The human costs of the research-assessment culture

Nature, Published online: 09 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02922-4 Large-scale evaluation permeates the UK university system, but some countries are rejecting harsh judgements and emphasizing strategic development. | Continue reading


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Consider the finches: Books in brief

Nature, Published online: 09 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02918-0 Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks. | Continue reading


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New virus-genome website seeks to make sharing sequences easy and fair

Nature, Published online: 09 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02864-x The Pathoplexus database has sequences from Ebola, West Nile virus and another dangerous pathogen. | Continue reading


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I make fake eyes for those who need them

Nature, Published online: 09 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02923-3 As the only ocularist in Uganda, Franklin Wasswa produces customized prosthetic eyes for people who’ve lost their own to injury or disease. | Continue reading


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The Amazon’s gargantuan gardeners: manatees

Nature, Published online: 07 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02874-9 The aquatic mammals disperse seeds of their favourite foods as they migrate, according to a serendipitous study of their poo. | Continue reading


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The baseless stat that could be harming Indigenous conservation efforts

Nature, Published online: 06 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02910-8 Researchers have identified that a commonly repeated claim about levels of biodiversity on Indigenous lands is not only wrong, it is also counterproductive in conservation efforts. | Continue reading


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Publisher Correction: Single-crystalline metal-oxide dielectrics for top-gate 2D transistors

Nature, Published online: 06 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08001-y Publisher Correction: Single-crystalline metal-oxide dielectrics for top-gate 2D transistors | Continue reading


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How to change people’s minds about climate change: what the science says

Nature, Published online: 06 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02777-9 Telling people about the consensus among scientists can help, study finds, but experts think that personal conversations are needed, too. | Continue reading


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Cough or sneeze? How the brain knows what to unleash

Nature, Published online: 06 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02858-9 ‘Sneeze neurons’ activated by triggers such as pollen or a viral infection send an achoo signal, whereas cough neurons induce a hack. | Continue reading


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Brazil’s ban on X: how scientists are coping with the cutoff

Nature, Published online: 06 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02898-1 Some are pivoting to alternative social-media platforms and scrambling to rebuild their networks. | Continue reading


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Daily briefing: The Doritos dye that makes mouse tissue transparent

Nature, Published online: 06 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02941-1 A dye that helps to give Doritos their orange colour helps scientists look inside tissues. Plus, the first pictures from NASA’s solar sail and how a loss of bats to disease has knock-on effects for human … | Continue reading


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Fur farming a ‘viral highway’ that could spark next pandemic, say scientists

Nature, Published online: 06 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02871-y Study in China finds viruses that could infect people are rampant in farms breeding mink, raccoons and foxes for their fur. | Continue reading


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Cheap catalysts close the loop on plastics production

Nature, Published online: 05 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02846-z Process breaks down two of the most common plastics into raw ingredients. | Continue reading


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Simple steps could shrink US beef industry’s carbon hoofprint

Nature, Published online: 05 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02848-x Beef production accounts for 3% of country’s carbon emissions, but measures such as tree-planting offer help. | Continue reading


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Daily briefing: Scientists almost have nuclear clocks ticking

Nature, Published online: 05 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02908-2 Scientists have demonstrated all of the ingredients they need to make a nuclear clock. Plus, a study sheds light on how the immune systems of trans men are affected by hormone replacement therapy and we f … | Continue reading


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Transparent mice made with light-absorbing dye reveal organs at work

Nature, Published online: 05 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02887-4 A method that renders skin temporarily see-through could offer researchers a non-invasive way to look inside the bodies of live mice. | Continue reading


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Perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells with bilayer interface passivation

Nature, Published online: 05 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07997-7 Perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells with bilayer interface passivation | Continue reading


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Candidate 1143172 cover letter: Junior pot scrubber

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02812-9 Career progression. | Continue reading


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Massive Attack’s science-led drive to lower music’s carbon footprint

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02835-2 Climate scientist Carly McLachlan partners with the UK band to put the environmental impact of concerts centre stage. | Continue reading


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Live music is a major carbon sinner — but it could be a catalyst for change

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02828-1 Powered by the enthusiasm of fans, many stars are emphasizing sustainability in their tours and live events. The industry needs to turn it up to eleven. | Continue reading


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Lassa fever to have a fearsome toll without vaccination

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02845-0 Modelling suggests that the Lassa virus could infect millions in a decade, but vaccines under development could sharply reduce deaths. | Continue reading


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Why I’m committed to breaking the bias in large language models

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02839-y Nuance is often lost on artificial-intelligence models, but here’s why society must navigate these grey areas. | Continue reading


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Intellectual property and data privacy: the hidden risks of AI

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02838-z Generative artificial-intelligence tools have been widely adopted across academia, but users might not be aware of all their inherent risks. | Continue reading


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Guide, don’t hide: reprogramming learning in the wake of AI

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02837-0 As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integral to the world outside academia, universities face a crucial choice: to use or not to use. | Continue reading


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Ancient fish dined on bats — or died trying

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02847-y Fossils hint that bats’ wings sometimes lodged in fish’s throats, leading the bat-eater to die of hunger. | Continue reading


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Why the next pandemic could come from the Arctic — and what to do about it

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02830-7 Only a unified approach across disciplines can reduce the underappreciated threat of emerging diseases arising in the north. | Continue reading


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A day in the life of the world’s fastest supercomputer

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02832-5 In the hills of eastern Tennessee, a record-breaking machine called Frontier is providing scientists with unprecedented opportunities to study everything from atoms to galaxies. | Continue reading


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Humans have evolved to digest starch more easily since the advent of farming

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02825-4 The region of the human genome that harbours genes encoding amylase enzymes, which are crucial for starch digestion, shows extensive structural diversity. Amylase genes have been duplicated and deleted se … | Continue reading


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Breast cancer blocked by multiple natural lines of defence

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02658-1 Cancer-promoting mutations are common in healthy tissue but rarely lead to tumour formation. A study of the mouse mammary gland reveals three protective mechanisms that limit the ability of cells to give … | Continue reading


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‘Nuclear clock’ breakthrough paves the way for super-precise timekeeping

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02865-w Physicists are one step closer to developing a clock based on energy shifts in atomic nuclei. | Continue reading


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Engineered T cell therapy for central nervous system injury

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07906-y This study presents a new T cell therapy targeting spinal cord injury, providing a potential new approach for injured CNS. | Continue reading


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Deciphering the impact of genomic variation on function

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07510-0 The Impact of Genomic Variation on Function Consortium is combining single-cell mapping, genomic perturbations and predictive modelling to investigate relationships between human genomic variation, genome … | Continue reading


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Mapping glycoprotein structure reveals Flaviviridae evolutionary history

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07899-8 Combined phylogenetic analyses and glycoprotein structure prediction across the Flaviviridae reveals divergent membrane fusion systems and provides insights into the complex evolutionary history within th … | Continue reading


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Farmed fur animals harbour viruses with zoonotic spillover potential

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07901-3 Fur farming represents an important hub of cross-species transmission for viral zoonoses. | Continue reading


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A pathology foundation model for cancer diagnosis and prognosis prediction

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07894-z A study describes the development of a generalizable foundation machine learning framework to extract pathology imaging features for cancer diagnosis and prognosis prediction. | Continue reading


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The hepatitis C virus envelope protein complex is a dimer of heterodimers

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07783-5 Structural studies of a homodimeric arrangement of hepatitis C virus envelope E1/E2 heterodimers reveals the molecular basis of intracomplex interactions and provides mechanistic insights into neutralizin … | Continue reading


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Mechanisms that clear mutations drive field cancerization in mammary tissue

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07882-3 The authors use lineage tracing to map the fate of wild-type and Brca1−/−;Trp53−/− cells in the adult mouse mammary gland, identifying three layers of protection that limit the spread of mutant cells at t … | Continue reading


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Alternating high-fat diet enhances atherosclerosis by neutrophil reprogramming

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07693-6 Re-exposure to a high-fat diet in mice led to emergency myelopoiesis and increased neutrophils in the blood, which infiltrated plaques and released neutrophil extracellular traps, exacerbating atheroscler … | Continue reading


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Global marine microbial diversity and its potential in bioprospecting

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07891-2 Analysis of 43,191 genomes obtained from publicly available marine bacterial and archaeal metagenome data provides insights into marine bacterial evolution, CRISPR–Cas defence and antibiotic resistance ge … | Continue reading


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DNA methylation controls stemness of astrocytes in health and ischaemia

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07898-9 Single-cell analysis of the transcriptome, chromatin accessibility and methylome of adult neural stem cells and astrocytes demonstrates that stemness is driven by methylation profiles distinct from those … | Continue reading


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A polymer-like ultrahigh-strength metal alloy

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07900-4 A polymer-like ultrahigh-strength TiNi alloy was fabricated by a simple three-step process to give a combination of a polymer-like ultralow elastic modulus and a steel-like ultrahigh yield strength over a … | Continue reading


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An aberrant immune–epithelial progenitor niche drives viral lung sequelae

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07926-8 CD8+ T cell–macrophage interactions have a central role in impairing alveolar regeneration and driving fibrotic sequelae after acute viral pneumonia in a mouse model of long COVID. | Continue reading


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Gravitational instability in a planet-forming disk

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07877-0 Observations of gravitational instability in the disk around AB Aurigae using deep observations of 13CO and C18O line emission provide evidence that giant protoplanets can be formed from collapsing fragme … | Continue reading


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Frequency ratio of the 229mTh nuclear isomeric transition and the 87Sr atomic clock

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07839-6 A vacuum ultraviolet frequency comb is used to directly excite the narrow 229Th nuclear clock transition in a solid-state CaF2 host material, marking the start of nuclear-based solid-state optical clocks. | Continue reading


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Signatures of magnetism control by flow of angular momentum

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07914-y Signatures of magnetism control by the flow of angular momentum are observed in Pt/Al/Fe/GaAs(001) multilayers by the application of an in-plane charge current in Pt. | Continue reading


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Diverse viral cas genes antagonize CRISPR immunity

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07923-x We demonstrate that phages have co-opted cas genes from CRISPR defence systems, which subsequently evolved anti-defence functions. | Continue reading


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Immune system adaptation during gender-affirming testosterone treatment

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07789-z Examination of immunological changes in transgender individuals undergoing gender-affirming testosterone treatment reveals sex hormone-regulated pathways in humans and explains sex-divergent responses in … | Continue reading


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CDK5–cyclin B1 regulates mitotic fidelity

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07888-x Cyclin B1 is a mitotic co-factor of CDK5. | Continue reading


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