Volume 641 Issue 8064, 22 May 2025

Researchers in low- and middle-income countries show that home-grown artificial-intelligence technologies can be developed, even without large external investments.

Collaborations between privately run foundations provide an opportunity to fund risky science that governments cannot take on.

The mass cancellation of US federal grants marks yet another escalation in political interference in science, but there are ways to keep crucial research going.

Immune-system responses to cell therapies produce long-term effects on cognition in mice.

The consumption and investments of the wealthiest 10% contribute disproportionately to the emissions that drive heat waves and drought.

A newly identified species of poison-dart frog seems to be monogamous, making it a rarity of its kind.

A device involving solar panels and a gel produces substantial amounts of water in one of the world’s driest deserts.

System improves chip designs and tackles unsolved maths problems, but has not been rolled out to researchers outside the company.

Five US-based researchers tell Nature why they are exploring career opportunities overseas.

Jakub Pachocki, who leads the firm’s development of advanced models, is excited to release an open version to researchers.

E-mails reveal the stoppage at the US Environmental Protection Agency, which is encouraging workers to resign ahead of a reorganization.

Tracks in Australia seem to be the earliest known prints of amniotes — a group that includes reptiles, birds and mammals.

Survey of hundreds of scientists’ work suggests that cutting off funding disrupts focus and reduces the novelty of research.

Results from a phase III clinical trial suggest that taking ubrogepant at the first sign of an oncoming migraine can prevent pre-headache fatigue and light sensitivity.

Researchers are arguing over whether ‘disruptive’ or ‘novel’ science is waning – and how to remedy the problem.

Clues are emerging about the ghostly clan that settled eastern Asia and left a genetic legacy in people today.

Manuscripts and specimens accumulated by the colonial East India Company lie at the roots of modern science and museums.

A call to arms argues that emerging microbial technologies can not only improve planetary health and preserve biodiversity — but also be the cornerstone of a thriving economy.

When it comes to modelling how global warming will affect storms hitting the United States, some factors are better understood than others.

Unemployed researchers face some tough career choices as they flood the job market after the Trump administration’s cuts to science.

João José Mendes de Oliveira and the Turtle Foundation catch poachers with the help of trained dogs.

Transplanting dopamine-releasing neurons into the brain is a promising regenerative therapy for Parkinson’s disease. Two clinical trials show that it is safe, but more evidence is needed to prove its effectiveness.

Observations of a galaxy from an early period of the Universe’s history reveal a bar-shaped structure and gas dynamics thought not to have been possible at that time.

Noises in nearby greenery heard before a thunderbolt, and the physics of a peculiar echo made by fences in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive.

The observation of bonding behaviours in wild chimpanzees suggests that some aspects of human attachment have a deep evolutionary origin.

Neurons involved in forming memories of a cold environment communicate with the part of the brain that regulates metabolic responses to cold stress.

The binary star system ν Octantis has long been considered hostile to planet formation. The discovery of a white dwarf in the system offers an alternative view.

A protein pair that influences how damage to cardiac muscle fluctuates with circadian rhythm could be the key to optimizing heart-attack recovery.

Gas distribution and motion patterns driven by a galactic bar of the J0107a dusty star-forming galaxy have analogues in local bars, indicating that similar processes of active star formation were already operating 11.1 billion years ago.

A planet in a retrograde orbit around a star with a close-in white dwarf companion reveals the role of binary stellar evolution in the formation and evolution of planets.

The successful transport of a trapped proton cloud from the antimatter factory of CERN using a transportable, superconducting, autonomous and open Penning-trap system that can distribute antiprotons into other experiments is reported.

A manufacturable platform for quantum computing with photons is introduced and a set of monolithically integrated silicon-photonics-based modules is benchmarked, demonstrating dual-rail photonic qubits with performance close to thresholds required for operation.

Using a system to adjust the strength of cavity vacuum fields penetrating a Hall bar, a study describes the effect of the vacuum field of a cavity on electronic correlations in quantum Hall systems.

An artificial Kitaev chain is realized by engineering three coupled quantum dots in a two-dimensional electron gas, which enables the manipulation and observation of both the edge and bulk states.

Examination of a complete structural phase diagram of twisted trilayer graphene shows that several large-scale moiré domain lattices can be formed, the physical properties of which can be tuned by the twist angles between layers.

The observation of the transition from hcp H₂ to a post-hcp structure with a six-fold larger supercell at pressures above 212 GPa is reported, indicating the trend of H₂ polymerization through molecular association.

Current trends imply that we will transgress most of the planetary boundaries by 2050; however, ambitious, urgent and universal action to ameliorate climate change and increase resource efficiency can effectively reduce the degree of transgression.

A comparison of alpha diversity (number of plant species) and dark diversity (species that are currently absent from a site despite being ecologically suitable) demonstrates the negative effects of regional-scale anthropogenic activity on plant diversity.

Ancient DNA from the eastern Maghreb (Tunisia and Algeria) dating between 15,000 and 6,000 years ago shows that this region was far less affected by external gene flow than the rest of the Neolithic Mediterranean, including not only Europe but also the western Maghreb (Morocco).

Integration of spatial transcriptomics data with data from genome-wide association studies enables spatially resolved mapping of cells associated with human diseases and other complex traits.

Cold-sensitive engrams contribute to learned thermoregulation in mice that are returned to an environment in which they previously experienced a cold challenge, through a network formed between the hippocampus and hypothalamus that enables the recall of cold-related memories.

Merging ideas from reinforcement learning theory with recent insights into the filtering properties of the dorsal raphe nucleus, a unifying perspective is found explaining why serotonin neurons are activated by both rewards and punishments.

In mice, learning and performance on an auditory task is driven by higher-order signals in the auditory cortex that are no longer required when the mouse has achieved expert-level performance.

After transplantation into the brain of patients with Parkinson’s disease, allogeneic dopaminergic progenitors derived from induced pluripotent stem cells survived, produced dopamine and did not form tumours, therefore suggesting safety and potential clinical benefits for Parkinson’s disease.

Bilateral grafts of cryopreserved human embryonic stem cell-derived dopaminergic neuron progenitor cells into the putamen of patients with Parkinson’s disease in a phase I clinical trial showed safety, improvements in off-drug motor function and graft survival at 18 months after transplant.

Upon intramuscular administration, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are primarily taken up by macrophages, in which the cellular machinery extends their poly(A) tails, thereby increasing mRNA stability and translation, providing an explanation for the efficacy of these vaccines.

Transcriptomic and proteomic analyses of cells and matrix along the fibrotic trajectory in mouse lung identified PI16 as an anti-fibrotic factor with potential for therapeutic application in humans.

Glutamate metabolically reprograms bone-marrow-derived macrophages, stabilizing HIF1α, which transcriptionally activates WNT3 to promote YAP1-dependent hepatocyte proliferation, boosting liver regeneration.

The core circadian transcription factor BMAL1 regulates circadian-dependent myocardial injury.

A gene-edited pig liver transplanted into a human recipient remains functional after 10 days and indicates that porcine organs could help meet the growing demand for liver transplants.

A genomic barcoding scheme called two-layer DNA seqFISH+ enables the simultaneous mapping of more than 100,000 loci and has been used to identify cell-type-specific subnuclear compartments in the mouse brain.

Systematic base-editing and computational screens identify specific cysteine residues on VPS35 in the retromer complex as key sensors that decrease mitochondrial translation in response to reactive oxygen species signals.