Volume 644 Issue 8076, 14 August 2025

As federal support vanishes for research addressing the root causes of health disparities in the United States, we are left with a dangerous void and an urgent need to rethink science funding.

Predictions of global warming are uncertain. That’s why we need to keep finding out how the climate system works.

Ice coverage is shrinking on Heard Island — a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a haven of biodiversity.

A nanoscopic machine transforms a molecular chain into interlocking loops.

In creatures that walk on land, a protein called Slurp1 protects skin cells from stress.

Experiments identify a bacterium as the cause of sea-star wasting disease, which has devastated populations along the western coast of North America.

Results from early-stage trial show that 80% of participants who received one of two HIV vaccine candidates produced antibodies against viral proteins.

More than two-thirds of people polled had witnessed sexual harassment or assault on the ice.

The system will save time spent on processing satellite data, researchers say — but they hope the tech firm will share more about how it works.

Inflammation from the respiratory infections seems to be the culprit, study in mice finds.

Trial compared effects of diets with differing levels of food processing.

Eight of its journals will publish papers open access each year they earn sufficient library revenue.

Having a lot of withdrawn papers will soon count against institutions but some warn the policy could create issues.

Physicists are developing laboratory tests to give insight into the true nature of gravity.

US researchers were hopeful when Donald Trump appointed Michael Kratsios to a top science position, but many say he has contributed to the chaos. Can he turn things around?

A portrait of Nobel prizewinner Luis Alvarez explores his scientific achievements without shying away from his contentious character.

Smith’s invention enabled the precise capture of light in electronic form, and has transformed science, medicine and daily life.

Indigenous scholars set out eight steps to stop marginalization in academia and to enable a shared Indigenous agenda in science.

Far from being relics of the past, atomic bombs must be managed as the embodiments of human-made catastrophe that they are.

Woodstock Bio² + Night Science aimed to encourage collaborations through creativity. The walk-on music for presentations was fun, too.

Spreadsheet software can be frustrating, but adopting some helpful habits can improve its effectiveness.

Jennifer Khattar and Yang Mei the dog trek through the forests of Taiwan to understand how they develop.

A nano-engineered structure that levitates when a laser of a similar intensity to sunlight is shone on it could help scientists to study a hard-to-reach region of the atmosphere.

The discovery of compounds that inhibit biosynthesis of the pheromone that triggers locust swarming suggests a fresh approach for controlling these pests.

Efforts to engineer a river to reduce flood risk might have unintentionally contributed to severe erosion of the riverbed, worsening the impact of the flood.

Women with a rare type of ovarian cancer have prolonged survival after receiving immune-checkpoint blockade if their tumour cells carry a mutation in the gene PPP2R1A.

The periderm layers of plants form an outer protective barrier. If the periderm is broken, movement of the gases ethylene and oxygen triggers a healing process.

The Rio Conventions’ objectives can be met by transforming food systems to bend the curve of land degradation.

Assessment of the stellar obliquities of a sample of resolved protoplanetary disk systems indicates that one-third of Sun-like stars are born with misaligned planet-forming disks, suggesting that the origin of star–planet configurations, including many misaligned planetary orbits, may be primordial.

A photophoretic aircraft that can levitate via thermal transpiration is achieved under near-space conditions, providing a potential platform for climate sensing, communications and Martian exploration.

The synthesis, recovery and detailed characterization of bulk hexagonal diamond under high pressure and temperature conditions using precursor graphite carbon is described, demonstrating the first successful synthesis in the 100 µm to millimetre size range.

Mass number measurements of the molecular species produced when ions of actinium (Ac) and nobelium (No) are exposed to trace amounts of H₂O and N₂ demonstrate direct species identification using an atom-at-a-time technique for heavy elements.

Cytochrome P450 enzymes can be repurposed to catalyse asymmetric metal–hydride hydrogen atom transfer, a new-to-nature reaction.

Analysis of the 2021 Meuse River flood reveals potential erosion risks due to uneven river widening and subsoil variability, highlighting challenges for river engineering and flood mitigation in a changing climate.

Bedload can dominate river sediment flux after a major earthquake for a prolonged time period.

Iceberg calving can act as a submarine melt amplifier through excitation of transient internal waves.

Estimating lateral subsidies by river and groundwater using a global hydrology model and incorporating them into the conventional global humidity index reduces aridity in the receiving lowlands and better explains ecosystem patterns.

In locusts, the aggregation pheromone 4-vinylanisole is derived from dietary phenylalanine, and its production is dependent on two 4-vinylphenol methyltransferases that are potential targets for locust pest control.

Using sequencing and haplotype-resolved assembly of 65 diverse human genomes, complex regions including the major histocompatibility complex and centromeres are analysed.

Intermediate-coverage long-read sequencing in 1,019 diverse humans from the 1000 Genomes Project, representing 26 populations, enables the generation of comprehensive population-scale structural variant catalogues comprising common and rare alleles.

Gradients of cell recognition molecules wire a sensorimotor interface in Drosophila.

Neurons in the median preoptic nucleus that express the prostaglandin EP3 receptor produce prolonged hypothermic responses or hyperthermic responses, respectively, following brief activation or inhibition.

An organoid system comprising adult mouse hepatocytes, cholangiocytes and mesenchymal cells recapitulates liver morphology, biliary function and fibrotic pathology, providing a new model for studies of hepatic biology.

A study using Arabidopsis shows that plants can monitor the integrity of their outer barriers by sensing gas diffusion, enabling them to initiate wound repair to prevent water loss and pathogen entry.

Two distantly related methanogens shift the methanogenic pathway under nickel limitation, suggesting that methanogens adapt to changing bioavailability of nickel by rerouting electron flow between two different pathways.

Non-antibiotic drugs from a wide range of therapeutic classes can alter the ability of gut commensals to resist invasion by enteropathogens, a previously underappreciated side effect of such drugs.

An analysis of prescription medications shows that several non-antibiotic drugs, such as the heart medication digoxin, can reduce the immune response to pathogens and increase the risk of gastrointestinal infections by altering the composition of the microbiome.

Pathology-oriented multiplexing (PathoPlex) represents a framework for widespread access to multiplexed imaging and computational image analysis of clinical specimens at a relatively high throughput and subcellular resolution.

Rapid extracellular antibody profiling reveals a contribution of autoantibodies to the effectiveness of checkpoint immunotherapy for cancer.

Inactivating PPP2R1A mutations correlate with better survival after immune checkpoint blockade in patients with ovarian clear cell carcinoma, suggesting that targeting the phosphatase 2A (PP2A) pathway may represent an effective startegy for improving responses to immunotherapy.

The chromatin-remodelling enzyme ATRX and the transcription factor HNF4A are identified as pivotal regulators of colonic epithelial identity, with roles in metastasis in colorectal cancer.

Spatially segregated rRNA processing dictates nucleolar morphology and drives outward progression of pre-ribosomal RNA through nucleolar phases.