Volume 639 Issue 8053, 6 March 2025

Event organizers often overlook the visa-related difficulties that researchers in low- and middle-income countries face. This must change.

Granite from the chunk of Earth’s crust called the Lhasa terrane did not come from India, as had previously been thought, but from much further afield.

The James Webb Space Telescope uncovered repeated flares from the supermassive object called Sagittarius A*.

The standard protective dose is almost 14,000 units, but even 500 units raises antibody levels sufficiently to do the job.

Cane toads have remarkable navigation abilities, even when their sense of smell and magnetic-sensory systems are compromised.

As US federal grants remain frozen and budget cuts loom, anxiety and fear grip early-career researchers.

More than five years on, studies suggest the animal is the most likely culprit, but other candidates haven’t been ruled out.

Lack of screening and limited treatment options mean that low- and middle-income countries face higher death rates despite having fewer cases than wealthier nations.

Trump officials bar NASA climate scientist from international meeting, and the space agency shuts down a team supporting the next global climate assessment.

A short bout of indulgence in fatty, sugary snacks leads to lingering brain-activity changes ― even if it does not cause weight gain.

Researchers are concerned about whether the US National Institutes of Health will continue to fund international projects.

Slippery proteins in the brain’s blood vessels form a protective barrier that breaks down with age, studies in mice show.

But even a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation could have grave consequences worldwide.

Researchers want firms to be more transparent about the electricity demands of artificial intelligence.

From China to Brazil to Germany, huge numbers of people are addicted to shopping, driven in part by companies that use gaming strategies.

A book deftly highlights how women have been considered unsuitable as researchers for reasons other than their ability and commitment.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

As the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act takes effect, AI systems that mimic how human teams collaborate can improve trust in high-risk situations, such as clinical medicine.

Scientists must commit to engaging with the communities they want to help at all stages of the research process — from planning to dissemination.

To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, six award-winning female scientists highlight women who have inspired them by pushing innovative research and creating opportunities for others.

The utility of generative AI tools is expanding far beyond simple summarisation and grammar support towards more sophisticated, pedagogical applications.

Sölvi Rúnar Vignisson observes species of sea bird as they gather and mix in Iceland.

Fungi made Earth’s land liveable by building networks that released nutrients locked in primordial rock and supplied those nutrients to plant roots. An imaging study now sheds light on how these fungal networks are constructed.

Clearing of Amazonian forest boosts rainfall during the wet season, but reduces it in the dry season, when the ecosystem needs water most — highlighting the need to prevent further clearance of a climate-regulating environment.

Many conventional small-molecule drugs work by inhibiting proteins, affecting their function. One small molecule instead imbues a protein with a new function in a mechanism that could inform rational drug design.

Fast electromagnetic follow-up observations of gravitational-wave sources such as binary neutron stars could shed light on questions across physics and cosmology. A machine-learning approach brings that a step closer.

Interest in psychedelic substances as medicines is rising. Identifying the neural circuits that mediate the benefits of psychedelics could pave the way for long-lasting anxiety treatments without the short-term sensory disturbances.

Ancient genomes from modern Ukraine and Russia reveal the origins of the Yamna people, pastoralists who migrated from the Eurasian steppe to Europe 5,000 years ago, spreading their ancestry, culture and, probably, language.

Analysis of gravitational waves from merging binary neutron stars was accelerated using machine learning, enabling full low-latency parameter estimation and enhancing the potential for multi-messenger observations.

Multiplexed entanglement distribution in a quantum network, with each node comprising multiple solid-state emitters in nanophotonic cavities, enables scalable quantum communication.

High-resolution STM/STS visualizes the fractionalization of flat moiré bands into discrete Hofstadter subbands in moiré graphene near the predicted second magic angle, and experimentally establishes several fundamental properties of the fractal Hofstadter energy spectrum.

The interplay between geometrical and spin chiralities in three-dimensional twisted magnetic ribbons can lead to new functionalities that could allow for innovative chiral spintronics.

Orbital hybridization in artificial atoms is achieved by altering their shape, and the anisotropy of the confining potential gives rise to the hybridization between quasibound states with different orbital quantum numbers within the artificial atom.

A textile fibre computer combining sensing, memory, processing and communication in a 5-g mass has been developed, enabling distributed computation on the human body through garments.

An elastocaloric cooling platform is constructed based on shape memory alloys with a cellular architecture that enables cooling powers above 1 kW.

Understanding the chemistry of perovskite precursor solutions enables improved film optoelectronic properties, allowing the fabrication of multijunction solar cells achieving power conversion efficiencies beyond the radiative limit of single-junction cells.

Reversed precipitation responses to Amazon deforestation show that deforestation leads to precipitation increases in the wet season and decreases in the dry season.

Emplacement of the north polar cap of Mars is investigated by combining viscoelastic deformation calculations and observations, showing that it formed over the last 1.7–12.0 Myr atop a stiff lithosphere and high-viscosity mantle (10²² Pa s), and that glacial isostatic adjustment could be further constrained.

Eurasian grasslands have high production sensitivity to extreme drought compared with North American grasslands.

Remote sensing, field survey and microbotanical analyses show that the pre-Columbian Casarabe culture in the Bolivian Amazon invested heavily in landscape engineering, constructing a complex system of drainage canals and newly documented savannah farm ponds.

Whole-genome sequencing analysis of 81 prehistoric individuals reveals how the genetic makeup of people from the North Pontic region was influenced by waves of migration during the Eneolithic period and Early Bronze Age.

Ancient DNA reveals how the explosive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists began with a small community north of the Black Sea speaking ancestral Indo-European, and detects genetic links with Anatolian speakers, stemming from a common Indo-Anatolian homeland in the North Caucasus–lower Volga region.

A double-transgenic mouse model that enables monitoring or manipulation of dopamine and serotonin simultaneously in the brain’s nucleus accumbens shows that these neuromodulators have opponent roles in reward learning.

Using high-density electrophysiological recordings, how internally generated cell assemblies are updated by action plans to meet external goals is explored.

Precise regulation of the phytohormone gibberellin to optimal levels may not only confer alkali–thermal tolerance to Green Revolution rice varieties but may also further enhance their yield, and ATT2, by enabling the fine-tuning of gibberellins, is expected to be a potential new post-Green Revolution gene.

Symbiotic fungi control network-level structure and flows to meet trade demands.

Experiments in infected mice and tissue-mimicking chemostats show that resilience of Salmonella against antimicrobial compounds is largely a result of starvation-induced general resilience rather than survival of a small subset of hyper-resilient cells.

Zhaonella formicivorans produces methanol, for a novel syntrophic interaction, without requiring methylated compounds as an input.

A modelling approach predicts SARS-CoV-2 variant dynamics on the basis of immunity and cross-neutralization, which was shaped by a region’s SARS-CoV-2 infection history.

Viral sequencing reveals subclinical infections in animals challenged with simian immunodeficiency virus even in the presence of potent neutralizing antibodies, with implications for clinical trials of antiviral agents against human immunodeficiency virus.

A non-invasive in vivo positron emission tomography imaging approach detects inflammatory disease using various preclinical models.

Deep learning methods have been used to design proteins that can neutralize the effects of three-finger toxins found in snake venom, which could lead to the development of safer and more accessible antivenom treatments.

UM171 promotes corepressor degradation by acting as a molecular glue to induce KBTBD4–HDAC1/2 interactions with the help of inositol hexakisphosphate.

We show that gain-of-function cancer mutations in the KBTBD4 E3 ligase promote neodegradation of substrates via a shape-complementarity-based mechanism, which converges with the mechanism of action of the UM171 molecular glue degrader and can be blocked by HDAC1/2 inhibitors.

After target binding, PIWI proteins undergo a conformational change from ‘open’ to ‘locked’, facilitating base pairing and enhancing target cleavage efficiency, providing insights into how dynamic conformational changes from PIWI coordinate cofactors to safeguard gametogenesis.