Volume 642 Issue 8069, 26 June 2025

More scientific leaders need to speak out about anti-science agendas and threats to academic freedom across the world.

As was realized after the Second World War, peace and prosperity stem from partnership and sustained investment in human development.

Local authorities can deal with natural hazards more effectively if they know ahead of time who will be affected.

Magnetially controlled device can combine or split microlitre-sized droplets.

Data could help to reveal the warning signs of potentially dangerous eruptions caused by liquid groundwater abruptly turning into gas.

The average number of bleeding episodes for men with haemophilia B dropped almost tenfold after treatment.

Trafficking of scales for traditional medicine plays a relatively small part in the hunting of pangolins in Nigeria.

The decision means that the US biomedical agency has to restore funding to hundreds of research projects, but the government is likely to appeal.

Critics fear that the anti-vaccine health-department leader’s picks for a crucial US committee will be a ‘disaster for public health’.

Ancient proteins and calcified dental plaque identify heavy-browed fossil from China as a Denisovan.

As Earth’s magnetic field has risen, so have the conditions that helped complex life to thrive — a discovery that could aid the search for life on distant planets.

Your inhalation and exhalation pattern is not only unique to you, it can be a marker of your physical and mental state, study suggests.

The hearts started to beat in the pig–human hybrids, which survived for 21 days.

Experiences of insight come with a burst of brain activity — and a memory boost.

The United States has lower life expectancy than most similarly wealthy nations. Chronic disease is part of the cause, but so are guns, drugs and cars.

Zoologist Jack Ashby explains why it’s vital to invest in protecting specimens stored in scientific collections.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

The uncontrolled deployment of machine learning in medicine can distort patient information and sacrifice long-term data reliability for short-term benefits.

A computer scientist is struggling to trust their postdoctoral research adviser after negative experiences with the previous two. How do you find one that’s right for you?

For water-bear enthusiasts, it’s the creature’s legs that make it stand out.

James Bradley studies the microbes thriving in extremely cold environments.

An emerging fungal infection is endangering bats in America. DNA analysis reveals that the infection first arose in Europe, mediated by two fungal culprits.

An analysis of millions of scientific papers and patents shows that the further a researcher or inventor moves from their previous work, the less cited their latest work will be.

Experiments in which systems of interacting electrons are split apart reveal the signatures of a liquid-like state — even for as few as three electrons.

Prognosis is poor for tumours with Y-chromosome loss. Examining the interplay between cancer and immune cells sheds light on potential mechanisms.

Budget cuts pit NASA’s burgeoning space telescope against other projects, and marking the 1825 isolation of benzene, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archives.

A quantum random-number generator has been developed that uses classical cryptography to certify that its output was produced by a quantum process.

This Review examines recently gained insights into the roles of ESCRT complexes in viral infection, immunity, cancer and neurological disease.

The Nature Relationship Index offers a new way to measure and engage human aspirations to shape a better future for people and all life on Earth.

Observations from the JWST MIRI-MRS instrument reveal the detection of rotational emission from molecular hydrogen near the only O-type star in the 3% solar metallicity galaxy Leo P, providing confirmation that significant quantities of molecular gas can form in such metal- and dust-poor environments.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument, a study reports evidence for a direct detection of a cold, sub-Jupiter-mass planet in the disk of the star TWA 7. 

A several-fold reduction in temperature is accomplished using a neutral-atom Hubbard quantum simulator by transforming a low-entropy product state into strongly correlated states of interest via dynamic control of the model parameters.

A study demonstrates a public generator of random numbers based on device-independent techniques, with the randomness being fully auditable and traceable.

The coherent bunching of anyons and their dissociation was observed in an interference experiment. 

The emergence of universal collective behaviour is demonstrated through collisions of electron droplets containing up to five particles, which exhibit strong all-body correlations characteristic of a Coulomb liquid.

Strong lasing effects similar to those in the optical regime can occur at 1.5–2.1 Å wavelengths during high-intensity XFEL-driven Kα₁ lasing of copper and manganese.

In situ vibrational electron energy-loss spectroscopy is used to examine phonon transport dynamics across the AlN–SiC interface during thermal transport at sub-nanometre resolution, demonstrating a sharp temperature drop within about 2 nm across the interface.

A substantial reduction of losses in a phononic waveguide can be achieved by soft clamping, through which phonons can be guided through very sharp turns with losses accounting for less than one phonon in a million.

A soft mesh microelectrode array can seamlessly integrate in developing brains, enabling long-term, stable mapping of how single-neuron activity and population dynamics emerge and evolve during brain development.

A critically low abundance of older herring due to age-selective fisheries resulted in an approximately 800-km poleward shift in main spawning.

A new tyrannosauroid, Khankhuuluu mongoliensis gen. et sp. nov., from lower Upper Cretaceous deposits of Mongolia provides a new perspective on eutyrannosaurian origins and evolution.

Characterization of the genetic architecture underlying the 7 pairs of contrasting traits studied by Mendel and the over 70 additional agronomic traits in pea (Pisum sativum) reveals their molecular details and provides tools for further studies in pea genetics, functional genomics and crop improvement.

Ancestral reconstruction together with molecular dating of the last Asgard archaea and eukaryote common ancestor suggest that eukaryotes arose from the fusion of a H₂-consuming archaeal host and a H₂-producing protomitochondrion.

An analysis of millions of scientific papers and patents reveals a ‘pivot penalty’ when researchers shift direction, with the impact of studies decreasing rapidly the further they move from their previous work.

Parvalbumin-positive interneurons in the hippocampal CA3 substantially reduce firing on approach to and at goal locations while food-deprived mice learn to find food.

Functional imaging and multiplexed in situ hybridization were combined to investigate how trigeminal neurons encode heat and mechanical stimuli, revealing distinct cellular mechanisms for continuing pain, heat hypersensitivity and tactile allodynia during inflammation.

A synthetic biology approach was used to engineer Vibrio natriegens into a strain capable of bioremediating complex organic pollutants in saline wastewater and soils, thereby addressing notable threats to marine biosecurity.

The identification of two cryptic species of the fungal pathogen that causes white-nose disease in bats highlights the need to integrate studies of genetic variability in pathogens into disease surveillance, management and prevention strategies.

Comprehensive pan-cancer analysis of loss of the Y chromosome (LOY) in benign and malignant cells establishes a new model linking LOY in circulating and tumour-infiltrating immune cells to LOY in malignant cells.

A nanofluidic intracellular delivery (NanoFLUID) patch provides a versatile, biocompatible and efficient method for the targeted delivery of payloads to internal organs for therapeutic purposes and for biomolecular investigations.

A large-scale multi-omics analysis reports oncogenic alterations that drive medulloblastoma progression, rather than initiation, and the findings show how single-cell technologies can be used for early detection and diagnosis of medulloblastoma.

A study reports on the DNA methylation dynamics during embryogenesis in marsupials, showing that these differ from those occurring during embryogenesis in eutherian mammals.

A study of retrotransposon activity repurposes a retroelement called R2Tocc to create a programmable system called STITCHR that enables diverse genome edits including efficient, scarless large payload insertions.

Biochemical, structural and genetic analysis of the shelterin complex reveal that by recruiting RAP1 to DNA, TRF2 directly inhibits DNA-dependent protein kinase to regulate classical non-homologous end joining at telomeres.

The physical organization of the genome in non-bilaterian animals and their closest unicellular relatives is characterized; comparative analysis shows chromatin looping is a conserved feature of genome architecture and spatial genome regulation emerged early in animal evolution.