Volume 627 Issue 8004, 21 March 2024

Measurement matters, but should not detract from the reality that humans are altering Earth systems.

Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected. More and better data are urgently needed.

Ornaments are positioned near the lower jaw and to the sides of the head of people buried at a site in Turkey.

Cost-saving strategy increases early detection of congenital cytomegalovirus, which can cause developmental problems if left untreated.

A hat-like prosthesis helps the invertebrates to swim more efficiently and can be used to carry ocean sensors.

Scientists controlled a hydrogen atom with electric fields to derive a highly precise estimate of the Rydberg constant.

Javier Milei’s actions after taking office have research institutions facing shutdown.

Astrophysicist Avi Loeb says that an interstellar meteor showered Earth with particles. At a planetary-science conference this week, researchers begged to differ.

A Dune-loving worm palaeontologist makes the case that worms have been just as important on Earth as they are in the blockbuster film.

OpenAI’s debut of its impressive Sora text-to-video tool has raised important questions.

Some large language models harbour hidden biases that cannot be removed using standard methods.

Semaglutide reduces weight and fat accumulation associated with the antiretroviral regimen that keeps HIV at bay.

AI tools that can come up with protein structures at the push of a button should be used safely and ethically, say researchers in the field.

A burgeoning technique called time-resolved cryo-EM is granting insights into the tiny motors and devices that power life.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when thinking about the damage that might be wrought by global warming — but that is missing the point.

Documentary reveals how Black US scholars shaped today’s mathematics community and provides hope for the future.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Zoologist whose understanding of chimpanzee behaviours has helped to assure their survival.

Many with the condition have found ways around their health problems, but they say more employer support is needed.

Research institutions are under siege from cybercriminals and other digital assailants. How do you make sure you don’t let them in?

Marine biologist Gabriel Renato Castro cultivates compounds from cyanobacteria to support agriculture and the environment.

It has been argued that human culture rests on a unique ability to learn from others more than we could possibly learn alone in a lifetime. Two studies show that we share this ability with bumblebees and chimpanzees.

The 1964 discovery of Epstein–Barr virus shed light on factors that contribute to human cancer. Subsequent studies set the stage for finding ways to diagnose and treat cancer, and revealed how immune defences control viral infection.

Complex magnetic structures called skyrmions have been generated on a nanometre scale and controlled electrically — a promising step for fast, energy-efficient computer hardware systems that can store large amounts of data.

Why do several species of whale experience menopause, and why does the phenomenon occur at all? Analysing whale data might help to answer these questions and shed light on why menopause evolved in humans.

A trial that took mobile health services to rural Sierra Leone finds that this initiative increased COVID-19 vaccine uptake. But more must be done to expand the coverage of health services in low-income countries.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

An array of robots has been set up so that pushes between them produce movements that do not conform to the usual laws of motion. Fascinating behaviour emerges from these interactions: wave phenomena known as solitons.

By analysing the chemical abundance differences of pairs of co-moving stars born together, it is found that about 8% show chemical signatures that indicate ingestion of planetary material.

Dimorphos ejecta plume properties were revealed by the observations from the LICIACube cube satellite, which was deployed 15  days in advance of the impact of DART.

A micro-fabricated Penning trap that operates at a 3 T magnetic field demonstrates full quantum control of an ion and the ability to transport the ion arbitrarily in the trapping plane above the chip.

Turbulent energy cascades can be arrested by non-dissipative viscosities, resulting in pattern formation at intermediate length scales.

Wafer-scale realization of a nanoscale magnetic tunnel junction hosting a single, ambient skyrmion enables its large readout, efficient switching, and compatibility with lateral manipulation, and thereby provides the backbone for all-electrical skyrmionic device architectures.

A local driving mechanism for solitons that accelerates both solitons and antisolitons in the same direction, called non-reciprocal driving, is introduced, showing a subtle interplay between non-reciprocity and topological solitons and providing waveguiding and wave-processing possibilities for other fields.

We leverage advances in integrated photonics to generate low-noise microwaves with an optical frequency division architecture that can be low power and chip integrated.

A miniaturized optical frequency division system that could transfer the generation of microwaves, with superior spectral purity, to a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor-compatible integrated photonic platform is demonstrated showing potential for large-volume, low-cost manufacturing for many applications.

We demonstrate an all-optical, mode-locking, Kerr-comb frequency division method that provides a chip-scale microwave source that is extremely versatile, accurate, stable and has ultralow noise, using only a single continuous-wave laser.

We demonstrate that self-enhanced mobility offers a simple physical mechanism for pattern formation in living systems and, more generally, in other active matter systems near the boundary of fluid- and solid-like behaviours.

Artificial intelligence-based forecasting improves the reliability of predicting extreme flood events in ungauged watersheds, with predictions at five days lead time that are as good as current systems are for same-day predictions.

An analysis of tree survival data from forest sites worldwide shows that in the tropics, rare tree species experience stronger stabilizing density dependence than common species, wheras no correlation of stabilizing density dependence and abundance exists in the temperate zone.

Bumblebees can learn how to open a two-step puzzle box by observing another trained bee, indicating that these insects can use social learning to acquire a behaviour too complex to otherwise be learnt through individual trial and error.

A comparative analysis tests competing evolutionary hypotheses in toothed whales in which menopause has evolved many times as females extended their overall lifespan but not their reproductive lifespan, increasing their opportunity for intergenerational help without increasing intergenerational reproductive competition.

The Chinese Liver Cancer Atlas project depicts a panoramic genomic landscape of hepatocellular carcinoma, covering candidate coding and non-coding drivers, mutational signatures, extrachromosomal circular DNA, subclonal catastrophic events and detailed evolutionary history.

The demethylase KDM5C, mutations in which often lead to intellectual disability, is identified as a crucial player in regulating the precise timing of neurodevelopment together with the WNT signalling pathway.

A synaptic neuron and astrocyte program (SNAP) varies among healthy humans, may shape interindividual differences in synapses and plasticity, and is undermined in schizophrenia and with advancing age.

A cluster randomized controlled trial in Sierra Leone shows that targeting access to vaccines in remote areas increases uptake, an approach that can be used to improve vaccine equity in developing countries.

Both the yeast and hyphal forms of Candida albicans enable colonization of the mammalian gut, with hyphal cells secreting the toxin candidalysin to inihibit bacteria and support fungal commensalism.

IL-10 exerts its anti-inflammatory activity in macrophages by increasing the expression of enzymes that promote fatty acid desaturation and downstream regulation of the transcription factor REL.

Transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility analyses of naive and transplanted colon cancer organoids in a mouse model reveal a key role for the transcription factor SOX17 in establishing a permissive immune environment for tumour cells.

A high baseline of intratumoural macrophages and regulatory T cells is associated with better outcomes in patients with non-small cell lung cancer treated with atezolizumab plus tiragolumab, but not with atezolizumab alone.

Analyses of single epithelial cells from early-stage lung adenocarcinoma and normal lung identifies a population of intermediate cells that may have an increased likelihood of transforming to tumour cells after injury such as tobacco exposure.

Incomplete duplication of the C-rich telomeric repeat strand by lagging-strand DNA synthesis is counteracted by DNA synthesis mediated by CST–polymerase α-primase.

A multidimensional proteomics analysis of the interactions between around 2,000 nuclear proteins and over 80 modified dinucleosomes representing promoter, enhancer and heterochromatin states provides insights into how chromatin states are decoded by chromatin readers.

Global profiling of hyper-reactive tryptophan sites across whole proteomes using tryptophan chemical ligation by cyclization (Trp-CLiC) reveals a systematic map of tryptophan residues that participate in cation–π interactions, including functional sites that can regulate protein-mediated phase-separation processes.