energy of previously detected neutrinos. The team hopes that further study and future detections will help reveal the secrets of high-energy phenomena like supernovae.

Research Article: The KM3NeT Collaboration

How bonobos adjust their communication to account for what other individuals know, and the discovery of a huge collection of beads adorning the attire of the powerful Copper Age women in Spain.

Research Highlight: Bonobos know when you?re in the know ? and when you?re not

Research Highlight: Record-setting trove of buried beads speaks to power of ancient women

A judge has blocked a policy that would have slashed billions of dollars of funding for US research institutions, which come as part of President Donald Trump?s controversial crackdown on government spending. We discuss the reasoning behind the proposed cuts and the impacts they may have if enacted. We also look at the effects that President Trump?s executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and funding are having across the US.

Nature: ?Devastating? cuts to NIH grants by Trump?s team put on hold by US judge

Nature: Have Trump?s anti-DEI orders hit private funders? HHMI halts inclusive science programme

Nature: Scientists globally are racing to save vital health databases taken down amid Trump chaos

Why the latest odds on asteroid 2024 YR4?s chance of impacting Earth are so hard to calculate, and how the latest version of DeepMind's AlphaGeometry AI has reached the gold-medal level in geometry.

New York Times: Why the Odds of an Asteroid Striking Earth in 2032 Keep Going Up (and Down)

Nature: DeepMind AI crushes tough maths problems on par with top human solvers

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In episode 2 of 'What's in a name' we look how choosing names can help, or hinder, attempts to communicate important messages.

Categorizing things is central to science. And there are dozens of systems scientists have created to name everything from the trenches on the sea bed to the stars in the sky.

But names have consequences. In our series What?s in a name we explore naming in science and how names impact the world ? whether the system of naming species remains in step with society, how the names of diseases can create stigma, or even how the names of scientific concepts can drive the direction of research itself.

In episode two, we're looking at how the names chosen by scientists help, or hinder, communication with the public.

Well chosen names can quickly convey scientific concepts or health messages ? in emergency situations they can even save lives. We'll hear how the systems of naming tropical storms and Covid-19 variants came to be, and how they took different approaches to achieve the same outcome.

We'll also consider the language used to talk about climate change, and how the ways of describing it have been used to deliberately introduce uncertainty and confusion.

Listen to the first episode Should offensive species names be changed? The organisms that honour dictators, racists and criminals

For a list of sources please visit the the episode's webpage

Music credits

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Richard Smithson/Triple Scoop Music/Getty Images

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In this episode:

Mathematics skills learnt in real-world situations may not translate to the classroom and vice versa, according to a new study. A team surveyed children in India who work in markets, to see whether the skills they learnt there transferred to the classroom. While proficient at solving market-based arithmetic problems, they struggled to solve problems typically used in schools. The reverse was seen for children enrolled in schools with no market-selling experience. The authors hope this finding could help adjust teaching curricula and bridge the gap between intuitive and formal maths.

Research Article: Banerjee et al.

Wolverine populations rebound in Sweden and Norway, and why wobbly arrows launch faster than rigid ones.

Research Highlight: Who?s the new furry neighbour? It might be a wolverine

Research Highlight: How a wobbly arrow can achieve superpropulsion

A study has revealed that when packed crowds reach a certain density, large groups of people suddenly start to move in circular patterns ? a finding that could be used to identify dangerous overcrowding. By assessing footage of the densely-packed San Fermín festival, a team observed this spontaneous phenomenon, and modelled the physics underlying it. Studying the movements of giant crowds has been difficult, and the team hope this work could help event organisers to identify and respond to situations where people could get hurt.

Research Article: Gu et al.

News and Views: Crowds start to spin when their densities hit a threshold

Sound effects:

Crowd Cheering - Ambience by GregorQuendel via CC BY 4.0

Cupinzano sounds by Europa Press - Footage News via Getty Images

An update on the US National Science Foundation?s scrutinizing of grants to comply with President Trump?s directives, and why scratching an itch may have unexpected antibacterial properties.

Nature: Exclusive: how NSF is scouring research grants for violations of Trump?s orders

Nature: Why it feels good to scratch that itch: the immune benefits of scratching

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The explosive improvement in artificial intelligence (AI) technology has largely been driven by making neural networks bigger and training them on more data. But experts suggest that the developers of these systems may soon run out of data to train their models. As a result, teams are taking new approaches, such as searching for other unconventional data sources, or generating new data to train their AIs.

This is an audio version of our Feature: The AI revolution is running out of data. What can researchers do?

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Analysis of samples taken from the asteroid Bennu reveal the presence of organic compounds important for life, and that its parent asteroid likely contained salty, subsurface water. Collected by NASA?s OSIRIS-REx mission, these rocks and dust particles give insights into the chemistry of the early Solar System, and suggest that brines may have been an important place where pre-biotic molecules were formed. As brines are found throughout the Solar System, this finding raises questions about whether similar molecules will be found in places like Jupiter?s moon Europa.

Research Article: McCoy et al.

Research Article: Glavin et al.

News: Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed

How seaweed farms could capture carbon, and why chimps follow each other to the bathroom.

Research Highlight: Seaweed farms dish up climate benefits

Research Highlight: All together now: chimps engage in contagious peeing

Researchers have found evidence of intensive maize agriculture that could help explain how a mysterious South American society produced enough food to fuel a labour-force big enough to build enormous earth structures. It appears that the Casarabe people, who lived in the Amazon Basin around 500-1400 AD, restructured the landscape to create water conserving infrastructure that allowed for year-round production of maize. While this work provides new insights into how the Casarabe may have established a complex monument-building culture, these people vanished around 600 years ago, and many questions remain about their lives.

Research Article: Lombardo et al.

Research Article: Hermenegildo et al.

A new AI model from a Chinese company, DeepSeek, rivals the abilities of OpenAI?s o1 ? a state-of-the art ?reasoning? model ? at a fraction of the cost. The release of DeepSeek has thrilled researchers, asked questions about American AI dominance in the area, and spooked stock markets. We discuss why this large language model has sent shockwaves around the world and what it means for the future of AI.

News: China?s cheap, open AI model DeepSeek thrills scientists

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A huge analysis of hiring practices has revealed that criteria to get a promotion to full professorship is hugely variable around the world. The authors suggest that this variability results in researchers from countries that value one type of metric being locked out of professor positions in others. They hope that the database of hiring practices created in this study could help institutions adjust their hiring policies to create a more diverse science workforce.

Research Article: Lim et al.

News: Want to become a professor? Here?s how hiring criteria differ by country

Lasers reveal hidden tattoos on ancient mummified-skin, and a new pill that cuts flu symptoms and viral levels in the body.

Research Highlight: Hidden tattoos on mummy skin emerge under a laser?s light

Research Highlight: Got flu? Promising drug shortens symptoms

Researchers have shown that cancer cells can slip their dysfunctional mitochondria into T cells, limiting the immune system?s cancer-fighting capabilities. Cancer cells are known to steal healthy mitochondria from immune cells to help tumours survive and thrive. Now, researchers have shown mitochondria can move in the opposite direction too, with the donor T cells showing signs of various stress responses that make them less effective when inside a tumour. The team showed that blocking this transfer limited this effect, and hopes that this mechanism could offer a new avenue for boosting the immune system?s response to cancer.

Research Article: Ikeda et al.

News & Views: Mitochondrial swap from cancer to immune cells thwarts anti-tumour defences

Noah Baker and Ehsan Masood turn to the war in Gaza, and discuss what comes next for science as a ceasefire comes into force.

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Researchers have shown that machine learning can quickly design antivenoms that are effective against lethal snake-toxins, which they hope will help tackle a serious public health issue. Thousands of people die as a result of snakebites each year, but treatment options are limited, expensive and often difficult to access in the resource-poor settings where most bites occur. The computer-aided approach allowed researchers to design two proteins that provided near total protection against individual snake toxins in mouse experiments. While limited in scope, the team behind the work believe these results demonstrate the promise of the approach in designing effective and cheaper treatments for use in humans.

Research Article: Vázquez Torres et al.

How male wasp spiders use hairs on their legs to sniff out mates, and how noradrenaline drives waves of cleansing fluid through the brain.

Research Highlight: ???????Male spiders smell with their legs

Research Highlight: ???????How the brain cleans itself during deep sleep

News broke last week that in 2024, Earth?s average temperature climbed to more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. Although this is only a single year so far, we discuss what breaking this significant threshold means for the 2015 Paris climate agreement and what climate scientists understand about the speed that Earth is heating up.  

Nature: ???????Earth breaches 1.5 °C climate limit for the first time: what does it mean?

NASA delays deciding its strategy for collecting and returning Mars rocks to Earth, and why papers on a handful of bacterial species dominate the scientific literature.

Nature: ???????NASA still has no plan for how to bring precious Mars rocks to Earth

Nature: ???????These are the 20 most-studied bacteria ? the majority have been ignored

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In this episode of the Nature Podcast, we catch up on some science stories from the holiday period by diving into the Nature Briefing.

A much-critiqued study demonstrating the now-disproven idea that hydroxychloroquine can treat COVID-19 has been retracted ? more than four-and-a-half years after it was published.

Nature: Controversial COVID study that promoted unproven treatment retracted after four-year saga

Researchers have discovered that healthy skin ? once thought to be a passive barrier ? can actually produce antibodies that fight off infections. It?s hoped that the finding could one day lead to the development of needle-free vaccines that can be applied to the skin.

Nature: The skin?s ?surprise? power: it has its very own immune system

New estimates, based on data collected by NASA?s Juno spacecraft, suggest that the ice on the surface of Jupiter?s moon Europa may be significantly thicker than previously thought. If these estimates prove accurate it could reduce the chances of Europa being habitable for extraterrestrial life.

Science: Surprisingly thick ice on Jupiter?s moon Europa complicates hunt for life

3D computer simulations of Australopithecus afarensis ? an ancient hominin that lived more than three million years ago ? reveals that while our relatives could run on two legs, they likely did so at a far slower pace than modern humans.

Nature: Humans evolved for distance running ? but ancestor ?Lucy? didn?t go far or fast

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In this episode, reporter Miryam Naddaf joins us to talk about the big science events to look out for in 2025. We?ll hear about: the latest Moon missions, 30 years of the United Nations' COP climate summits, the return of Donald Trump, and more.

Nature: Science in 2025: the events to watch for in the coming year

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Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel prizes in 1991, after years of collecting examples of weird research that he included in the Journal of Irreproducible Results. The aim of these satirical awards is to honour achievements that ?make people laugh, then think?.

While the initial response from the scientific community was mixed, last year the prize received more than 9,000 nominations. Several researchers who have won an ?Ig? say that it has improved their careers by helping them to reach wider audiences, and spend more time engaging with the public about their work.

This is an audio version of our Feature: How a silly science prize changed my career

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Nature Podcast: 27 March 2024

Research article: Agnew

Podcast extra: 01 May 2024

Collection: Sex and gender in science

Research Highlight: How to train your crocodile

Research Highlight: Ancient fish dined on bats ? or died trying

Podcast extra: 09 August 2024

Nature Podcast: 03 July 2024

Research Article: Waddle et al.

News and Views: Mini saunas save endangered frogs from fungal disease

Nature News: Your brain on shrooms ? how psilocybin resets neural networks

Nature News: NASA cancels $450-million mission to drill for ice on the Moon ? surprising researchers

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The shifting orbit of one of Saturn?s moons indicates that the satellite has a subsurface ocean, contradicting theories that its interior is entirely solid. The finding calls for a fresh take on what constitutes an ocean moon.

Nature Podcast: 14 February 2024

News and Views: Mimas?s surprise ocean prompts an update of the rule book for moons

Millions of tonnes of ?red mud?, a hazardous waste of aluminium production, are generated annually. A potentially sustainable process for treating this mud shows that it could become a source of iron for making steel.

Nature Podcast: 24 Jan 2024

News and Views: Iron extracted from hazardous waste of aluminium production

A design principle for buildings incorporates components that can control the propagation of failure by isolating parts of the structure as they fail ? offering a way to prevent a partial collapse snowballing into complete destruction.

Nature podcast: 15 May 2024

Nature video: Controlled failure: The building designed to limit catastrophe

News and Views: Strategic links save buildings from total collapse

RNA-guided recombinase enzymes have been discovered that herald a new chapter for genome editing ? enabling the insertion, inversion or deletion of long DNA sequences at user-specified genome positions.

News and Views: Programmable RNA-guided enzymes for next-generation genome editing

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In the first of our annual festive songs celebrating the science of the past year, we pay homage to Ozempic, or Semaglutide, that's able to tackle obesity, diabetes and potentially a whole lot more.

We gather an all-star cast and see how well they can remember some of the big science stories from 2024 in our annual festive quiz.

In the second of our festive songs, we look at CAR-T cells. These engineered immune cells have shown great promise at tackling cancer, but these treatments are not without their drawbacks.

Every year, Nature?s 10 highlights some of the people who have helped shape science over the past 12 months. We hear about a few of the people who made the 2024 list, including an economist who now needs to run a country, a Russian science-sleuth, a researcher who?s been sounding the alarm on Mpox, and a PhD student who won a salary bump for researchers in Canada.

News Feature: Nature?s 10

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Categorizing things is central to science. And there are dozens of systems scientists have created to name everything from the trenches on the sea bed to the stars in the sky.

But names have consequences ? unintended or otherwise. In our new series What?s in a name we?ll explore naming in science and how names impact the world ? whether that?s how the names of storms impact public safety, how the names of diseases impact patient care, or even how the names of scientific concepts can drive the direction of research itself.

In this first episode we?re looking at species names. The modern system of species naming began in the 1700s and has played a vital role in standardizing academic communication, ensuring that scientists are on the same page when they talk about an organism. However, this system is not without its issues. For example, there has been much debate around whether species with names considered offensive ? such as those named after historical racists ? should be changed, and what rule changes need to be made to allow this to happen.

We speak to researchers about the history of this naming system, how it?s applied and how it might evolve in the face of growing pressures.

Sources

For a full list of sources, please visit https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-04200-9

Music credits

Premiumaudio/Pond5

Alon Marcus/Pond5

Groove Committee/Pond5

Opcono/Pond5

Erik Mcnerny/Pond5

Earless Pierre/Pond5

Richard Smithson/Triple Scoop Music/Getty Images

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Sound effects via Pond5

Thick-billed Longspur/???????Andrew Spencer via ???????CC BY-NC-ND 2.5

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Researchers have shown in mice experiments that an mRNA-based therapy can reverse the underlying causes of pre-eclampsia, a deadly complication of pregnancy for which treatment options are limited. Inspired by the success of mRNA vaccines, the team behind the work designed a method to deliver the genomic instructions for a blood-vessel growth factor directly into mouse placentas. This stimulated the production of extra blood vessels reducing the very high-blood pressure associated with the condition. Pre-eclampsia causes 15% of maternal deaths and 25% of foetal and newborn deaths worldwide and although the work is early and human trials will be required, the team hope that this work demonstrates the potential of using this approach to treat pre-eclampsia.

Research Article: Swingle et al.

Stacks of, mass-produced bowls suggest that people founded, but then abandoned an ancient Mesopotamian civilization, and analysis of Venus?s gases suggests that the planet was always dry.

Research Highlight: Ancient stacks of dishes tell tale of society?s dissolution

Research Highlight: Has Venus ever had an ocean? Its volcanoes hint at an answer

A team of scientists have created cellular switches on the surface of cells, allowing them to control their behaviour. Creating these switches has been a long-term goal for synthetic biologists ? especially a group of proteins called G-protein-coupled receptors that already control many cellular processes. However, engineering these proteins has been challenging, as modifications can ruin their function. Instead, the team added another molecular component that blocked the receptors activity, but could be removed in response to specific signals. This allowed the researchers to activate these receptors on command, potentially opening up a myriad of new ways to control cell behaviour, such as controlling when neurons fire.

Research Article: Kalogriopoulos et al.

A team at Google has shown it is possible to create a quantum computer that becomes more accurate as it scales up, a goal researchers have been trying to achieve for decades. Quantum computing could potentially open up applications beyond the capabilities of classical computers, but these systems are error-prone, making it difficult to scale them up without introducing errors into calculations. The team showed that by increasing the quality of all the components in a quantum computer they could create a system with fewer errors, and that this trend of improvement continued as the system became larger. This breakthrough could mean that quantum computers are getting very close to realising the useful applications that their proponents have long promised.

Nature: ?A truly remarkable breakthrough?: Google?s new quantum chip achieves accuracy milestone

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Zoologist Arik Kershenbaum has spent his career studying animals and how they communicate in the wild. In his book Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication, Arik takes a deep dive into the various forms of communication, from wolf howls to gibbon songs, to look at how different species get their points across, why they do it the way they do, and what insights they provide into our own use of language.

Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication Arik Kershenbaum Penguin (2024)

Music supplied by SPD/Triple Scoop Music/Getty Images

Wolf howl via NPS & MSU Acoustic Atlas/Jennifer Jerrett

Slowed down dolphin whistle via Arik Kershenbaum

Hyrax song via Arik Kershenbaum

Pileated gibbon song via Rushenb CC BY-SA 4.0

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Breast cancer cells are more susceptible to chemotherapy at certain points in the menstrual cycle, new data in Nature suggests. Researchers studied the equivalent hormonal cycle in mice and found that during the oestrous phase, where progesterone levels are low, tumours are more susceptible to chemotherapy. The same effect was shown in humans in a small retrospective study. The team caution that a larger clinical trial would need to be conducted, but hope that this work could open up an, easy to implement, way to boost the effect of chemotherapy.

Research Article: Bornes et al.

News and Views: What is the best time of the month to treat breast cancer?

How coffee changes your gut microbiota, and the first amber deposits found in Antarctica hint at an ancient rainforest.

Research Highlight: Do you drink coffee? Ask your gut

Research Highlight: Antarctica?s first known amber whispers of a vanished rainforest

The latest AI system released by OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, is better able to break down problems into smaller chunks, making it closer to a human way of solving problems than other systems. This has reignited discussions about the likelihood of AIs achieving human-level intelligence. Although previously the realm of science fiction, researchers are now taking the idea of ?artificial general intelligence?, or AGI, more seriously. Although this technology has the potential to help tackle humanity's biggest challenges, there are concerns about the safety of such technology if it were to become autonomous.

News Feature: How close is AI to human-level intelligence?

How making a bank of centenarians? stem cells could help unlock the secrets of healthy ageing, and what some 1.5 million year old footprints reveal about how ancient hominin species may have interacted.

Nature: What?s the secret to living to 100? Centenarian stem cells could offer clues

Nature: These two ancient human relatives crossed paths 1.5 million years ago

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AI tools that help researchers design new proteins have resulted in a boom in designer molecules. However, these proteins are being churned out faster than they can be made and tested in labs.

To overcome this, multiple protein-design competitions have popped up, with the aim of sifting out the functional from the fantastical. But while contests have helped drive key scientific advances in the past, it's unclear how to identify which problems to tackle and how best to select winners objectively.

This is an audio version of our Feature: AI has dreamt up a blizzard of new proteins. Do any of them actually work?

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A huge collection of fossilised digestive contents has provided clues as to how dinosaurs grew to become the dominant animals on the planet. Why these animals rose to dominance has been unclear, with one theory proposing that a chance event wiped out other species, whereas another suggests that dinosaurs had adaptations that better allowed them to thrive. By analysing over 500 vomit and faeces fossils, researchers have better identified what dinosaurs ate, and their interactions with other animals. The new work suggests both of these theories are correct, with dinosaurs benefiting from one or the other at different points in time. The researchers believe this work demonstrates how useful fossilised food contents are for understanding these ancient creatures.

Research Article: Qvarnström et al.

News and Views: Wastes of time ? faeces and vomit track how dinosaurs rose to prominence

News: Fossilized poo and vomit shows how dinosaurs rose to rule Earth

Bacteria found on an asteroid actually came from Earth, and why play helps chimps to cooperate.

Research Highlight: Bacteria found on a space rock turn out to be Earth-grown

Research Highlight: Chimps tickle and wrestle in play to pave the way for teamwork

By testing mice across the United States, researchers have identified a fungus that is well adapted to living in the gastrointestinal tracts of mice, an important step in modelling the role these microorganisms play in the body. Fungi are known to be a constituent of the gut microbiome, but very little is known about what they do. Now, a team has identified that the fungus Kazachstania pintolopesii is likely a long-term resident of mice guts, which they hope will allow them to study how these microbes interact with the immune system, and the role they play in host defence and allergies.

Research Article: Liao et al.

The United Nations annual climate change conference, COP29, finished last week. Largely the discussions revolved around climate finance ? the idea that wealthier countries who have benefitted most from past carbon emissions should pay to help poorer, vulnerable countries adapt to the effects of climate change. Although a last minute agreement was hammered out at the conference, not everyone was happy with the text and promised actions. We discuss this and the other key outcomes of COP29.

Nature: Is the COP29 climate deal a historic breakthrough or letdown? Researchers react

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Inspired by squids? ability to shoot ink, a team of researchers have developed swallowable devices that can deliver tiny jets of drugs directly into the gut lining, circumventing the need for needles. Previous studies have shown that most people prefer to take medication in pill form, rather than as an injection, but many drugs are degraded as they pass through the digestive system. The team?s new swallowable devices overcome this issue, and deliver drugs directly to where they need to be. So far, this approach has shown efficacy in animal models, but more work needs to be done to ensure their safety in humans.

Research Article: Arrick et al.

The largest ?terror bird? fossil ever found, and a simple solution to help prevent premature births.

Research Highlight: Huge carnivorous ?terror bird? rivalled the giant panda in size

Research Highlight: Reducing pregnancy risk could be as easy as chewing gum

Two papers describe how light-activated catalysts could be used to break down toxic ?forever chemicals?, hinting at a new way to clean up pollution caused by these persistent compounds. Forever chemicals contain multiple carbon-fluorine bonds that give them useful physical properties, but these bonds are some of the strongest in organic chemistry, making these compounds energetically difficult to break down. The new, light-based methods demonstrate low-energy ways to sever these bonds, a milestone that could make forever chemicals less permanent.

Research Article: Zhang et al.

Research Article: Liu et al.

News and Views: Catalysts degrade forever chemicals with visible light

Analysis of far-side soil highlights the Moon?s turbulent past, and how CRISPR can help make sweeter tomatoes.

Nature: First rocks returned from Moon?s far side reveal ancient volcanic activity

CNN: Findings from the first lunar far side samples raise new questions about the moon?s history

Nature: CRISPR builds a big tomato that?s actually sweet

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During ageing, bone marrow in the skull becomes an increasingly important site of blood-cell production. This is in stark contrast to most bones where the ability of marrow to make blood and immune cells declines. Studies in mice and humans showed that ageing results in skull bone-marrow expanding, and in mice this marrow was more resistant to inflammation and other hallmarks of ageing. The team behind the work hope by understanding this process better it may be possible to help organs become more resistant to ageing.

Research Article: Koh et al.

Elderly big brown bats show remarkable resistance to age-related hearing loss, and why search-engine algorithms may not be the main driver steering people towards misinformation.

Research Highlight: No hearing aids needed: bats? ears stay keen well into old age

Research Highlight: Don?t blame search engines for sending users to unreliable sites

Researchers have overcome a major hurdle preventing the radioactive isotope lead-205 from being used as a ?clock? to date the age of the Solar System. 205Pb is made in some stars and thanks to its half life of around 17 million years has been proposed as a potential way to date ancient astronomical processes. However, exactly how much 205Pb can escape a star were unclear, limiting its dating potential. Now, researchers have mimicked the conditions seen in stars to pin down how much 205Pb can escape into space, paving the way for its use as a clock.

Research Article: Leckenby et al.

How millions of Android smartphones were used to map the Earth?s ionosphere, and the ethical implications of a virologist who treated her own cancer.

Nature: Google uses millions of smartphones to map the ionosphere

Nature: This scientist treated her own cancer with viruses she grew in the lab

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Samantha Harvey's Booker Prize shortlisted novel Orbital is set inside an International Space Station-like vessel circling 250 miles above Earth. It looks at a day-in-the-life of the crew, investigating the contrasts they experience during the 16 orbits they make around the planet, crossing continents, oceans and the line separating night and day.

On the latest episode of Nature hits the books, Samantha joins us to discuss why the ISS is a rich setting for fiction, the challenges of putting yourself in the shoes of an astronaut, and how distance can give new perspectives on global issues like climate change.

Orbital Samantha Harvey Vintage (2024)

Music supplied by Airae/Epidemic Sound

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Researchers have uncovered that mitochondria divide into two distinct forms when cells are starved, a finding that could help explain how some cancers thrive in hostile conditions. Mitochondria are cellular powerhouses, creating energy and vital metabolic molecules, but how they are able to do this when resources are limited has been a mystery. It turns out that in nutrient-poor situations, mitochondria split into two separate types, one which concentrates on energy production, the other on producing essential cellular building blocks. Together these allow cells to make everything they need. The team showed that this also happens in certain cancer cells, which may help them survive and grow under hostile conditions in the body.

Research Article: Ryu et al.

News and Views: Division of labour: mitochondria split to meet energy demands

Video: A new kind of mitochondrion

A tidy genome may explain naked mole rats? long lifespans, and why the midlife crisis may not be as ubiquitous as previously thought.

Research Highlight: Naked mole rats vanquish genetic ghosts ? and achieve long life

Research Highlight: The midlife crisis is not universal

Physicists have revealed a new technique to image the shape of atomic nuclei ? by smashing them together. The nucleus of an atom doesn?t really resemble what is shown in textbooks ? they actually come in a variety of shapes, which drive an element?s behaviour. Current methods essentially take a long-exposure photo of an atom?s nucleus, which doesn?t capture the subtle variations in how the protons and neutrons arrange themselves. The new method overcomes this by colliding nuclei together and then using information on the resulting debris to reconstruct the shape of the nucleus. The researchers hope that this technique can help physicists resolve many more mysteries about atomic nuclei.

Research Article: STAR Collaboration

News: Scientists worked out the shapes of atomic nuclei ? by exploding them

Analysing the genome of an ancient clone forest has revealed it could be up to 80,000 years old, and how putting limits on the famous infinite monkey theorem means they probably wouldn?t churn out Shakespeare before the end of the Universe.

Nature: The world?s oldest tree? Genetic analysis traces evolution of iconic Pando forest

The Guardian: Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds

Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.

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This series was originally broadcast in 2020.

Science and politics are not easy bedfellows - "Stick to the science" is a three part series which aims to find out why.

In the third and final episode we try to get to the bottom of how journalists, communicators and policymakers influence how science is perceived. We discuss the danger of politicization and ask the question - can science be part of the political narrative without compromising its values?

This episode was produced by Nick Petri? Howe, with editing from Noah Baker and Benjamin Thompson. It featured: Deborah Blum, Bruce Lewenstein, Dan Sarewitz, Hannah Schmid-Petri, Shobita Parthasarathy, and Beth Simone Noveck.

Further Reading

The great fish pain debate

Politicization of mask wearing

Masks work

Donald Trump used a quote from Anthony Fauci to falsely suggest Fauci approved of his actions in the pandemic

Comparing Norway and Sweden in their coronavirus combating actions

Beth Simone Noveck argues for more open and transparent governance

Solving Public Problems, by Beth Simone Noveck

Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing, by Beth Simone Noveck

The Received Wisdom Podcast, with Shobita Parthasarathy

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This series was originally broadcast in 2020.

Science and politics are not easy bedfellows - "Stick to the science" is a three part series which aims to find out why.

In this episode we're asking how politics shapes the life of a working scientist. Be it through funding agendas, cultural lobbies or personal bias, there's a myriad of ways in which politics can shape the game; influencing the direction and quality of research, But what does this mean for the objective ideals of science?

This episode was produced by Nick Petri? Howe, with editing from Noah Baker and Benjamin Thompson. it featured contributions from many people, including: Mayana Zatz, Shobita Parthasarathy, Michael Erard, Peg AtKisson, Susannah Gal, Allen Rostron, Mark Rosenberg, and Alice Bell.

Further Reading

Brazil?s budget cuts threaten more than 80,000 science scholarships

Move to reallocate funds from scientific institutions in São Paulo

Backlash to ?Shrimps on a treadmill?

Explanation of the Dickey Amendment

After over 20 years the CDC can now fund gun violence research

Spirometer use ?race-correction? software

Black researchers less likely to get funding from the National Institutes of Health in the US

Black researchers may get less funding from the National Institutes of Health due to topic choice

Black researchers fill fewer academic roles in the UK

Clinical trials use mostly white participants

The Received Wisdom Podcast, with Shobita Parthasarathy

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This series was originally broadcast in 2020.

Science and politics are not easy bedfellows - "Stick to the science" is a three part series which aims to find out why.

In this episode we delve into the past, and uncover the complicated relationship between science, politics and power. Along the way, we come up against some pretty big questions: what is science? Should science be apolitical? And where does Nature fit in?

This episode was produced by Nick Petri? Howe, with editing from Noah Baker and Benjamin Thompson. it featured contributions from many researchers, including: Shobita Parthasarathy, Alice Bell, Dan Sarewitz, Anna Jay, Melinda Baldwin, Magdelena Skipper, Steven Shapin, David Edgerton, Deborah Blum, Bruce Lewenstein and Chiara Ambrosio. Quotes from social media were read by: Shamini Bundell, Flora Graham, Dan Fox, Edie Edmundson and Bredan Maher. And excerpts from Nature were read by Jen Musgreave.

Further Reading

History of Education in the UK

Nature?s History

Nature?s Mission statement

Nature editorial on covering politics

Making ?Nature?, by Melinda Baldwin

Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority, by Steven Shapin

David Edgerton?s writing on the history of science and politics in the Guardian

The received wisdom podcast with Shobita Parthasarathy

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Researchers have been investigating the best ways to help people deal with trauma in the wake of a climate disaster. In April and May devastating floods surged across Rio Grande do Sul in the South of Brazil, affecting two million people and killing hundreds. As people try to put their lives back together scientists have been conducting surveys and investigating how to make sure that any mental health issues don?t become persistent. We hear from some of the affected people and researchers in the region.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

News Feature: How to recover when a climate disaster destroys your city

A new way to make ultra-heavy elements, and how some plankton swim by blowing up like a balloon.

Research Highlight: Atomic smash-ups hold promise of record-breaking elements

Research Highlight: This plankton balloons in size to soar upwards through the water

Nature has conducted a poll of its readers to get a sense of what is on researchers? minds in the run up to the US election. Overwhelmingly, the survey respondents identified as researchers and reported that they supported Vice President Harris (86%). Many also voiced concerns about a possible victory for former President Trump, saying that they would consider changing where they would live if he wins. Reporter Jeff Tollefson tells us more about the results and what the election means for US science.

News: The US election is monumental for science, say Nature readers ? here?s why

The possible benefits of ?poo milkshakes? for newborns, and how Tardigrades can withstand incredibly high levels of radiation.

Nature: ?Poo milkshake? boosts the microbiome of c-section babies

Nature: New species of tardigrade reveals secrets of radiation-resisting powers

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By the end of 2024 up to two billion people will have gone to the polls, in a pivotal year of elections around the globe. This is giving political scientists the chance to dive into each election in detail but also to compare the differing voting systems involved.

They hope understanding the advantages and drawbacks of the systems will help highlight whether some are more likely to promote democratic resilience or to stave off corrosive partisanship.

This is an audio version of our Feature: Which is the fairest electoral system? Mega-election year sparks debate

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Researchers have uncovered the scale of two ancient cities buried high in the mountains of Uzbekistan. The cities were thought to be there, but their extent was unknown, so the team used drone-mounted LiDAR equipment to reveal what was hidden beneath the ground. The survey surprised researchers by showing one of the cities was six times bigger than expected. The two cities, called Tashbulak and Tugunbulak, were nestled in the heart of Central Asia?s medieval Silk Road, suggesting that highland areas played an important role in trade of the era.

Research Article: Frachetti et al.

Video: Uncovering a lost mountain metropolis

How children's? movements resemble water vapour, and why coastal waters may be a lot dirtier than we thought.

Research Highlight: Kids in the classroom flow like water vapour

Research Highlight: Sewage lurks in coastal waters ? often unnoticed by widely used test

A team at Google Deepmind has demonstrated a way to add a digital watermark to AI-generated text that can be detected by computers. As AI-generated content becomes more pervasive, there are fears that it will be impossible to tell it apart from content made by humans. To tackle this, the new method subtly biases the word choices made by a Large Language Model in a statistically detectable pattern. Despite the changes to word choice, a test of 20 million live chat interactions revealed that users did not notice a drop in quality compared to unwatermarked text.

Research Article: Dathathri et al.

News: DeepMind deploys invisible ?watermark? on AI-written text

What one researcher found after repeatedly scanning her own brain to see how it responded to birth-control pills, and how high-altitude tree planting could offer refuge to an imperilled butterfly species.

Nature: How does the brain react to birth control? A researcher scanned herself 75 times to find out

Nature: Mexican forest ?relocated? in attempt to save iconic monarch butterflies

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In this episode:

A type of binary-system known as a microquasar has been found to be firing out ?-rays at high energy-levels, which may make it a candidate to be a long-theorized natural particle-accelerator known as a PeVatron. These objects are thought to be a source of galactic cosmic rays, the origins of which are currently a mystery.

Understanding how this microquasar works could also help researchers learn more about full-sized quasars ? monstrous objects centred around supermassive black holes, which are too distant to study easily.

Research Article: Alfaro et al.

News and Views: High-altitude particle detector spots a second Galactic microquasar

The comb jellies caught fusing their bodies, and an ancient burial site reveals that Classical accounts of Scythian culture appear to be true.

Research Highlight: Two comb jellies fuse their bodies and then act as one

Research Highlight: Evidence of dead people posed on dead horses found in ancient tomb

Researchers have developed a modified insulin-molecule that varies its level of activity depending on blood-glucose levels. It?s hoped that this ?smart? insulin could one day help those with diabetes regulate their blood sugar more easily.

Many people with diabetes rely on regular insulin injections, but because blood-sugar levels can be difficult to predict it can be hard to select the correct dose. This can lead to hypoglycaemia ? a life-threateningly low level of glucose. To overcome this, a team created a modified form of insulin with a switch that activates the molecule when glucose levels are high, and deactivates it when levels are low. This insulin-molecule was effective at maintaining correct blood glucose in animal models, and may eventually help lessen diabetes-related complications in humans.

Research Article: Hoeg-Jensen et al.

News and Views: Smart insulin switches itself off in response to low blood sugar

Ancient DNA confirms that infamous lions hunted humans and a variety of game, and a new technique can sequence a cell?s DNA and pinpoint its proteins, without cracking it open.

Nature: Famed lions? full diet revealed by DNA ? and humans were among their prey

Nature: ?Phenomenal? tool sequences DNA and tracks proteins ? without cracking cells open

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Researchers have developed a graphene ?tongue? that uses AI to tell the subtle differences between drinks. Graphene has long been sought after as a chemical sensor, but tiny variations between devices have meant that it couldn?t be used very reliably. The team behind the ?tongue? got around this problem by training an AI to tell the difference between similar liquids regardless of variations between graphene devices. They hope that their work shows that it?s possible to use ?imperfect? chemical sensors to get accurate readings and that the ?tongue? will be able to help detect problems with food.

Research Article: Pannone et al.

A 3D-printed optical microscope that can image biological samples with ultrahigh resolution, and how newly-hatched sea turtles dig their way up to the beach.

Research Highlight: A ?Swiss army knife? microscope that doesn?t break the bank

Research Highlight: Baby sea turtles ?swim? up from buried nests to the open air

Studies of migrating Pacific salmon have revealed that these animals transport thousands of tonnes of nutrients and kilograms of contaminants from the ocean to freshwater ecosystems. It?s been known that as the fish return to their freshwater spawning grounds from the sea they bring with them both nutrients and contaminants, but the impact of each has largely been studied separately. A new study combines datasets to estimate that over 40 years, the levels of nutrients these fish carry have increased at a proportionally higher rate than the contaminants, but the toxins could nevertheless be present at concerning levels to the animals that eat them.

Research Article: Brandt et al.

News and Views: Salmon?s moveable feast of nutrients with a side order of contaminants

Flora Graham from the Nature Briefing joins us to talk about the winners of this year?s science Nobel Prizes.

News: Medicine Nobel awarded for gene-regulating ?microRNAs?

News: Physics Nobel scooped by machine-learning pioneers

News: Chemistry Nobel goes to developers of AlphaFold AI that predicts protein structures

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Physicists have identified new forms of ?-ray radiation created inside thunderclouds, and shown that levels of ?-ray production are much higher on Earth than previously thought.

Scientists already knew about two types of ?-ray phenomena in thunderclouds ? glows that last as long as a minute and high-intensity flashes that come and go in only a few millionths of a second. Now, researchers have identified that these both occur more frequently than expected, and that previously undetected ?-ray types exist, including flickering flashes that share characteristics of the other two types of radiation.

The researchers hope that understanding more about these mysterious phenomena could help explain what initiates lightning, which often follows these ?-ray events.

Research Article: Østgaard et al.

Research Article: Marisaldi et al.

Nature: Mysterious form of high-energy radiation spotted in thunderstorms

Ancient arrowheads reveal that Europe's oldest battle likely featured warriors from far afield, and why the dwarf planet Ceres?s frozen ocean has deep impurities.

Research Highlight: Bronze Age clash was Europe?s oldest known interregional battle

Research Highlight: A dwarf planet has dirty depths, model suggests

Researchers have published the most complete wiring diagram, or ?connectome? of the fruit fly?s brain, which includes nearly 140,000 neurons and 54.5 million connections between nerve cells.

The map, made from the brain of a single female fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), reveals over 8,400 neuron types in the brain, and has enabled scientists to learn more about the brain and how it controls aspects of fruit fly behaviour.

The FlyWire connectome: neuronal wiring diagram of a complete fly brain

Nature: Largest brain map ever reveals fruit fly's neurons in exquisite detail

How researchers created an elusive single-electron bond between carbon atoms, and why bigger chatbots get over-confident when answering questions.

Nature: Carbon bond that uses only one electron seen for first time: ?It will be in the textbooks?

Nature: Bigger AI chatbots more inclined to spew nonsense ? and people don't always realize

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The world's fastest supercomputer, known as Frontier, is located at the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. This machine churns through data at record speed, outpacing 100,000 laptops working simultaneously.

With nearly 50,000 processors, Frontier was designed to push the bounds of human knowledge. It's being used to create open-source large language models to compete with commercial AI systems, simulate proteins for drug development, help improve aeroplane engine design, and more.

This is an audio version of our Feature: A day in the life of the world?s fastest supercomputer

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In this episode:

Children with Down?s syndrome have a 150-fold increased risk of developing leukaemia than those without the condition. Now, an in-depth investigation has revealed that changes to genome structures in fetal liver stem-cells appear to be playing a key role in this increase.

Down?s syndrome is characterised by cells having an extra copy of chromosome 21. The team behind this work saw that in liver stem-cells ? one of the main places blood is produced in a growing fetus ? this extra copy results in changes in how DNA is packaged in a nucleus, opening up areas that are prone to mutation, including those known to be important in leukaemia development.

The researchers hope their work will be an important step in understanding and reducing this risk in children with Down?s syndrome.

Research Article: Marderstein et al.

News and Views: Childhood leukaemia in Down?s syndrome primed by blood-cell bias

How taking pints of beer off the table lowers alcohol consumption, and a small lizard?s ?scuba gear? helps it stay submerged.

Research Highlight: A small fix to cut beer intake: downsize the pint

Research Highlight: This ?scuba diving? lizard has a self-made air supply

How tiny crustaceans use ?smell? to find their home cave, and how atomic bomb X-rays could deflect an asteroid away from a deadly Earth impact.

Science: In the dark ocean, these tiny creatures can smell their way home

Nature: Scientists successfully ?nuke asteroid? ? in a lab mock-up

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Astronomers have spotted a pair of enormous jets emanating from a supermassive black hole with a combined length of 23 million light years ? the biggest ever discovered. Jets are formed when matter is ionized and flung out of a black hole, creating enormous and powerful structures in space. Thought to be unstable, physicists had theorized there was a limit to how large these jets could be, but the new discovery far exceeds this, suggesting there may be more of these monstrous jets yet to be discovered.

Research Article: Oei et al.

The knitted fabrics designed to protect wearers from mosquito bites, and the role that islands play in fostering language diversity.

Research Highlight: Plagued by mosquitoes? Try some bite-blocking fabrics

Research Highlight: Islands are rich with languages spoken nowhere else

Making metal alloys is typically a multi-step process that creates huge amounts of emissions. Now, a team demonstrates a way to create these materials in a single step, which they hope could significantly reduce the environmental burdens associated with their production. In a lab demonstration, they use their technique to create an alloy of nickel and iron called invar ? a widely-used material that has a high carbon-footprint. The team show evidence that their method can produce invar to a quality that rivals that of conventional manufacturing, and suggest their technique is scalable to create alloys at an industrial scale.

Research article: Wei et al.

How AI-predicted protein structures have helped chart the evolution of a group of viruses, and the neurons that cause monkeys to ?choke? under pressure.

Nature News: Where did viruses come from? AlphaFold and other AIs are finding answers

Nature News: Why do we crumble under pressure? Science has the answer

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Ancient DNA analysis has further demonstrated that the people of Rapa Nui did not cause their own population collapse, further refuting a controversial but popular claim. Rapa Nui, also known as Easter island, is famous for its giant Moai statues and the contested idea that the people mismanaged their natural resources leading to ?ecological suicide?. Genomes sequenced from the remains of 15 ancient islanders showed no evidence of a sudden population crash, substantiating other research challenging the collapse idea.

Research Article: Moreno-Mayar et al.

News and Views: Rapa Nui?s population history rewritten using ancient DNA

News article: Famed Pacific island?s population 'crash' debunked by ancient DNA

The extinct bat-eating fish that bit off more than they could chew, and how manatee dung shapes an Amazonian ecosystem.

Research Highlight: Ancient fish dined on bats ? or died trying

Research Highlight: The Amazon?s gargantuan gardeners: manatees

Despite being a hugely-studied model organism, it seems that there?s still more to find out about the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, as researchers have discovered a new species of parasitoid wasp that infects the species. Unlike other parasitic wasps, this one lays its eggs in adult flies, with the developing larva devouring its host from the inside. The miniscule wasp was discovered by chance in an infected fruit fly collected in a Mississippi backyard and analysis suggests that despite having never been previously identified, it is widespread across parts of North America.

Research article: Moore et al.

How a dye that helps to give Doritos their orange hue can turn mouse tissues transparent, and an effective way to engage with climate-science sceptics.

Nature News: Transparent mice made with light-absorbing dye reveal organs at work

Nature News: How to change people?s minds about climate change: what the science says

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The often repeated claim that "80% of the world's biodiversity is found in the territories of Indigenous Peoples" appears widely in policy documents and reports, yet appears to have sprung out of nowhere. According to a group of researchers, including those from Indigenous groups, this baseless statistic could be undermining the conservation efforts of the Indigenous People it's meant to support and prevent further work to really understand how best to conserve biodiversity.

Two of the authors joined us to discuss how this statistic gained traction, the harm it could cause, and how better to support the work of Indigenous Peoples.

Read more in a Comment article from the authors: No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories

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Researchers have made a big step towards the creation of the long theorized nuclear clock, by getting the most accurate measurement of the frequency of light required to push thorium nuclei into a higher energy state. Such a timekeeper would differ from the best current clocks as their ?tick? corresponds to the energy transitions of protons and neutrons, rather than electrons. Nuclear clocks have the potential to be more robust and accurate than current systems, and could offer researchers new insights into fundamental forces present within atomic nuclei.

Research Article: Zhang et al.

News and Views: Countdown to a nuclear clock

Nature News: ?Nuclear clock? breakthrough paves the way for super-precise timekeeping

Editorial: Progress on nuclear clocks shows the benefits of escaping from scientific silos

The star that got partially shredded by a supermassive black hole, not just once, but twice, and how heatwaves could mangle bumblebees? sense of smell.

Research Highlight: This unlucky star got mangled by a black hole ? twice

Research Highlight: Bumblebees? sense of smell can?t take the heat

By harnessing T cells to fine-tune the inflammation response, researchers have limited the damage caused by spinal injury in mice, an approach they hope might one day translate into a human therapy. Following injury to the central nervous system, immune cells rush to the scene, resulting in a complex array of effects, both good and bad. In this work researchers have identified the specific kind of T cells that amass at the site, and used them to create an immunotherapy that helps the mice recover more quickly from injuries by slowing damage to neurons.

Research article: Gao et al.

How unprecedented floods in Brazil have helped and hindered paleontologists, and the ?AI scientist? that does everything from literature review through to manuscript writing, to an extent.

Nature News: The race to save fossils exposed by Brazil?s record-setting floods

Nature News: Researchers built an ?AI Scientist? ? what can it do?

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