Volume 634 Issue 8034, 17 October 2024

Maintaining connectivity is essential to keeping schools and universities working and humanitarian aid flowing.

The United Nations has just listed more things the world needs to accomplish. It should be asking why it hasn’t reached its current goals.

Young children in the playground behave like molecules in a gas, but kids undergo a phase change in a more structured setting.

A royal burial site linked to the fearsome Scythian equestrian culture contains evidence of ‘spectral riders’ described in Classical account.

Global survey finds human faecal contamination in at least one sample from all 18 cities tested.

The easy synchronization suggests that an individual jelly does not distinguish its tissues from those of others.

The treatment’s success in three people raises hopes for mass production of cutting-edge CAR-T therapies.

Biologists created a symbiotic system that hints at how features such as mitochondria and chloroplasts might have emerged a billion years ago.

Vegetation is spreading at an alarming rate in a place where temperatures are soaring.

There is no proven vaccine or treatment for infections with the virus, which is closely related to Ebola virus and causes similar symptoms.

John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton pioneered computational methods that enabled the development of neural networks.

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun identified a class of tiny molecules that have a crucial role in controlling gene expression.

This year’s prize celebrates computational tools that have transformed biology and have the potential to revolutionize drug discovery.

Claims about food and immunity are everywhere. Now scientists are exploring exactly how nutrition acts on the immune system to boost health and treat disease.

Emerging protein-design competitions aim to sift out the functional from the fantastical. But researchers hope that the real prize will be a revolution for the field.

Spectacular archaeological finds in melting glaciers and mountain ice are giving new — although fleeting — insights into prehistoric hunting practices and more.

Clinician whose family-centred approach upended work on mid-life memory loss.

The impacts of armed conflict on biodiversity have long been neglected. A United Nations meeting hosted by Colombia is a golden opportunity to begin changing that.

The work of addressing the inequities in science must not fall just on those most affected.

More than 1,100 research leaders from 77 countries told Nature about where and how they recruit scientists — and who makes the cut.

It’s not enough to write high-quality programs. If you want to make your apps public — and usable — you should also follow these steps.

Rebeca Gonçalves explains how plant food could be grown on the red planet.

What is the neural basis of our perceptual experience? Simultaneous recordings from many individual neurons in humans provide surprising insights into how odours are processed in different regions of the brain.

An astrophysical object called a microquasar in the Milky Way has been found to emit γ-rays. The discovery shows that these systems accelerate particles to extremely high energies, and could provide insight into Galactic cosmic rays.

Abnormal filaments of a single type of protein are hallmarks of neurodegeneration. Structural studies reveal filaments made from two discrete but interwoven proteins, giving clues about the origin of neurodegenerative conditions.

A glaring gap in the portfolio of reactions used to synthesize libraries of organic compounds has been filled by the advent of a general method for joining together 3D molecular fragments — a boon for pharmaceutical research.

Photography from the air was helping archaeologists find the right spot to dig, plus a screaming frog makes a narrow escape, in our weekly peek at Nature’s archive.

Researchers have narrowed down the sources of the most common types of meteorite to a few collisional events that happened much more recently than was previously thought.

The race is on to find interventions that improve health and promote longevity. The mechanisms behind and possible benefits of one such intervention, dietary restriction, are more complex than previously thought.

We find that conservatives tend to share more low-quality news through social media than liberals, and so even if technology companies enact politically neutral anti-misinformation policies, political asymmetries in enforcement should be expected.

Ultra-high-energy gamma-ray emission from the microquasar V4641 Sagittarii is reported, suggesting that large-scale jets from microquasars could be more common than previously thought and also could be a notable source of galactic cosmic rays.

The Massalia asteroid family is identified as the remnant of the collisional event that gave rise to ordinary L chondrites, the most abundant class of meteorites in our collections.

Three relatively recent break-up events relating to young asteroid families are probably the dominant sources of the current influx of meteoritic material to the Earth.

Machine learning models trained with extensive datasets generated by ion-sensitive field-effect transistor sensors can classify complex liquids and quantify changes in chemical composition.

Bulk high-temperature superconductivity observed in pressurized tetragonal La₂PrNi₂O₇ was testified by detecting clear diamagnetic signals below about 75 K with appreciable superconducting shielding volume fractions at a pressure of above 15 GPa.

Alkyl–alkyl cross-coupling reactions are achieved by forming nickel–alkyl complexes directly by oxidative addition of alkyl halides, redox-active esters or pyridinium salts, and then combining them with a second alkyl electrophile.

Reductive deuteration and deuterodefluorination of arenes and heteroarenes is achieved through a scalable and general electrocatalytic method using a nitrogen-doped ruthenium electrode and heavy water.

Tree-ring records used to reconstruct the variability of the European jet stream from 1300 to 2004 ce show modulation of extreme regional climate events and extensive impacts on agriculture and human well-being.

The impact of structural variation on the evolution of the amylase genes is explored using human pangenome resources and ancient DNA data.

Human piriform and mediotemporal neurons encode odours, and signal how we perceive, rate and identify scents.

A state-dependent dopamine filter system in the male Drosophila brain balances threat perception against the drive to mate.

Using cross-areal mapping of axonal projections in the mouse neocortex, we identify the subtype-specific developmental dynamics of extratelencephalic neurons and show the functional transcriptional programs driving extratelencephalic neuron diversity.

Temporally dynamic extraembryonic and embryonic BMP4 signalling shapes mouse embryo lineage choices.

Using cryo-electron microscopy, heteromeric amyloid filaments composed of TDP-43 and ANXA11 in the brains of patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration type C are discovered.

Spillover of the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus to dairy cattle and the findings of a clinical, pathological and epidemiological investigation in nine affected farms are reported.

We demonstrate that phages have co-opted cas genes from CRISPR defence systems, which subsequently evolved anti-defence functions.

Health effects of dietary restriction are uncoupled from longevity.

This study presents a new T cell therapy targeting spinal cord injury, providing a potential new approach for injured CNS.

Elevated type 2 functionality in CAR T cell infusion products is significantly associated with maintenance of a median B cell aplasia duration of 8.4 years in paediatric patients with acute lymphocytic leukaemia.

Fc–IL-4, a typical type 2 cytokine, reinvigorates exhausted CD8⁺ T cells in tumours, underscoring this fusion protein as a potent immunotherapy that synergizes effectively with type 1 immunity against cancer.

Genome-wide characterization of solute-binding proteins in SAR11, a group of ubiquitous marine bacteria, reveals that they generally combine high binding affinities with narrow binding specificities, suggesting a molecular mechanism for the adaptation of SAR11 to diverse marine environments.

Cryogenic electron microscopy determines the structure of a fully assembled, MR1-reactive, human Vγ8Vδ3 TCR–CD3δγε₂ζ₂ complex bound by anti-CD3ε antibody Fab fragments.