Volume 643 Issue 8073, 24 July 2025

Gavi, the vaccine provider for the world’s poorest people, needs an extra US$3 billion to protect infants and other vulnerable groups. More donors must step up.

Scientists who are not tied down by fixed research agendas can pivot nimbly to work where they are most needed. It’s time to build career paths with these researchers in mind.

Pollution emitted by fossil-fuel usage in Asia influences sea-ice coverage in Antarctica.

Data from a South Pole observatory show that the fraction of protons in ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays is lower than expected.

Genetic analysis helps to reveal why flying foxes can measure almost 2 metres from wingtip to wingtip.

A study in mice finds that a high-sucrose diet during youth has long-term implications for learning and brain connectivity.

Committee gives first hint that policymakers might preserve, rather than slash, funding for US National Science Foundation and other agencies.

Some studies containing instructions in white text or small font — visible only to machines — will be withdrawn from preprint servers.

Gravitational-wave detector LIGO spots fast-spinning ‘forbidden’ black holes that challenge physics models.

The latest version of the chatbot, developed by start-up Moonshot AI, is open for researchers to build on.

Astronomers get rare glimpse of earliest stages of planet formation around a baby star.

Long-awaited results suggest that mitochondrial donation can prevent babies from inheriting diseases caused by mutant mitochondria.

These sophisticated models will be used for human-development studies and drug testing.

Scientists and regulators are divided over the threat posed by rising levels of a chemical called TFA.

Nuclear deterrence is no longer a two-player game, and emerging technologies further threaten the status quo. The result is a risky new nuclear age.

Rivers are born, evolve and die, and can bring life — and death. We might respect them more if we saw them as animated by spirits of their own.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

One free-wheeling 1930s cafe nurtured mathematical ideas including the theory of the nuclear bomb. That holds lessons for how to spur creative thought today.

The world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide relies on coal, oil and gas for its economic growth. But all is not lost if China can lead on cleaning up through carbon capture, utilization and storage.

Artificial-intelligence technologies are being deployed rapidly across industries, yet most organizations lack even basic guidelines to assess the tools’ effects.

For some parents, finding a cure for their child’s illness is the ultimate motivation to start a company.

Enzyme-based techniques and refinements in organic chemistry ease the generation of extended DNA sequences.

Loren Chang designs satellites and other spacefaring machinery destined for low Earth orbit.

Australian migratory moths use the night sky to maintain their course when they travel long distances to shelter in cool caves during the arid summer.

Research shows that jargon can make weak explanations feel complete by masking their gaps. What can experts do to communicate science effectively to laypeople?

Lasers have been used to heat solid gold well beyond its melting temperature without losing the metal’s crystalline structure — exceeding a theoretical superheating limit.

Place cells are neurons that encode spatial locations. Experiments in chickadees reveal that the cells activate even when those locations are viewed from a distance.

A gender gap in mathematical ability arises shortly after children begin school — irrespective of the type of school they attend and their socio-economic background.

A decision-making tool for the aviation sector helps to assess the likelihood of a net positive outcome from climate actions that can have competing effects on warming.

Questions raised by a fission chain reaction that occurred billions of years ago, and making silver compounds lighter with light, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive.

The integration of omics technologies, genome editing and protein design with artificial intelligence (AI) promises rapid advances in the field of crop improvement that will improve global food security.

Direct observations of silicate clouds in the atmosphere of the exoplanet YSES-1 c and the first circumplanetary disk silicate emission around its sibling planet YSES-1 b are reported.

The detection and coherent control of single ¹³C nuclear spins in hexagonal boron nitride at room temperature enables the use of van der Waals materials in upcoming quantum technologies.

Gold samples can be heated to more than 14 times their melting point while retaining their crystalline structure, far surpassing the predicted entropy catastrophe threshold and suggesting a substantially higher or potentially no limit for superheating.

A hybrid quantum network combining entangled light with an atomic spin ensemble engineered to act as a negative-mass oscillator enables frequency-dependent quantum noise reduction for measurements in the acoustic noise frequency range relevant for gravitational-wave detection.

A method making use of heavy water dissociation in bipolar membranes to synthesize deuterated acids and bases is described, which requires particularly mild conditions and inexpensive D₂O and K₂SO₄ and is also environmentally friendly.

Stereoselective synthetic routes use P3HB (a polyester produced by bacteria) as a chiral feedstock for related polymers that have properties more amenable to processing and use.

A method based on boron-mediated assembly is described for the synthesis of tetrasubstituted alkenes, molecules with four substituents around the central C=C bond, with complete control over the double-bond geometry.

Analysis of cloud motion vectors from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer over the past two decades indicates an acceleration and poleward shift of atmospheric circulation, and comparison with ERA5 reanalysis winds suggests probable ERA5 biases in the upper troposphere.

A climate-trade-off risk curve derived from uncertainties in the radiative-forcing components indicates that focusing on reducing contrails or nitrogen oxide emissions is more effective than reducing CO₂ emissions.

Every spring, Bogong moths use the starry night sky as a compass to navigate up to 1,000 km towards their alpine migratory goal.

A pangenome of the Cannabis genus including 193 genomes demonstrates high variability in most of the genome but low diversity in cannabinoid synthesis genes and provides a resource for future genetic studies and crop optimization.

Screening shotgun-sequencing data from ancient humans covering 37,000 years of Eurasian history uncovers the widespread presence of ancient bacterial, viral and parasite DNA and zoonotic pathogens coincide with the widespread domestication of livestock.

Boys and girls exhibit very similar maths scores upon school entry, but a gender gap in favour of boys becomes highly significant after 4 months of schooling, which increases with years of schooling, independently of age.

Following spinal cord injury, gamified physical therapy that incorporates closed-loop vagus nerve stimulation can aid restoration of arm and hand function.

Place cells in the chickadee hippocampus coherently represent locations in space, whether physically visited or viewed, enabling spatial reasoning at a distance through a unified process coordinated by head saccades.

Neurons in the rodent dorsomedial prefrontal cortex encode a flexible internal model of emotion by linking directly experienced and inferred associations with aversive experiences.

Reverse electron transport is the mechanism behind excess mitochondrial reactive oxygen species in the livers of obese mice, which has implications for developing therapeutics for fatty liver disease in humans.

In mice, tissue-mimetic cells appear in thymus in two distinct waves, creating two distinct pools of mimetic cells, each expressing antigens characteristic of different cell types.

The transcription factor CREM is a pivotal regulator of NK cell function, making CREM a valuable target to increase the efficacy of anticancer immunotherapies based on this cell population and chimeric antigen receptors.

Independent of antigen presentation, migratory CCR7⁺ dendritic cells orchestrate the influx, proliferation and cytotoxic action of natural killer cells to control cancer cell growth in the leptomeninges.

In vivo gene delivery to haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells in newborn mice using engineered lentiviral vectors shows promise as an effective treatment for genetic diseases.

Targeting a non-natural micropeptide ‘killswitch’ to several biomolecular condensates altered condensate compositions and revealed condensate functions in human cells

To efficiently silence the integrated stress response, SIFI detects many diverse substrates that include stress indicators and stress response components through flexible domains within an easily accessible scaffold, before building linkage-specific ubiquitin chains at separate, sterically restricted elongation modules.

Reconstitution of seven human RNA polymerase III (Pol III) transcribing complexes (TC4/5/6/8/10/12/13) halted on U6 promoters with nascent RNAs of 4–13 nucleotides offers molecular insights into Pol III dynamics.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of three large ornate natural bacterial RNA molecules reveal their quaternary structures and intra- and intermolecular interactions that stabilize them.