Volume 655 Issue 8123, 16 July 2026

Countries elsewhere must learn from the continent’s example and combat disease outbreaks by working together, not by closing borders.

Two gas giants circling the same star are among the least dense planets ever found.

Scientists identify an alga species as the culprit behind the deaths of more than one million marine animals.

Pachyderms would have lost substantial amounts of weight traversing the mountains, as would have horses and soldiers.

Omar Yaghi’s move comes amid cuts to US science and a campaign in China to recruit top international talent.

Potentially fraudulent papers often cite each other and could be inflating the impact factor of journals in which they are published.

Darío Gil knows that researchers are sceptical of the massive US artificial-intelligence push — he’s asking them to keep an open mind.

Scientists observed a mid-ocean ridge widen in real time, recording several metres of sea-floor motion and huge lava outflows.

Tool directs text-generation systems to remove constructions associated with artificial intelligence in research papers and grant proposals.

The National Natural Science Foundation of China says it will fund an extra 12,000 projects from this year.

The month’s sharpest science shots — selected by Nature’s photo team.

Researchers are racing to regrow the thymus, an ephemeral immune organ, in the hope that it will slow ageing.

Batteries based on sodium ions are entering mass production. Some researchers say they could ultimately be a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium in electric cars and other energy applications.

Ten Nature contributors share their current book obsessions.

An impeccably researched account describes how clinical trials have transformed health and social policy.

Increasing instability of the ocean, ice and atmosphere threatens farming, finance and society. We all need to wake up to that fact.

Sarah Blackford reflects on how early-career scientists and professional football players share similar motivations, pressures and challenges.

Marisa Chrysochoou and Keivan Stassun argue that AI tools could help students to navigate academia’s unwritten rules.

Researchers are rewriting the chemical tags on DNA and chromatin to tune gene expression.

A nuclear weapon orbiting Earth would emit neutrons through its interactions with the planet’s space radiation environment, and these could be detected by satellites.

Evolutionarily conserved targets have been identified that are shared across malaria-parasite species and their life stages and are recognized by the human immune system.

Structures called plastoglobules organize the enzymes that turn nitrogen into compounds needed for plant growth, offering lessons for sustainable agriculture.

The water-transport system of tropical giants called dipterocarps has evolved to defy the effects of gravity and resist water stress.

A sea-floor monitoring experiment observed oceanic crust being created between two tectonic plates — the first in situ measurement of this phenomenon.

The development of time-keeping, and a book that brings an immune cell back in vogue, in this week’s pick from the Nature archive.

Combining satellite imagery and machine learning has created the first comprehensive map of seagrass meadows, in a boost for the conservation of these crucial ecosystems.

By observing the neutrons induced by spallation from protons in the inner Van Allen radiation belts using widely available sensor technologies, the detection of a thermonuclear weapon carried by a space satellite is possible.

A 54-qubit realization of non-Abelian S₃ topological order demonstrates that combining anyon braiding with fusion enables universal topological quantum computation.

Large-scale behavioural studies show that people approach a new game systematically and adaptively rationally. A cognitive model called the ‘Intuitive Gamer’ offers insights into this process and may inform the design of more flexible AI systems.

A Floquet regime of rotational super-radiance has been observed in a spatiotemporally modulated ring network of resonators.

Hydrogen-bonding networks engineered with isomeric molecules enable stable, saturated blue perovskite LEDs with record external quantum efficiencies up to 22.0%, advancing high-performance full-colour display technologies.

A targeted ligand anti-solvent is incorporated into an anion-rich ether-based electrolyte and used to achieve lithium metal batteries with a long cycle life, high energy density and high capacity retention.

By deflecting dendrite propagation, in-plane biaxial compression provided direct evidence that dendrite initiation occurs within the interior of garnet solid electrolytes during long-term cycling.

Observations and modelling show that volcanic eruptions and extreme wildfires have systematically increased stratospheric water vapour since 2005, revealing that these episodic aerosol perturbations are a previously overlooked driver of stratospheric water vapour variability.

A database of daily dust metals in Europe is established and a machine learning model shows that transported dust intrusion events over the past decade are linked to changes in atmospheric circulation, while an ice core shows that the increase in dust since pre-industrial times is governed by increasing aridity in North Africa..

By combining hydroacoustic, direct-path ranging and bottom-pressure measurements, in situ observations of a rifting event at a segment of the Southeast Indian Ridge are reported, providing insight into seafloor spreading events on yearly timescales.

Global high-resolution mapping shows widespread seagrass loss and degradation since 2019, with most meadows outside protected areas, highlighting urgent conservation and climate-policy needs.

Integrated palaeontological, sedimentological and geochemical analyses of ancient rocks from Australia show that early eukaryotes were largely restricted to oxygenated benthic habitats, probably possessed mitochondria by 1.75 billion years ago, and may have expanded into planktonic habitats much later, perhaps during the Neoproterozoic era.

Genome-wide analyses in multiancestry and European cohorts show that in complex traits, rare alleles have disproportionately large effects at the tails of the phenotypic spectrum compared with common alleles.

Government-controlled media influences the output of large language models via their training data, and models queried in the languages of countries with lower media freedom show a stronger pro-regime valence than models queried in the languages of countries with higher media freedom.

Machine learning analysis of cell-type-specific gene expression in mouse and human neocortex and human cortical organoids reveals human-specific cell-type and temporal variations in expression controlled by JUNB.

Connexin proteins found in white perch fish were used to engineer synthetic electrical synapses, enabling precision circuit editing in mammals.

Chloroplast plastoglobules act as nitrogen-assimilation hubs in maize, with key enzymes enhancing nitrogen-use efficiency and offering new strategies for developing high-yield, sustainable crops.

A machine-learning model that uses smartphone cameras to measure heart rate in the background during normal daily phone use and subsequently estimate resting heart rate could make it easier for people to monitor heart health.

Improved fractionation strategies can identify antibiotics with previously unseen scaffolds and mechanisms, exemplified by manikomycin from Streptomyces rimosus, which acts by targeting the E-site of the bacterial large ribosomal subunit.

An immunopeptidomics analysis identifies numerous Plasmodium T cell antigens that are conserved across malaria parasite species and expressed at several phases of the parasite’s life cycle, with possible applications in the development of a malaria vaccine.

Linafexor is a rapidly cleared FXR agonist designed to mimic natural bile acid signalling, achieving transient receptor activation with strong efficacy and reduced toxicity in preclinical and early clinical studies.

Tumour network mapping of diffuse midline glioma (DMG) defines a conserved and prognostically important brain network in children with DMG, consistent with the hypothesis that DMGs exploit otherwise healthy brain circuits to promote tumour growth.

Molecular glue degraders of the RNA-binding protein HuR have therapeutic potential for BRAF-mutant cancers.

The metabolite αKG promotes carnitine synthesis and increases site-specific histone acetylation, thereby promoting homologous recombination-mediated DNA repair, which has potential implications for chemoresistant cancers.

NSUN2 is an enzyme that adds a small chemical mark to RNA molecules and uniquely selects its targets based on specific sequence patterns and structural features.