Volume 654 Issue 8120, 25 June 2026

Researchers who study what divides people also have the tools to explore strategies to unite them.

Artificial intelligence’s ability to enrich science will depend not only on model capability, but also on whether researchers, reviewers and funders reward originality over speed.

From energy grids to language performance, emerging economies are exposing the limits of today’s artificial-intelligence strategy as it expands globally.

Having a greater tissue volume in some parts of the cerebellum is linked to higher scores on cognitive tests.

Analysis of wildfire in California suggests a net reduction in exposure to blaze-related air pollution.

Sequencing shows duplication of genes that affect mitochondria, the organelles that provide energy for cells.

Fillets of raw fish are irregular in shape and floppy in texture, but a robot with three arms has learnt how to manipulate a salmon loin.

A new benchmark pitting AI against previously unseen maths problems shows that systems still fall short of top human expertise.

Report shows region is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The device has helped a man with motor neuron disease communicate and control his computer for nearly two years.

Neural maps reveal the specialized cells that produce speech.

Preliminary study finds that testosterone levels increase or stabilize in people taking GLP-1 medications.

The UK’s share of EU research funding is climbing, but lost networks will be harder to recover.

Nature asked a football-journal chief about emerging trends in the sport, from AI tools to PhD students embedded in teams.

Amid chaos in US science and geopolitical turmoil, Europe wants to position itself as a research haven — but questions about funding and innovation remain.

As rising seas and intensifying disasters threaten historic sites worldwide, new ways to understand, preserve and adapt these places are needed urgently.

Researchers have long discussed the replication crisis. Now it’s time to tackle another problem in the behavioural sciences: generalizability.

From AI to biotechnology, today’s scientific breakthroughs raise ethical and social challenges that technical expertise alone cannot solve.

A PhD student in China who has changed his focus twice since obtaining his undergraduate degree is struggling to keep up.

Andrew Kythreotis re-evaluated his personal and professional priorities after a mid-career opportunity to move abroad fell through.

In the Indian Ocean, a deep-sea area roughly 1,200 kilometres long and 7 kilometres deep was found to harbour an ecological landmark site of whale remains.

Water-suspended carbon nanotubes move more slowly in green light, suggesting that excited electrons in the tubes couple to the water through ‘quantum friction’.

As neurons migrate to their final destinations in the forming brain, their DNA gets damaged. The brain has evolved a fix, but there can be lasting consequences if repair fails.

The first demonstration of superconductivity at 35 kelvin drove decades of materials research and introduced a puzzle about this strange state of matter.

An analysis of the extent to which mining caused deforestation between 2001 and 2020 in areas near mines in sub-Saharan Africa could help conservation efforts.

This Review reflects on the joint power of genetic technologies, including untapped CRISPR–Cas techniques to combat hidden hunger and improve crop resilience, and argues in favour of their combined use to overcome these societal challenges.

A Review of the immunological mechanisms of mRNA–lipid-nanoparticle vaccines for infectious diseases discusses how the components of this vaccine platform can be modified to fine-tune immune responses against challenging pathogens.

A technique combining atomically resolved scanning tunnelling microscopy with neural-quantum-state quantum Monte Carlo simulation of disordered 2D electron Wigner solids establishes a powerful framework to enable the clear identification of two distinct defect-induced disorder regimes.

A new AI system uses a large language model combined with tree and evolution search to quickly create expert-level empirical software and accelerate scientific progress, as demonstrated in a wide range of experimental tasks.

By embedding core computer vision principles into a large-scale optical metasurface, an efficient vision processing system using far fewer parameters is demonstrated to outperform many digital models and enables deployment on edge devices.

Ring laser gyroscope lock-in has been eliminated using spontaneous symmetry breaking in a He–Ne laser, enabling accurate near-zero rotation sensing without external components, improving miniaturization and precision.

A lightweight and portable robot that administers isokinetic variable resistance training for juveniles with spinal muscular atrophy type II is shown to facilitate enduring neuromuscular recovery even after temporary exposure, helping patients perform sit-to-stand transitions.

Near-infrared fluorescent carbon nanotubes exhibit light-induced quantum friction in water, in which exciton interactions slow nanoscale motion and enable optical control of diffusion and fluid dynamics.

A supramolecular strategy, in which uniform, dynamic nanopores are constructed, overcomes the limitations of limited structural control, mechanical fragility or demanding synthesis in nanoporous anion-conducting membranes, providing a versatile tool for molecularly engineering transport pathways.

Porous polyacrylonitrile membranes—typically used as non-selective support layers—can be used to achieve effective molecular refining of crude oil at steady state, enabling substantial reductions in energy consumption, cooling water, and CO₂ emissions compared with distillation processes.

Accelerated Arctic glacier disintegration and a more dynamic sea ice cover are increasing iceberg-delivered dropstones in the deep ocean, reshaping seafloor habitats and extending cryospheric impacts far beyond glaciers.

Extensive mining activity leads to large-scale deforestation of dense tropical forests across sub-Saharan Africa, driven particularly by key energy transition minerals such as cobalt.

Researchers uncovered an enormous deep-sea accumulation of whale remains in the southeastern Indian Ocean, showing long-term, specialized ecosystems and an extensive fossil record that offers new insight into deep-ocean biodiversity and whale evolutionary history.

Analysis of 258 ancient genomes from southern Germany reveals a major demographic shift during the late fifth century, yet family structures persisted from Late Roman times, demonstrating cultural continuity despite profound demographic reorganization.

A fully phased genome assembly of the sugarcane foundational cultivar POJ2878 reveals extensive subgenome recombination and non-homologous chromosomal rearrangements.

Audit experiments on TikTok show asymmetric partisan exposure that is not explained by observable engagement metrics, with Republican-leaning accounts receiving more aligned content and Democratic-leaning accounts more cross-partisan recommendations.

In mice, female aggression is governed by an amygdala–to–medial hypothalamus circuit that is strengthened during pregnancy and is dynamically amplified by oxytocin during lactation.

The I3 pharyngeal enteric neuron in Caenorhabditis elegans detects high-salt conditions, and the GLR-9 ionotropic salt receptor expressed specifically in I3 regulates genes related to salt stress resistance in distal tissues.

A transient grey matter microgliosis is required for remyelination, the failure of which results in a chronic neuroinflammatory state seen in neurodegenerative disorders.

HIV-1 capsid nuclear import at the nuclear pore complex is a bottleneck to resting T cell infection, but HIV-1 overcomes this by triggering receptor-mediated signalling during cell–cell spread to drive nuclear import and licence infection.

Humanized glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor (GLP1R) mouse models are used to investigate the neural circuitry through which small-molecule GLP1R agonists modulate feeding, with implications for how these orally delivered weight-loss drugs engage brain reward circuits.

Experiments in mice and humans show enhancement of T cell function following fasting and refeeding, caused by persistent immunometabolic reprogramming, with potential implications for nutritional interventions and adoptive cell therapy.

Multimodal machine learning reveals that tumour microenvironments can be decomposed into spatially organized multicellular ecosystems, termed spatial ecotypes, that can be accessed non-invasively via liquid biopsy and used to profile individual cancers and target treatments.

Treatment data for triple-negative breast cancer show the importance of macrophage subtypes and cancer-cell metaprograms for interferon signalling, HLA expression and cell cycle activity that are associated with a good response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

The migration of neurons in developing cerebral and cerebellar cortices is accompanied by massive DNA double-strand breaks due to mechanostress during passage through narrow interstitial spaces.

An analysis of 5,778 domains 28–64 amino acids in length reveals hidden variation in conformational fluctuations, even between sequences sharing the same fold and global folding stability.