Volume 648 Issue 8094, 18 December 2025

Nurturing research talent at community-rooted universities and colleges is a necessity, not a luxury.

Researchers will study the effects of the policy on young people’s mental health, social interactions and political engagement.

The German government has committed half a billion euros to research into long COVID and other post-infection syndromes.

Having placed artificial intelligence at the centre of its own economic strategy, China is driving efforts to create an international system to govern the technology’s use.

Just a year after the first AI-designed antibody was made, scientists say clinical trials are on the horizon.

Technology could offer longer protection against allergies than is possible with existing treatments.

The Sun’s fiery surface, a tattooed tardigrade, rare red lightning and more.

A fired public-health official, a mosquito breeder and a baby with a smile seen around the world. These are just a few of the remarkable people chosen for Nature’s 10.

Susan Monarez is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

Achal Agrawal is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

Tony Tyson is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

Precious Matsoso is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

Sarah Tabrizi is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

Mengran Du is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

Luciano Moreira is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

Liang Wenfeng is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

Yifat Merbl is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

KJ Muldoon is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

How the Trump administration caused seismic disruptions to the world’s premier scientific superpower.

In a world that can seem lacking in optimism, researchers share their opinions on books that stimulate thoughts — and actions — for a better future.

Controlled studies capture only a fraction of the effects of artificial intelligence. Economists should work with social scientists to find innovative ways to fully grasp this fast-moving field.

It might seem gross, but these materials are treasure troves for research.

Somphouthone Phimmachak studies amphibians and reptiles as one of the country’s few conservation researchers.

Highlights from News & Views published in 2025.

An assessment of the food hunted across the Amazon rainforest reveals its crucial role and how human pressures, particularly deforestation, threaten the resource.

Perovskites are promising materials for solar cells. A layer of dipolar molecules at the perovskite surface improves the efficiency of these devices.

Fossils newly discovered in Ethiopia indicate that previously unidentified foot bones belong to the ancient human relative Australopithecus deyiremeda.

Scientists discuss concerns that genetic manipulation could lead to disease outbreaks, and Nature is gifted an unusual scientific instrument, in our weekly dip into the archive.

Using genomic data, researchers have uncovered the origins and cultural practices of the people of Shimao, a 4,000-year-old fortified settlement in northern China.

In the high-pressure environments in which rocky planets form, their molten interiors can interact with their hydrogen atmospheres to release water.

Reanalysis of radiometric data from Cassini indicates that Titan does not contain a subsurface ocean, as strong tidal dissipation observed in its gravity field is not consistent with the presence of a liquid layer.

Gas-phase actinium monofluoride (AcF) has been produced and spectroscopically studied at the CERN-ISOLDE radioactive ion beam facility; the results highlight the potential of ²²⁷AcF for exceptionally sensitive searches of CP violation.

An 11-qubit atom processor comprising two precision-placed nuclear spin registers of phosphorus in silicon is shown to achieve state-of-the-art Bell-state fidelities of up to 99.5%.

An architecture inspired by Hopfield networks based on a programmable, stable, room-temperature optoelectronic oscillator-based photonics Ising machine is introduced that can be used to efficiently address optimization and combinatorics problems.

Scanning tunnelling microscopy is used to image pristine electrostatically defined quantum Hall edge states in graphene with high spatial resolution and demonstrate their interaction-driven restructuring.

A three-dimensional (3D) nanofabrication platform based on metalens-generated focal spot arrays is introduced to parallelize two-photon lithography beyond centimetre-scale write field areas, revealing the potential of 3D nanolithography towards wafer-scale production.

A dipolar-passivation strategy enables all-perovskite tandem solar cells with a power conversion efficiency of over 30%.

A modified Mn–PDP/HFIP catalyst that selectively oxidizes methylene C–H bonds in α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds is introduced; removing carboxylic acid additives and introducing HFIP suppresses undesired epoxidation with Mn-PDP, probably by promoting a more charged, chemoselective oxidation pathway.

Trends in global H₂ sources and sinks are analysed from 1990 to 2020, and a comprehensive budget for the decade 2010–2020 is presented.

Data provided by Amazonian peoples are used to estimate the value of wild animals as a source of food, including its spatial distribution and nutritional value, providing information that will be key for improved management of forest ecosystems in the region.

Discovery of a nearly complete skeleton of Huayracursor jaguensis, a Carnian dinosaur from the Northern Precordillera Basin in northwestern Argentina provides evidence of increased body size and early cervical elongation during the Late Triassic epoch.

3.4-million-year-old hominin fossils discovered in Ethiopia provide insight into the diet and locomotion of Australopithecus deyiremeda.

A newly compiled atlas of species-wide structural variants and gene-based and graph pangenomes derived from highly complete assemblies of genomes from 1,086 natural isolates enable integrative genome-scale studies of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Sequencing of 144 ancient genomes from Shimao city and its satellites presents pedigrees among tomb owners spanning up to four generations showing predominantly patrilineal descent structure across Shimao communities, and possibly sex-specific sacrificial rituals.

Experiments with human volunteers and macaques show that expectations produced by probabilistic cueing of future sensory inputs shape motor circuit dynamics in order to increase the efficiency of movement responses.

NextBrain is an open source, probabilistic atlas of the entire human brain, assembled using artificial-intelligence-enabled registration and segmentation methods to reconstruct the multimodal serial histology of five human half brains, and which can be used to automatically segment brain MRI scans into 333 regions.

In flowering plants, DNA–FD–14-3-3 recruits FT to the florigen activation complex both through DNA–FT interactions and by reducing liquid phase condensation of FD protein, which promotes dimerization, leading to FT recruitment.

This multi-omic longitudinal analysis of the healthy human peripheral immune system constructs the Human Immune Health Atlas and assembles data on immune cell composition and state changes with age, including responses to cytomegalovirus infection and influenza vaccination.

Cellular Z-RNAs generated during active virus infections are bona fide ZBP1 ligands, and position ZBP1-activated cell death as a host response to counter viral disruption of the cellular transcriptional machinery.

Analysis of the longest-lived mammal, the bowhead whale, reveals an improved ability to repair DNA breaks, mediated by high levels of cold-inducible RNA-binding protein.   

The results from the phase II NICHE trial on immunotherapy in mismatch-proficient colon cancer are presented.

Results of an early-phase breast cancer prevention trial demonstrate the potential for breast cancer prevention in premenopausal women with anti-progestin therapy by inducing epithelial–stromal remodelling and suppression of luminal progenitors.

Structural studies of 16 native yeast ribosomal small subunit processome structures provide insights into the mechanisms governing the transformation into a pre-40S particle.

Structures of GDP-bound MOR–G_i conformational states combined with pharmacological assays show an inverse correlation between ligand efficacy and GDP affinity, where agonists decrease GDP affinity, promoting GTP exchange, and antagonists increase GDP affinity, dampening activation, thus providing structural and mechanistic insights into G protein activation.