Volume 641 Issue 8062, 8 May 2025

A report detailing how climate inaction will consign people born today to a lifetime of weather extremes must awaken a sense of responsibility.

The country’s publication policies should balance the need to promote science locally with the benefits of disseminating research internationally.

There’s no mystery to innovation and economic growth; the US must nurture its scientists or find out the hard way.

The treatment, which aimed to block production of a mutant protein, reduced the frequency of infant’s seizures, but did not improve neurological impairments.

The stone fragments had been discovered inside ‘Handprint Cave’ in Belize alongside other artefacts suggestive of ritual use.

Lithium that pooled in a volcanic caldera in the western United States had no way out, thanks to a lack of rivers.

Over time, young fringe-lipped bats learn how to distinguish the calls of palatable frogs from those of toxic ones.

In turbulent economic times, the prime minister’s Liberal party has promised funding to attract research talent to Canada.

As funding dries up, US universities will need to reconsider traditional tenure requirements.

Telltale signs of chatbot use are scattered through the scholarly literature — and, in some cases, have disappeared without a trace.

The month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.

As the administration of US President Donald Trump slashes budgets, crucial data sets on climate and other subjects could disappear.

Unique reproducibility effort in Brazil focuses on common methods rather than a single field ― and prompts call for reform.

Quick immune responses could be key to establishing herd immunity in future pandemics.

Studies suggest benefits as well as harms from digital companion apps — but scientists worry about long-term dependency.

Momentum is building for PROTAC treatments that eliminate disease-causing proteins, including those responsible for difficult-to-treat childhood cancers.

The Natural History Museum’s new gallery, Fixing our Broken Planet, examines Earth’s changing ecosystems and how to protect them.

The emerging global competition for green innovation, markets and investments might boost prosperity without improving environmental sustainability.

To foster research excellence, institutions should value both researchers and technicians — and facilitate collaborations between them.

Researchers and administrators are exploring ways to restructure a rigid hierarchy that can breed power abuses.

Michael Running Wolf leads artificial-intelligence initiatives to revive lost languages and empower Indigenous people.

Jiraporn Inthasan studies soils in Thailand’s plantations to identify farming methods that best absorb carbon.

Scientists have fully sequenced the genomes of six living ape species, enabling long-awaited comparisons of hard-to-assemble genomic regions.

Satellite observations of solar radiation have narrowed down the possible properties of dark photons — a proposed dark-matter particle.

An analysis shows that large fractions of future generations will be exposed to extreme climate events that would occur only once every 10,000 years in the absence of global warming.

Boosting the recycling process known as autophagy — impaired in the brain during prolonged stress — has the potential to restore normal neuronal activity and treat depression.

Large-scale analyses of electronic health data suggest that the herpes zoster vaccine could protect against dementia — but it’s not yet clear how.

Hungry house-sparrows destroy primroses and bees dance to direct others to sweetness, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive.

This Review provides an overview of progress and future directions in the development of nasally administered vaccines for respiratory infections.

A life cycle assessment study is used to examine the impacts of advanced cooling technologies on cloud infrastructure, from virtual machines to server architecture, data centre buildings and the grid.

Measurements of fission fragments for 100 fissioning systems are used to map an asymmetric fission island, providing evidence for the role played by the deformation induced by a closed 36-proton shell.

Generalization of a quantum twisting microscope to cryogenic temperatures in twisted bilayer graphene shows the ability to map phononic dispersions through inelastic momentum-conserving tunnelling and reveals an angle-dependent coupling between electrons and phonons.

To increase the efficiency, brightness and stability of next-generation light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the microstructure of CsPbI_3-xBr_x metal-halide perovskite, a good pure-red emitter, was altered to fix hole leakage, which was identified as decreasing efficiencies in overworked LEDs.

A size-sieved complex precipitation in Sc-added Al–Mg alloys achieves a high-density dispersion of both fine Al₃Sc nanoprecipitates and in situ formed core-shell Al₃(Mg, Sc)₂/Al₃Sc nanophases with high hydrogen-trapping ability.

A one-step process using fossil-free hydrogen-plasma-based reduction is used to extract nickel from low-grade ore and create high-grade ferronickel alloys, providing a more sustainable and environmentally friendly method for obtaining nickel.

Climate models, impact models and demographic data are used to estimate the number of people projected to experience unprecedented lifetime exposure to extreme climate events across multiple dimensions, including birth year, warming scenario and vulnerability.

3D seismic reflection images of the lithosphere–asthenosphere boundary beneath Axial volcano show a magma assimilation front that focuses magmatism towards the centre of the volcano, controlling both eruption and hydrothermal processes.

Geochemistry and geochronology show that Samoa and Rurutu–Arago are the longest-lived Pacific hotspots, providing better constraints on plate rotation and support for a link between the Louisville volcanic track and the Ontong Java Nui Plateau.

Key measures of biodiversity were quantified and found to be affected by human pressures that shifted community composition and decreased local diversity across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems.

Complete sequences of chromosomes telomere-to-telomere from chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan and siamang provide a comprehensive and valuable resource for future evolutionary comparisons.

Exome sequencing of 851 trios from more than 2,500 individuals finds 187 genes with de novo mutations that contribute to meningomyelocele (spina bifida) and highlights critical pathways required for neural tube closure.

Acute stress activates autophagy in the lateral habenula, whereas chronic stress suppresses it, with this autophagy having a causal role in maintaining emotional homeostasis against stress, and its restoration through autophagy enhancers offers a novel antidepressant strategy.

Using a natural experiment that avoids common bias concerns, this study finds that the live-attenuated shingles vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis within a follow-up period of 7 years by approximately one-fifth.

A study using flies of the genus Drosophila adapted to life in diverse thermal environments shows how evolution has shaped temperature preference by acting on both molecular heat receptors and thermosensory circuits in the flies.

Neonatal antibiotic use is shown to reduce immune response to infant vaccines, accompanied by reduced abundance of Bifidobacteria in the gut microbiota, with experiments in mice indicating that probiotic therapy could be beneficial.

Dynamic cytoskeletal regulation of lymphatic endothelial cell shape, induced by isotropic stretch and crucial for dermal lymphatic capillary function, is identified and found to result from continuous remodelling of cellular overlaps that maintain vessel integrity.

CYSLTR2 and P2RY6 are identified as endogenous ceramide receptors, and inhibition of these ameliorates atherosclerosis, particularly in chronic-kidney-disease-associated cardiovascular disease.

B cell germinal centres achieve a balance between clonal expansion and sequence diversification by suppressing somatic hypermutation during proliferative clonal bursts.

Germinal centre B cells modify their mutation rate to preserve high-affinity receptors, thereby safeguarding high-affinity B cell lineages and enhancing the outcomes of antibody affinity maturation.

Results of a multicentre phase 1 clinical trial evaluating treatment with the engineered herpes simplex virus VG161 in advanced liver cancer indicate a good safety profile and promising efficacy.

A head-to-head double-ring complex of the human multifunctional DNA repair protein RAD52 mediates protection of stalled replication forks during replication stress, protecting them from reversal by SMARCAL1 motor.

Using cryo-electron microscopy, the structures of mammalian fatty acid synthase reveal how the acyl carrier protein dynamically shuttles intermediates between selected active sites.

A study examines functional human endogenous fatty acid synthase and characterizes its structural dynamics using single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, providing insights into its dynamics during the fatty acid synthesis condensing cycle.

GluA2-containing AMPA receptors (AMPARs) are not Ca²⁺ impermeable, and their ability to transport Ca²⁺ is shaped by the subunit composition of AMPAR tetramers as well as the orientation of transmembrane AMPAR regulatory proteins and cornichon auxiliary subunits.