Volume 632 Issue 8026, 22 August 2024

In this traumatized region, exploring a rich history of scientific and medical problem-solving provides the context to imagine a better future.

The mother and father of a young child buried at the archaeological site of Paquimé, Mexico, were more closely related to each other than first cousins.

Degradation of the Amazon’s tree canopy is the main culprit, although the complete clearance of portions of the forest contributes too.

Therapy designed for one seems to have improved a young girl’s quality of life.

Doctored toad carcasses teach crocs to avoid eating the toxin-producing cane toad.

The threshold for survival in heat is lower than thought — researchers are using state-of-the-art climate chambers to explore when blistering conditions threaten life.

Artificial-intelligence developers are buying access to valuable data sets that contain research papers — raising uncomfortable questions about copyright.

Whistleblowers raise questions about the processing and sharing of raw data.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention also issued an emergency declaration as several countries see their first cases of the disease caused by the monkeypox virus.

Researchers from Afghanistan who found sanctuary around the world following the Taliban takeover in 2021 are struggling to settle in.

Hundreds of medical algorithms have been approved on basis of limited clinical data. Scientists are debating who should test these tools and how best to do it.

Many nations have embraced burning wood pellets to produce electricity — under the assumption that it is carbon neutral. But research shows this approach can boost greenhouse-gas emissions and threaten the health of local communities.

High-profile advances, such as anti-ageing drugs called senolytics, have sparked hope that old age and death could be postponed considerably, and have even fostered fantasies of eternal life. But the reality is more nuanced.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Visionary researcher helped to overturn the idea that all particles behave in the same way as their mirror images.

Building sustainable settlements on the water is a feasible option for climate adaptation, as long as people and ecosystems are protected.

The rising energy and environmental cost of the artificial-intelligence boom is fuelling concern. Green policy mechanisms that already exist offer a path towards a solution.

Many researchers describe public outreach as a labour of love, often carried out in their spare time. But some funders reward these activities.

The ERROR project offers researchers a bounty for spotting mistakes in published papers — a strategy borrowed from the software industry.

Geophysicist Natalia Cisternas embarked on a 37-day voyage to document microbes in a low-oxygen region of the Pacific Ocean.

Proteins have been designed that assemble in different ways depending on whether an ‘effector’ molecule is present — a demonstration of allostery, the phenomenon that enables switch-like control of protein functions in nature.

A decades-long survey of a nearby galaxy has detected signals consistent with ancient black holes that could explain dark matter — but the objects would have to be at least ten times more abundant to support the theory.

Neural activity in human brains rapidly restructures to reflect hidden relationships needed to adapt to a changing environment. Surprisingly, trial-and-error learning and verbal instruction induce similar changes.

Artificial neural networks become incapable of mastering new skills when they learn them one after the other. Researchers have only scratched the surface of why this phenomenon occurs — and how it can be fixed.

The problems of political planning in 80 countries, and chemistry’s contributions to archaeology, in this week’s snippets from Nature’s archive.

Genetic variants in RNU4-2, a gene in a part of the genome not usually in the spotlight, have been identified as the cause of a developmental disorder in a large number of individuals who previously lacked a diagnosis.

The results of the search for long-timescale microlensing events among the light curves of nearly 80 million stars located in the Large Magellanic Cloud indicate that there are no massive black holes in the Milky Way halo.

The exoplanet HD 189733b has a metal-enriched atmosphere with the possible presence of H₂O (13.4σ), CO₂ (11.2σ), CO (5σ) and H₂S (4.5σ).

A high-precision measurement of the shielding effects of multiple electrons on the nuclear magnetic moment is made possible by spectroscopy of hydrogen-like ⁹Be³⁺, which overcomes limitations from the nuclear structure.

Time-resolved measurements of the X-ray photoemission delay of core-level electrons using attosecond soft X-ray pulses from a free-electron laser can be used to determine the complex correlated dynamics of photoionization.

The pervasive problem of artificial neural networks losing plasticity in continual-learning settings is demonstrated and a simple solution called the continual backpropagation algorithm is described to prevent this issue.

Using normal and Josephson scanning tunnelling microscopy, chiral kagome superconductivity modulations with corresponding residual Fermi arcs are detected in KV₃Sb₅ and CsV₃Sb₅.

A mixed-dimensional hot-emitter transistor based on mixed-dimensional graphene/germanium Schottky junctions uses stimulated emission of heated carriers, achieving an ultralow subthreshold swing and a high negative differential resistance.

By using intercalative oxidation techniques, stable, stoichiometric and atomically thin single-crystalline Al₂O₃ films can be produced, which can be effectively used as a dielectric in top-gated field-effect transistors based on two-dimensional materials.

The catalytic asymmetric polyene cyclization of homofarnesol to ambrox is achieved using a highly Brønsted-acidic and confined imidodiphosphorimidate catalyst.

To facilitate more accurate long-term projections of primary production and export over oceanic low latitudes (LLs), we identified the first-order importance of the temperature dependence of remineralization of the LL nutrient reservoir, with this serving to enhance LL mesopelagic retention under warming.

Analysis of 20 chemical and morphological plant traits at diverse sites across 6 continents shows that the transition from semi-arid to arid zones is associated with an unexpected 88% increase in trait diversity.

Juvenile and adult skeletons of Middle Jurassic Krusatodon from the Isle of Skye, Scotland, show that this mouse-sized mammaliaform had longer development and lifespan than modern mammals of similar mass.

Genomic and phenomic screens of 827 wheat landraces from the A. E. Watkins collection provide insight into the wheat population genetic background, unlocking many agronomic traits and revealing haplotypes that could potentially be used to improve modern wheat cultivars.

The non-coding RNA RNU4-2, which is highly expressed in the developing human brain, is identified as a syndromic neurodevelopmental disorder gene, and, using RNA sequencing, 5′ splice-site use is shown to be systematically disrupted in individuals with RNU4-2 variants.

A task in which participants learned to perform inference led to the formation of hippocampal representations whose geometric properties reflected the latent structure of the task, indicating that abstract or disentangled neural representations are important for complex cognition.

In Drosophila, dopamine sets motivational state during mating by regulating the integration of competing drives in copulation decision neurons, potentially indicative of a more general role for control over neuronal integration time in the regulation of behavioural decisions.

A regional atlas of the ageing human brain—spanning six distinct anatomical regions from individuals with and without Alzheimer’s dementia—provides insights into cellular vulnerability, response and resilience to Alzheimer’s disease pathology

Cryo-electron microscopy reveals that the tomato immune receptor NRC2 forms oligomers to stabilize its inactive state and sequester it from activation, with inositol phosphates acting as immunoregulatory cofactors.

Edited bacteria were stably maintained in mouse gut for at least 42 days following the delivery of a base editor using an engineered phage-derived particle to modify Escherichia coli colonizing the gut.

Disruption of leukaemia inhibitory factor production from group 2 innate lymphoid cells prevents immune cells leaving the lungs to migrate to lymph nodes, leading to plasmacytoid dendritic cells becoming retained in the lungs following viral infection.

An ultra-rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing method is introduced that bypasses the need for traditional blood culture, demonstrating the potential to significantly reduce the turnaround time of reporting drug susceptibility profiles.

Serotonin has a role in ependymoma tumorigenesis through modifying histones and thereby regulating key transcription factors and activating specific oncogenic transcriptional networks in brain cells.

We investigate the de novo design of allostery and suggest that it can arise from global coupling of the energetics of protein substructures without optimized allosteric communication pathways, providing a roadmap for the design of switchable molecular systems.

The cryo-electron microscopy structures of the human noradrenaline transporter in both the apo state and bound to substrates or antidepressant drugs are resolved.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the noradrenaline transporter (NET) reveal binding modes of adrenaline, coordination of sodium and chloride ion binding and the binding sites and mechanisms of inhibition by conotoxin, bupropion and ziprasidone.