Volume 628 Issue 8006, 4 April 2024

A reboot of the flagship Horizon Europe fund risks prioritizing a mindset geared towards security over open, future-facing research collaboration.

A move away from narrow assessment metrics such as publication records is welcome. Now planning and consultation is needed to make sure that replacements work better.

Soap bubbles bombarded with ultrasonic waves rise into mid-air and can survive being stabbed with a needle.

Horses buried near the royal complex of Westminster in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had been imported from as far away as Scandinavia.

Copper-containing ‘nanoclusters’ form glasses with an orderly structure and unusual properties.

Levels of a host of molecules in the cerebrospinal fluid reliably assess development of the disease.

The operation’s early success has made researchers hopeful that clinical trials for xenotransplanted organs will start soon.

The Simons Observatory will search for signs of gravitational waves that originated from the Big Bang.

This 2D material is only the second to exhibit the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect, and theorists are still debating how it works.

Lawsuit could roll back access to mifepristone, a drug widely used to induce abortion in the United States.

Carrying a baby creates some of the same epigenetic patterns on DNA seen in older people.

Machine-learning system trained on millions of human audio clips shows promise for detecting COVID-19 and tuberculosis.

A leaky blood–brain barrier and inflammation might account for some of the cognitive symptoms of COVID-19.

A lack of social interaction is linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and more. Researchers are unpicking how the brain mediates these effects.

With key long COVID trials yet to yield results, people with the condition are trying to change how clinical trials are done.

The evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety — and rising hysteria could distract us from tackling the real causes.

The aspiring astronaut turned theoretical physicist talks travelling, the accelerating expansion of the Universe, thinking beyond three dimensions and detecting gravitational waves.

The trailblazing palaeobotanist investigated how climate change affected Earth in the past — and firmly believed science should be used in its defence now.

Hurricane Otis yields lessons for researchers and policymakers on how to reduce risks in the face of inequality.

As X wanes, researchers are turning to Reddit for insights and data, and to better connect with the public.

Artificial electron donors and acceptors expand researchers’ metabolic engineering options — if only cells would cooperate.

Geographer Muh Aris Marfai collects reference data for Indonesia’s coastal areas to prepare for the impacts of climate change.

The quality of a bird’s song during courtship can influence whether a male is selected as a mate. An innovative approach using machine learning offers a way to analyse the characteristics of birdsong.

A smart adhesive patch that wicks sweat away from electronics embedded in its centre offers comfortable and reliable sensing of the wearer’s biometrics or environment without the risk of perspiration damaging the devices.

A population of neurons that engages mechanisms of the innate immune system during memory formation has been uncovered in mice. Surprisingly, inflammatory signalling might pave the way for long-term memory.

The idea that three different free radicals could be used together to carry out specific steps in a chemical reaction has long been implausible. A ‘radical sorting’ strategy now achieves this feat to make organic molecules.

Depleting an expanding pool of aberrant stem cells in aged mice using antibody therapy has been shown to rebalance blood cell production, diminish age-associated inflammation and strengthen acquired immune responses.

Words and images experienced by an infant wearing sensors during their daily life have led to efficient machine learning, pointing to the power of multimodal training signals and to the potentially exploitable statistics of real-life experience.

The interplay between cryo-electron microscopy and cryo-electron tomography to define complex macromolecular assemblies and visualize them in situ is explored.

JWST/NIRSpec observations of Abell2744-QSO1 show a high black-hole-to-host mass ratio in the early Universe, which indicates that we are seeing the black hole in a phase of rapid growth, accreting at 30% of the Eddington limit.

Spatial and kinematic analysis of the solar neighbourhood shows that the Radcliffe Wave, a wave-shaped chain of star-forming gas clouds, is oscillating through the Galactic plane while also drifting radially away from the Galactic Centre.

By stabilizing a stationary giant quantum vortex in superfluid ⁴He and introducing a minimally invasive way to characterize the vortex flow, intricate wave–vortex interactions are shown to simulate black hole ringdown physics.

Fidelity benchmarking of an analogue quantum simulator reaches a high-entanglement regime where exact classical simulation of quantum systems becomes impractical, and enables a new method for evaluating the mixed-state entanglement of quantum devices.

Through inelastic light scattering chiral spin-2 long-wavelength magnetorotons are observed, revealing chiral graviton modes in fractional quantum Hall states and aiding in understanding the quantum metric impacts in topological correlated systems.

Incorporation of a ‘liquid diode’ into a wearable electronic platform enhances comfort and stability by shunting away sweat as it accumulates.

A study presents a technique to sandwich 3D perovskite with 2D perovskites at the top and bottom, improving the performance and stability of perovskite solar cells.

We report a strategy that yields thermally and hydrothermally stable silicates by expansion of a one-dimensional silicate chain with an intercalated silylating agent that separates and connects the chains.

We use bimolecular homolytic substitution catalysis to sort an electrophilic radical and a nucleophilic radical across an unactivated alkene, accelerating access to pharmaceutically relevant C(sp³)-rich molecules and defining a mechanistic approach for alkene dialkylation.

Heat flows through thin, crack-like geo-compartments are shown to purify previously mixed compounds and enhance their reactivity, providing a selective mechanism for separating molecules relevant to the chemical origins of life.

A detailed analysis of male song structure in zebra finches shows how females use particular features of songs as indicators of male quality in species that learn only one song.

In Caenorhabditis tropicalis, selective expression of genetic alleles from one parent but not the other can arise from maternally inherited small transcripts acting via the PIWI-interacting RNA host defence pathway.

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for 233 circulating metabolites from 33 cohorts reveals more than 400 loci and suggests probable causal genes, providing insights into metabolic pathways and disease aetiology.

Through modelling, neural recordings and behavioural experiments, a study shows that individual electric fish use electrical pulses of conspecifics to extend their electrolocation range, discriminate objects and increase information transmission.

Learning results in persistent double-stranded DNA breaks, nuclear rupture and release of DNA fragments and histones within hippocampal CA1 neurons that, following TLR9-mediated DNA damage repair, results in their recruitment to memory circuits.

A microglial state, featuring lipid droplets and secretion of neurotoxic factors, is shown to be most prominent in people with Alzheimer’s disease who have the APOE4 genotype.

Antibody-mediated depletion of myeloid-biased haematopoietic stem cells in aged mice restores characteristic features of a more youthful immune system.

A new technology for proteome-scale assessment of human exoproteome–microbiome interactions exposes an extensive network of transkingdom connectivity.

In a mouse model of enteric pathogen infection, tryptophan metabolites protect against infection via activation of dopamine receptor D2 and regulation of actin cytoskeletal organization in intestinal epithelial cells.

In Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the fitness cost of rifampicin resistance is partially due to excessive RNA polymerase pausing and is rescued by mutations in the pro-pausing transcription factor NusG.

Blocking mitochondrial complex I in pro-inflammatory microglia protects the central nervous system against neurotoxic damage and improves functional outcomes in vivo in an animal disease model.

A study provides evidence for a shared lymphatic circuit that connects the posterior eye and the brain, allowing the generation of immune responses to protect the CNS against pathogens and tumours following intravitreal immunization.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of human RAD51 in complex with the nucleosome show that RAD51 can adopt two conformations—rings and filaments—and reveal how RAD51 binds to the nucleosome through its N-terminal lobe domain.