Volume 637 Issue 8048, 30 January 2025

In a year that will see many AI achievements and battles, let’s not forget that not all AI research makes the front pages.

Looking at energy systems from resource extraction to end-use, not just individual components, can help.

First estimate of its type shows that cultivated seaweed beds can accumulate as much carbon as some natural ecosystems.

Myostatin, which blocks muscle development, unexpectedly has an effect on ovulation in female mice.

Seeds, fruit stones and other remnants hidden in a Sydney barracks in the nineteenth century show residents’ deviation from the standard diet.

If one animal urinates, others are likely follow, according to a study of captive apes.

The new president has signed decrees designed to shift the US government’s stance on climate and public health.

The president-elect quickly nominated confidantes with a focus on AI, but their recommendations for the rest of science remain unclear.

Mice injected with a microRNA molecule lived longer and had fewer markers of ageing, but it’s not yet known if the treatment would work in people.

Despite stock-market jitters, firms in the sector continue to make progress — and to score hundreds of millions of dollars in investments.

In the aftermath of deadly blazes in Los Angeles, researchers also suggest ways to make homes more resilient.

Weight-loss medicines such as Ozempic might raise a person’s likelihood of developing conditions including arthritis.

Researchers are investigating who — or what — cut ancient tunnels in sandstone in Brazil and nearby nations.

The human genome encodes potentially thousands of tiny proteins that were previously overlooked. The search is on to find out what they do.

Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg’s posthumously published memoir details a swashbuckling life in physics.

Artwork created between 1945 and the 1990s captures a world in the throes of sweeping technological change.

The Nobel prizewinner used quantum and molecular mechanics to model the dynamics of complex chemical systems.

A group of scientists who are experts at spotting fraudulent research outline five essential steps to combat industrialized scientific misconduct.

How a Swiss lawsuit is recasting agriculture’s role in climate policy.

These strategies can transform your unsolicited applications from forgettable to fabulous.

From mines to metro stations, Mihai Emilian Popa analyses traces of the distant past.

Colour change in animals can occur over different timescales and aids communication and camouflage. Direct evidence of the associated energetic costs has been lacking, but now an experimental study of octopuses fills this gap.

A space mission to an asteroid has returned extremely delicate salts not previously observed in extraterrestrial materials. An analysis of these salts helps to establish the history of water in the early Solar System.

Evidence from 2,000-year-old DNA reveals that women in Celtic society stayed in their ancestral communities after marriage, whereas men were mobile, and that the southern coast of Britain was a hotspot for cultural exchange.

Energy-storage devices called capacitors deliver power rapidly, but the amount of energy they can absorb is limited. Deliberately disordered electric dipoles in ‘antiferroelectric’ capacitor materials could solve this problem.

Behavioural experiments in shell-dwelling cichlid fish reveal evolutionary adaptations in parents and offspring that control the timing of emergence from the nest.

A groundbreaking imaging method for tracking salt inside plant cells has rewritten knowledge of how roots handle toxic levels of sodium ions. The findings might aid efforts to boost plant resilience to stress driven by high levels of salt.

This Perspective explores five ways in which cell atlases are revealing valuable biological insights, and how they are poised to provide considerable benefits in the coming years.

Samples from the asteroid (101955) Bennu, returned by the OSIRIS-REx mission, include sodium-bearing phosphates and sodium-rich carbonates, sulfates, chlorides and fluorides formed during evaporation of a late-stage brine.

Van der Waals (Cr,Bi)₂Te₃, synthesized by non-equilibrium molecular beam epitaxy, is characterized by magnetotransport measurements and shown to be a semimetallic Weyl ferromagnet, with Fermi surface composed of two Weyl points and no irrelevant electronic states.

We report signatures of a generalized version of the anomalous Hall crystal in twisted bilayer–trilayer graphene, whose formation is driven by the moiré potential.

New topological states have been observed in rhombohedral graphene/hBN moiré superlattices, including fractional and extended quantum anomalous Hall effects, at ultra-low temperatures, demonstrating the rich quantum phenomena emerging from correlated electrons in topological flat bands.

An integrated electro-optic frequency comb that combines microwave integrated circuits with a photonic circuit based on lithium tantalate leads to broadband operation with low power requirements.

This study reports that incorporating non-polar nanodomains into antiferroelectrics greatly enhanced the energy density and efficiency.

Inorganic perovskite tandem solar cells using ligand evolution strategy achieve record efficiencies and durability, maintaining 80% of their initial efficiency under light/heat stresses, guiding the development of high-efficiency, stable inorganic perovskite tandem solar cells.

Enantioselective three-component radical cross-coupling is achieved using a thiamine-dependent enzyme and photoredox catalysis, giving access to ketone products with exceptional stereoselectivity.

Modelling of the evolution of atmospheric methane emissions from the 2022 Nord Stream subsea pipeline leaks shows that the event emitted the largest recorded amount of methane from a single transient event.

Using whole-Earth oscillations to constrain a 3D global model of attenuation for the whole mantle, low attenuation correlates with low velocity in the lower mantle, suggesting long-lived deep-mantle provinces.

An analysis of ancient mitochondrial and nuclear DNA shows evidence of matrilocal communities in Iron Age Britain.

Touch-guided tongue control in mice relies on a collicular mechanosensorimotor map, analogous to collicular visuomotor maps associated with visually guided orienting across many species.

A temporally asymmetric synaptic plasticity kernel results from bidirectional modifications of synaptic weights around the induction of a place field.

The temporal microstructure of the brain can multiplex distinct cognitive processes during sleep to support continuous learning.

Cryoelectron microscopy, cryoelectron tomography and proteomics are used to resolve the 96-nm modular repeat of axonemal doublet microtubules from both sperm flagella and epithelial cilia of the oviduct, brain ventricles and respiratory tract.

The development of a first-in-class non-covalent small-molecule inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 replication that targets the viral guanine-N7 methyltransferase NSP14 is reported.

Somatically determined preferential allelic expression of select genes that when mutated cause inborn errors of immunity corresponds with disease phenotypes, suggesting that the penetrance and expressivity of monogenic disorders is also dependent on the ‘transcriptotype’.

Liver X receptor drives epithelial Areg-mediated intestinal regeneration, while preventing tumour growth through adaptive immune responses.

Single-cell profiling of human prostate cancer and studies in mouse models show that macrophages expressing SPP1 mediate immunotherapeutic resistance through adenosine pathway activation and represent a potential target for future studies.

A study reporting the results of a clinical trial co-administering the GDF-15-blocking antibody visugromab with the anti-PD-1 antibody nivolumab demonstrates that neutralizing GDF-15 can overcome resistance to immune checkpoint inhibition in cancer.

This study demonstrates that cryo nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (CryoNanoSIMS) enables direct multi-elemental imaging at subcellular resolution of macro- and micronutrients or trace elements in plants and may provide insights into the in vivo roles of many transporters.

HORNET, a method that uses unsupervised machine learning and deep neural networks to analyse atomic force microscopy data enables structural determination of RNA molecules in multiple conformations.

Using a deep neural network and statistical analyses of atomic force microscopy images of individual RNA molecules enables the mapping of RNA conformational space in solution.

A structural study of native dystrophin glycoprotein complex from mouse skeletal muscle reveals an extended tower-like architecture that provides multiple binding sites on both sides of the membrane for signalling and effector molecules, reshaping our understanding of how the complex is assembled.

The detailed structure of the native dystrophin–glycoprotein complex provides mechanistic insights into mutations underlying muscular dystrophy.