Volume 643 Issue 8072, 17 July 2025

The US science crisis presents an opportunity to reinvent funding and management of the global research enterprise.

The next generation of managers must be fit for a net-zero, nature-positive economy.

Mice that exercised produced higher levels of an immune-cell-stimulating molecule than sedentary rodents did.

Study participants’ memory faltered when they learnt while experiencing negative or neutral emotions.

NASA’s New Horizons probe, which hurtled past Pluto in 2015, demonstrates that it can sail through interstellar space using its onboard camera.

Tropical regions where heatwaves are already common will be hardest hit by this trend.

Brain–computer interfaces being trialled in China offer some advantages over Neuralink and other leading US devices.

Democrats hosted a protest event featuring ‘things we’ll never know’ because of the US government’s cuts to science.

Some sleuths fear that the business of cleaning up flawed studies is being weaponized against science itself.

Experimental treatment could offer a safer, cheaper alternative to CAR-T-cell therapies for disorders such as lupus.

SciArena uses votes by researchers to evaluate large language models’ responses on technical topics.

High-resolution imaging method could lead to wiring diagram for the whole body.

The comet-like body — called 3I/ATLAS or C/2025 N1 — is zipping past Jupiter.

The Langlands programme has inspired and befuddled mathematicians for more than 50 years. A major advance has now opened up new worlds for them to explore.

The next generation of deep-brain stimulation automatically corrects the precise brain waves that create symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Can this approach target other conditions?

Ten of Nature’s recent contributors share their current book obsessions.

Beijing’s reorganization of science is a broad, systemic effort to reshape how research is conducted, applied and evaluated nationwide.

Unexpected events, such as pandemics and wars, are on the rise. Financial markets need tools to help them cope with unforeseen losses.

Virologist Amadou Sall is the driving force behind a world-class manufacturing hub in Senegal.

Researchers engaged in long-term projects often need to update their data sets over time. Here’s how to do it while maintaining reproducibility.

Emmanuel Barde Elisha is a research coordinator for a non-profit organization dedicated to managing protected areas for conservation and local development.

Trauma leaves traces in the brain. A study of alterations in gene regulation in the brains of people with post-traumatic stress disorder offers insights into its biology.

Random fluctuations in the intensity and energy of X-ray lasers, which generally limit performance, have been harnessed for high-resolution spectroscopy.

Pondering the difficulties faced by metaphysicians, and a dog strikes up an unlikely friendship with a cat and her kittens, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive.

Observations of a young star offer a glimpse of the high-temperature conditions that shaped rock formation in the early Solar System.

Premenopausal women are more likely than men to develop certain cancers. Pathways activated by the sex hormone responsible could be targeted in cancer therapies.

Planet-induced flares on HIP 67522, a 17 million-year-old G dwarf star with two known close-in planets, were detected.

Observations at infrared and millimetre wavelengths of the young protostar HOPS-315 show a gaseous disk captured at the point at which solids are first starting to condense, the t = 0 for planet formation.

Observations indicating the chiral nature of superconducting states in five rhombohedral tetralayer and pentalayer graphene devices without moiré superlattice effects are reported, establishing a pure carbon material for the study of topological superconductivity.

A high-resolution spectroscopic tool is demonstrated using the stochastically fluctuating intensity spikes in time and energy domains of a self-amplified spontaneous emission X-ray free-electron laser.

A strategy for engineering photon-avalanche nanoparticles is proposed such that they exhibit an unprecedentedly strong nonlinear optical response and their emissions scale by more than 500th power of the pump intensity.

A high-sensitivity, broadband, transient, full-Stokes spectroscopy setup is demonstrated, which can detect quickly varying small signals from chiral emitters.

A general two-step intercalation and cation-exchange strategy is used to produce a library of highly ordered magnetic intercalation superlattices with tunable chemical modulations and magnetic ordering.

Tuning the b-axis length of silicalite-1 crystals allows control over the migration–agglomeration–lockup of active metal species in zeolites, which enables the creation of stable and durable catalysts for propane dehydrogenation in industrial applications.

Reshaping of thiamine-dependent enzymes with ferrocene-mediated electrocatalysis can unlock an unnatural dynamic kinetic oxidation of α-branched aldehydes, providing new opportunities for making molecules.

Biological nitrogen fixation may impose stronger constraints on the carbon sink in natural terrestrial biomes and represent a larger source of agricultural nitrogen than is generally considered in analyses of the global nitrogen cycle.

The isolation of dental proteins from fossils deposited 1.5 million to 18 million years ago in the Turkana Basin in Kenya, a tropical region, demonstrate the promise of dental enamel for palaeoproteomic and evolutionary studies.

Protein sequences from fossil tooth enamel of a rhinocerotid from Canada’s High Arctic are used to develop phylogenetic frameworks from a specimen too old to preserve ancient DNA.

Imaging and optogenetics in mice provide insight into the interplay between the primary motor cortex and the motor thalamus during learning, showing that thalamic inputs have a key role in the execution of learned movements.

A study shows that loss of memory precision associated with systems consolidation can be explained by neurogenesis-dependent reorganization of engram circuitry within the hippocampus over time.

A comprehensive analysis of the cell-specific molecular regulatory mechanisms underlying post-traumatic stress disorder in the human prefrontal cortex.

The outflow pathway of cerebrospinal fluid into lymph nodes in the neck and how non-invasive mechanical stimulation can enhance drainage and restore impaired outflow in aged mice are explored.

A plant kinase mediates symbiotic signalling and suppress host immunity to enable legume–rhizobium symbiosis.

Conditional cysteine restriction in mice causes substantial weight loss, exceeding that seen with essential amino acid restriction, by activating the integrated stress and oxidative stress responses, and by unexpectedly depleting coenzyme A, leading to metabolic inefficiency.

An in vivo screen of small-molecule compounds to inhibit the mosquito-stage development of Plasmodium identified hits that can be incorporated into bed nets and led to effective parasite killing in the insect host.

Hailong, an anti-phage defence system, synthesizes an oligodeoxyadenylate signal that blocks effector activity in the absence of phage infection but is degraded by phage-encoded DNA exonucleases, leading to protective growth arrest of infected cells.

A study finding an oestrogen-sensing signalling pathway that promotes melanoma metastasis only in female mice emphasizes the importance of recognizing sex-specific factors in cancer management.

Radiotherapy induces expression of the EGFR ligand amphiregulin, which promotes metastasis growth at remote sites in mouse models and human patients by shifting myeloid cells towards an immunosuppressive state.

In vitro reconstitution and in vivo live-cell imaging of LHX2–EBF1–LDB1 enhancer hubs in olfactory sensory neurons reveals that these transcription factors form condensates with solid, rather than liquid, phase properties.

The REX element is associated with long-range enhancer–promoter interactions.

Human enhancers contain a high density of sequence features that are required for their normal in vivo function.

Structures associated with the final steps of non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) and gap filling present new targets for NHEJ inhibition to enhance efficacy of radiotherapy and accuracy of gene editing.

SLC35B1, initially thought to be a nucleotide sugar transporter, is an essential ATP/ADP exchanger that imports ATP into the endoplasmic reticulum through a unique stepwise translocation mechanism.