Volume 639 Issue 8056, 27 March 2025

Nature Index data reveal how countries and fields differ in gender equity in research.

Insurers rely on sophisticated catastrophe modelling to estimate risk exposure — and as climate risks are rising, so are the costs for protection.

Rather than assuming that relatives of older people will step up to fill systemic gaps in health care, communities need research and policies that align with families’ existing routines.

Research on mice show promise for agents that attack senescent cells, which contribute to the degradation of spinal discs.

The protein keratin, the principle ingredient of wool and feathers, can be repurposed as strong, flexible plastic.

A crackdown on sulfur in ship fuel is linked to a steep drop in thunderclouds in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.

Genomic analysis suggests that the ancestors of lizards on Fiji today rafted from North America some 30 million years ago.

The effects of a proposed green-energy facility in Chile could be devastating for some of the most powerful instruments available to astronomers.

Concern rises among researchers after agency officials ask for a list of projects funded to study the jabs.

Researchers flag groups that should get an extra dose of measles vaccine as case numbers continue to rise in Texas and neighbouring states.

Memorable ‘tripartite’ phrases in titles make studies more likely to be read and cited.

The device, to be tested in more people, could be used as a temporary measure for those waiting for a donor organ.

Physicists had long assumed that the elusive force has constant strength. But the latest results from a project to map the Universe’s expansion challenge this idea.

Cells called neutrophils form gooey rings around sites where skin is punctured, study in mice shows.

Artificial intelligence software is increasingly involved in reviewing papers, provoking interest and unease.

Intermittent fasting has gained a following, in part because of tantalizing hints that it can boost cognition, fend off cancer and even slow ageing.

One century after Edwin Hubble revealed his astonishing discovery of a cosmos beyond the Milky Way, the most precise measurements still can’t agree on how fast galaxies are moving.

As glaciers begin to disappear, technological fixes to slow or halt ice melt are emerging. But regulations are urgently required before these fixes are used widely.

Interventions involving bacteria or fungi could help to sequester greenhouse gases, create more sustainable products and clean up pollution — in ways that are economically viable and safe.

Geophysicist Shiba Subedi combines science and songwriting to raise awareness and debunk earthquake myths.

AlphaFold’s highly accurate structural models transformed protein biology,but RNA lags behind.

Juan Ramón Fernández Cardenete tends the Alhambra’s many water features and gardens.

Why are some species more likely to diversify than others? For the largest group of vertebrates, ray-finned fishes, the ability to evolve by transitioning back and forth between simple and complex teeth fuelled their diversification.

Ultraviolet light from a galaxy observed when the Universe was just 330 million years old has intriguing implications for understanding how the first generations of stars and black holes were formed.

As well as degrading proteins, the proteosome surprisingly also functions in human defence against bacterial infection. By changing how proteins are cleaved, this system generates antibiotic peptides on demand.

Genomic sequencing has revealed that individual strains of life-threatening, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and Candida auris fungi reside on human skin and can be commonly transmitted between residents of nursing homes.

A musician’s query as to the origin of a warped ‘wolf’ tone, and a review of a book by physicist Marie Curie, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive.

The 2005 finding of cells and blood vessels in dinosaur bone launched a systematic search for fossil remnants of biomolecules, creating innovations in methods and applications.

The standard approach of climate science is showing signs of a crisis owing to the emergence of discrepancies and disruptions in recent years; this Perspective discusses the policy implications and the paths forward.

This Perspective describes how recent advances in artificial intelligence could be used to automate medical image interpretation to complement human expertise and empower physicians and patients.

Spectroscopy from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey of a galaxy at redshift 13 shows a singular, bright emission line identified as Lyman-α, suggesting the onset of reionization only 330 Myr after the Big Bang.

Ultra-hot Jupiters provide a unique window into atmospheric processes and this in-depth study enables integrated global snapshots of the atmosphere and more accurate identification of flow patterns, thus allowing for better comparison to models.

Far-field mid-infrared spectroscopy reveals both the electroluminescence of hyperbolic phonon polaritons of hexagonal boron nitride excited by strongly biased graphene, and the associated radiative energy transfer through the material.

All-electrical excitation of the hyperbolic phonon polaritons in hexagonal boron nitride by drifting charge carriers in nearby graphene results in electroluminescence at mid-infrared frequencies.

Spontaneous parametric down-conversion was used to generate narrowband photon pairs with a high spectral brightness in a high-Q silicon nitride microresonator.

An optical parametric amplifier based on integrated photonic circuits fabricated using low-loss gallium phosphide-on-silicon dioxide demonstrates improved bandwidth and gain performance over state-of-the-art erbium-doped fibre amplifiers while maintaining a low noise figure.

The development of active solids based on centimetre-scale building blocks incorporating odd elasticity shows that they can spontaneously undergo limit cycles of shape changes, leading to adaptive locomotion such as rolling and crawling.

Observations and climate models suggest that the global sea surface temperature jump in 2023–2024 was not unexpected and would have been nearly impossible without anthropogenic warming.

Digital image correlation measurements show that nominally stationary interfaces subjected to constant shear and normal loads are sliding at extremely small rates, confirming the predictions of rate-and-state friction formulations.

A 4 °C global temperature increase would push 7.5% of amphibian species beyond their physiological limits.

A study shows that the rapid diversification of cichlids in African lakes is driven by their ability to evolve between having simple or complex teeth.

Using multi-ancestry genome-wide association study and fine-mapping, 298 loci and 36 credible genes are identified in the aetiology of bipolar disorder.

Data from Michigan, USA, systematically document that comparatively fewer students from racial minorities excel in maths and reading, and that this gap grows as students progress through school.

Disruption of mucin-domain glycoprotein expression and function in the endothelial glycocalyx are associated with ageing and Alzheimer’s disease, leading to dysregulated blood–brain barrier function.

A study in rats proposes a mechanism for how the brain maps the surrounding environment, including places it has never seen, by alternating left and right forward sweeps in successive theta cycles.

The posterolateral cortical amygdala and other connected brain regions have a key role in mediating the transition from investigative to aggressive behaviour in male mice.

Analyses of strain-resolved metagenomics with isolate sequencing data of skin samples from residents at nursing homes suggest that skin is a reservoir for Candida auris and other multidrug-resistant bacterial species.

Two distinct patterns in the protective effect of natural infection against reinfection in the Omicron variant versus pre-Omicron eras show that SARS-CoV-2 immune protection is shaped by dynamic interaction between host immunity and viral evolution.

Proteasomal degradation of cellular proteins generate defence peptides constitutively and in response to bacterial infection. Such peptides might provide a source of natural antibiotics that could lead to biotechnology applications and therapeutic interventions.

In a phase 1 trial, patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma who were treated with surgery and bespoke neoantigen mRNA vaccines combined with anti-PD-L1 and chemotherapy exhibited marked long-lived persistence of neoantigen-specific CD8⁺ T cell clones, which correlated with prolonged recurrence-free survival at a 3.2-year follow-up.

We show the evolution of a case of EGFR mutant lung cancer treated with a combination of erlotinib, osimertinib, radiotherapy and a personalized neopeptide vaccine targeting somatic mutations, including EGFR exon 19 deletion.

Functional, tumour-promoting GABAergic neuron-to-glioma synapses in diffuse midline gliomas are identified.

Plasmodium falciparum Snf2L is an ISWI-related ATPase that actively repositions P. falciparum nucleosomes in vivo.

A metalloenzyme capable of oxidatively cleaving cellulose, found in a microbial community specialized in lignocellulose degradation, could enable sustainable biofuel production.

DNA double-strand breaks induce local genome maintenance and inhibition of replication initiation at nearby topologically associating domains without affecting global DNA synthesis.

Zorya uses a membrane-anchored H⁺-driven rotary motor ZorAB to sense phage invasion and to recruit the intracellular effectors ZorC and ZorD that execute anti-phage defence.