Volume 650 Issue 8102, 19 February 2026

Around the world, governments are demanding that research funding follow broader political priorities. They should be careful what they wish for.

The changes announced by a major UK science funder are putting scientists — and the future of research — in a difficult position.

Instead of trying to refine diagnoses, we should focus on how best to give people the care that they need.

Symptoms and organ damage abated in young children and teenagers whose conditions had resisted other treatments.

A 3D-printed robot has adjustable legs and joints that can switch from ‘elbows’ to ‘knees’.

Finding suggests that ‘blocking games’ were played in Europe centuries earlier than realized.

A virus that became integrated into the wasp genome long ago is useful for subduing moth larvae.

Latest batch of documents show researchers consulting the financier and sex offender on publications, visas and more.

Cases in fully vaccinated people are rare and usually mild, but are likely to become more common as exposure to the virus rises.

Although the government says the move will depoliticize US science, some researchers say it will do the opposite.

Artificial-intelligence agents have their own social-media platform and are publishing AI-generated research papers on their own preprint server.

Policy follows establishment of a national database of papers retracted for serious misconduct.

Rush for funds to relocate laboratories to Europe is latest sign of a US brain drain.

Study suggests moderate caffeine intake might reduce dementia risk and slow cognitive decline.

Most research on autism focuses on younger people, but some studies suggest older adults face increased risks — and perhaps benefits.

Scientists and medical experts are countering climate denialism, vaccine scepticism and wellness pseudoscience on social media.

Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, plant biologists and novelists have all grappled with the mysteries of conscious experience, to an uncertain end.

An ambitious book unravels the common themes driving people’s thirst for knowledge — matters that still resonate today.

Measuring trust isn’t enough. Furthering knowledge about the institutions and norms of science is the best way to build credibility.

To ensure that AI advances benefit everyone, scientific institutions must prioritize collaborative, mission-driven structures instead of chasing top talent with astronomical compensation.

Prepping for an interview with an author? Keep it simple, meet in person if possible, and stick to your subject, say five writers who regularly talk to scientists about their research.

An archive system that encodes information in modified optical properties of glass could be a fast, efficient way to store huge quantities of data.

In life-threatening sepsis, the same signalling pathway that protects young mice from succumbing to organ dysfunction exacerbates damage and lethality in older animals.

Analyses of a Swedish tree-ring archive suggest that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide has lowered soil-nitrogen supply, which could cap carbon storage by land ecosystems.

Viral DNA that is usually dismissed when sequencing the human genome could help to uncover useful information about complex diseases.

Neurons in the bird eye’s inner retina lack a blood supply. Finding how these neurons function without oxygen reveals a role for an enigmatic eye structure.

This Perspective offers a roadmap for tackling the challenges of the facsimile problem, moral multidimensionality and moral pluralism in large language models.

A new platform comprising large-scale 2D arrays of quantum dots patterned with sub-nanometre precision, with each quantum dot defined by tens of phosphorus atoms doped into silicon, allows for analogue simulation of quantum materials on arbitrary lattices.

Optical switching of a moiré Chern ferromagnet is demonstrated in twisted molybdenum ditelluride bilayers using continuous-wave circularly polarized light, paving the way for dissipationless spintronics and quantized Chern junction devices.

Tunable moiré WSe₂ bilayers realize Hubbard-model physics, exhibiting antiferromagnetism, strange metals and superconducting domes, offering a controllable platform to study high-transition-temperature superconductivity.

This study of magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene moiré superconductors using scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy identifies two energy gaps that develop from many-body resonance in this highly tunable class of materials.

A spin-wave ladder architecture based on single-crystal yttrium iron garnet requiring only one external magnetic bias for manufacturing tunable compact filters using modern micromachining fabrication methods is described, demonstrating applications in future communications systems.

An optical archival storage technology based on femtosecond laser direct writing in glass addresses the practical demands of archival storage.

A strategy compatible with a broad range of materials by precisely manipulating optofluidic interactions within a confined 3D space to control the assembly of colloidal microparticles/nanoparticles is demonstrated, enabling the precise manufacture of complex microstructures/nanostructures.

A new Matteson-type homologation method inserts carbon units into boronic esters using electrochemistry.

Nitrogen isotope tree-ring chronologies show that rising atmospheric CO₂ has reduced nitrogen availability in boreal forests in Sweden, suggesting that elevated atmospheric CO₂ is causing oligotrophication in boreal forests.

Geochemical data from zircons show that subduction-like processes were operating contemporaneously with stagnant-lid-like processes at different locations as early as 4.4 billion years ago on the Hadean Earth.

Analysis of effect sizes of vegetation spillovers from protected areas in Australia shows that 71% of over 3,063 analysed protected areas had a positive spillover effect, and that these effects covary with protected area management type.

A hand stencil painted on a cave wall on a small island off the coast of Sulawesi more than 67,800 years ago suggests a very early occupation of Wallacea.

While the photoreceptor outer segments in the bird outer retina have access to oxygen, the inner retina operates under chronic anoxia, supported by anaerobic glycolysis in the retinal neurons.

Population-scale WGS reveals genetic determinants of persistent EBV DNA, linking immune regulation—especially antigen processing and MHC class II variation—to EBV persistence and heterogeneous disease associations.

Using two-photon microscopy with a panoramic virtual reality setup, how head direction cells in larval zebrafish integrate visual landmarks and optic flow to track orientation is revealed.

Humans and monkeys integrated experiential and observational evidence during a two-player task, and the anterior cingulate cortex combined the information sources into a unified neural belief representation that explains behavioural asymmetries.

Single-neuron recordings in humans reveal largely separate content and context neurons whose coordinated activity flexibly places memory items in context.

HIV remission of more than 6 years was achieved in a patient with functional viral co-receptors after CCR5 wild-type/Δ32 allogeneic stem cell transplantation, providing evidence of other mechanisms that can be harnessed to attain long-term remission.

Development and application of the integrated linkage disequilibrium score (iLDS) reveals both selective pressures impacting the human gut microbiome and the mechanisms by which gut bacteria adapt to meet them.

Neutrophil-derived IL-1β has a role in preserving lipid stores during metabolic stress.

Disease course and pathology an infection may cause can change owing to the structural and functional physiological changes that accumulate with age, but therapy can be tailored accordingly; disease tolerance genes show antagonistic pleiotropy.

An intratumoural vaccination chimera reprograms tumour cells into an antigen-presenting state with restored anti-tumour immunity.

In colorectal cancer, therapeutic resistance is driven by MAPK-dependent epithelial cell plasticity.

Division of embryonic cells with an incomplete contractile ring occurs by a ratchet mechanism with repeated cycles of cytoplasmic stiffening, which stabilizes the contractile actin band, and fluidization, which enables band ingression.

A histone ubiquitin-dependent regulatory hub governs stimulus-dependent heterochromatin propagation, with important implications for understanding mechanisms governing rapid changes in the epigenetic landscape in physiology and disease.

In mice, a SPOCD1–TPR-dependent ‘nowhere-to-hide’ mechanism is required for complete non-stochastic piRNA-directed LINE1 DNA methylation by preventing transposons from escaping surveillance within heterochromatin.