Volume 651 Issue 8106, 19 March 2026

There’s a shocking lack of understanding of the physics underlying this commonplace phenomenon, but researchers are on the case.

As artificial intelligence begins to mimic consciousness with uncanny skill, we need design norms and laws that prevent it from being mistaken for sentient beings.

Warning systems can engage people on a personal level — if they are built in a way that bridges technology and social science.

Experiments with simulated magma show it can be pulled into long strands similar to those seen in lava tubes.

Tightly packed molecular chains can start to wiggle in many directions when an enzyme introduces energy.

Ancient DNA and other clues from feathers found in modern Peru hint that the ancient Ychsma culture imported birds from the distant Amazon.

‘Cryosleep’ remains the preserve of science fiction, but researchers are getting closer to restoring brain function after deep freezing.

Researchers simulated nearly every molecule in a bacterial cell —and then watched it grow and reproduce.

Funding for national laboratories and important research projects would increase under the government’s plans.

Four million articles are now downloaded from bioRxiv every month, according to an analysis of the life-science preprint server’s first 13 years of existence.

If confirmed in people, the finding might lead to gut-targeted therapies that could reverse cognitive decline.

Proteins assume complex 3D shapes even faster than does DNA, which is a simpler molecule.

Earth is now warming at a rate of around 0.35 ºC per decade, fresh analysis finds.

But scientists say there are practical and ethical challenges to overcome before the strategy could be deployed in real-world settings.

It has long been known as the arbiter of reward in the brain, but recent findings could upend this classic theory of dopamine function.

The familiar phenomenon has puzzled researchers for centuries, but experiments are finally making sense of its unruly behaviours.

An exemplary book gets much right, but misses the point that the nation’s tech dominance has more to do with globalization than with policy choices.

Silicon Valley’s billionaires have become ideological provocateurs, spreading rage and reshaping the public sphere.

More-rigorous testing is required before artificial-intelligence approaches are widely adopted by public forecasting agencies.

A cross between e-bikes and electric cars, low-speed electric vehicles are easier to build and run and are greener than larger alternatives.

Planning to switch fields? Be bold, know your limits and choose your institution wisely, say three UK research leaders.

Graduate students increasingly use artificial-intelligence tools to draft, code and search — but many fear it could erode the very skills a doctorate is meant to build.

Objects made from the same insulator can sometimes acquire different charges when rubbed together, owing to a thin layer of carbon-based material on the object’s surface.

An approach that specifically targets a single nucleotide corrected behavioural abnormalities in an animal model of Snijders Blok–Campeau syndrome.

Antarctic ice cores hint that changes in the ocean might have played a larger part than have greenhouse gases in key climate shifts of the past three million years.

A genetic variant that quashes cyclin D3 expression might have been selected for in a population on an island where malaria was once endemic.

Mathematicians use computational tools to prove theorems. An AI model that is trained to use these tools might accelerate mathematical discovery.

An artificial-intelligence system uses clinical data, genetic information and literature searches to suggest diagnoses and provides the underlying reasoning.

An assessment of sensitivity to increasing temperature for thousands of insect species in mountainous terrain reveals a risk of insect biodiversity loss in tropical lowlands.

Self-bound droplets and droplet arrays are observed in an ultracold gas of strongly dipolar sodium–caesium molecules, establishing ultracold molecules as a system for the exploration of strongly dipolar quantum matter.

Olympiad-level formal mathematical reasoning is achieved with reinforcement learning, with performance reaching a score equivalent to that of a silver medallist at the 2024 International Mathematical Olympiad competition.

A multimodal in situ electron microscopy approach enables direct visualization of structural and chemical evolution in a working halide perovskite light-emitting diode with nanometre precision.

The synthesis of millimetre-sized phase-pure hexagonal diamond, a polymorph of cubic diamond, by compressing highly oriented pyrolytic graphite under high pressures and temperatures is reported, providing new insight into the graphite-to-diamond transformation pathway.

By measuring charge exchange in a sphere/plate pair composed of identical amorphous silicon dioxide and controlling charging polarity using baking or plasma treatment, adventitious carbon is shown to break symmetry in oxide contact electrification.

A method is described for the manufacture of pivoting colloidal assemblies comprising rotating diamond and rotating triangle geometries that show tunable folding and unfolding by thermal fluctuations and actuation by magnetic attractions.

A machine-learning workflow has been developed to predict the enantioselectivity of asymmetric catalytic reactions using only sparse data for training.

Blue ice records from Antarctica are used to determine methane and carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 3 million years.

Estimates of mean ocean temperature based on noble gas (Xe/Kr) measurements in shallow ice cores from the Allan Hills blue ice area, Antarctica, indicate enhanced cooling around the Plio-Pleistocene Transition and enhanced ice sheet growth around the time of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition.

Reliable 5-day, 3-hourly forecasts of aerosol optical components and surface concentrations are obtained in 1 minute using a machine-learning-driven forecasting system.

Observations of river channel geometry and monthly water storage changes for 126,674 river reaches worldwide are derived from the first water year of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite mission.

A survey of tropical insect populations and thermal tolerance limits indicates that species from lowland areas have low capacity to survive increased temperatures, and that thermal tolerance is limited by fundamental properties of protein architecture.

The Huayuan biota exhibits extraordinary biodiversity, illuminating the impact of the Phanerozoic mass extinction around 513 million years ago and offering critical insights into the transformation of global ecosystems in the early Cambrian.

A large cross-population atlas of gene–environment interactions reveals how age, sex and lifestyle shape genetic effects, heritability, prediction accuracy and disease biology, with implications for personalized medicine and drug development.

Population-level analyses and in vitro experiments show that a specific genetic variant of cyclin D3 inhibits the growth of the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum in erythrocytes, and suggest that its high frequency in Sardinia was driven by past endemic malaria.

Risk associated with genetically defined forms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can propagate by means of transcriptional regulation to affect convergently dysregulated pathways, providing insight into the convergent impact of ASD genetic risk on human neurodevelopment.

Peripheral macrophage-like haemocytes in Drosophila promote sleep by clearing lipid buildup in the brain, helping to maintain metabolic homeostasis and brain function and fitness.

Systematic screening of transcription factors reveals conserved mechanisms governing cortical radial glia lineage progression across primates and provides a framework for functional dissection of gene regulatory networks in human cortical neurogenesis.

Transcription factor osr2 is identified as a specific marker and regulator of mural lymphatic endothelial cell (muLEC) differentiation and maintenance, and muLECs and border-associated macrophages share functional analogies but are not homologous, providing an example of convergent evolution.

CD44 expressed by fibroblastic reticular cells in secondary lymphoid organs regulates trafficking of dendritic cells, and thus has an essential role in the priming of T cells and the adaptive immune response.

In mice, DHPS supports the maturation, maintenance and function of tissue-resident macrophages via the polyamine–hypusine axis, with implications for macrophage-targeting therapies.

DeepRare—a multi-agent system for rare disease differential diagnosis decision support powered by large language models, integrating specialized tools and up-to-date knowledge sources—has the potential to reduce healthcare disparities in rare disease diagnosis.

In vivo base editing of a causative mutation that leads to the neurodevelopmental disorder Snijders Blok–Campeau syndrome restores protein dosage and ameliorates molecular and behavioural deficits in a humanized mouse model of the condition.

ATF6α activation in human and preclinical models of hepatocellular carcinoma is significantly associated with an aggressive tumour phenotype characterized by reduced survival, glycolytic reprogramming and local immunosuppression.

Heparan sulfate proteoglycans facilitate the assembly of clusters of glycoRNAs and cell surface RNA-binding proteins, which negatively modulate VEGF-A signalling and angiogenesis.

Polyamines prevent the action of kinases on acidic phosphorylatable motifs in spliceosomal proteins, thus providing a mechanism for metabolite-mediated regulation of alternative splicing in cells.

Psychedelics and their non-hallucinogenic analogues were compared, revealing that serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT_2AR)-mediated G_i signalling is essential for hallucinogenic effect, with the functional mechanisms underlying this providing insights for designing therapeutic drugs without hallucinogenic effects.