A description of the terminology and methodology used in this supplement, and a guide to the functionality available free online at natureindex.com. | Continue reading
Using data from Michigan, Harding et al. find no evidence that prison sentences have an effect on arrests or convictions for violent crimes after release. Imprisonment modestly reduced violence if the analysis included imprisonment’s incapacitation effects. | Continue reading
Mysterious groups of archaea — named after Loki and other Norse myths — are stirring debate about the origin of complex creatures, including humans. | Continue reading
Natalie Kofler is engrossed by a book that examines what cutting-edge biotechnology means for our sense of self. | Continue reading
Open science can lead to greater collaboration, increased confidence in findings and goodwill between researchers. | Continue reading
Shallow moonquakes detected at four Apollo landing sites between 1969 and 1977 occurred during maximum stress and in close proximity to young faults, suggesting that the Moon is tectonically active, according to reanalyses of the seismic data and tidal force modelling. | Continue reading
The Mongolian leader left a strong footprint in the Y chromosomes of modern descendants — but he was not the only one. | Continue reading
The Environmental Protection Agency's decision leaves fate of more than a dozen decades-long projects in doubt. | Continue reading
Transitioning to a low-carbon world will create new rivalries, winners and losers, argue Andreas Goldthau, Kirsten Westphal and colleagues. | Continue reading
Academics put at risk a self-driving future by accepting industry’s optimistic predictions and obsessing over irrelevant questions, says Ashley Nunes. | Continue reading
As the Belt and Road Initiative spreads to central and eastern Europe, China’s investments in research and technology are raising concerns in the West. | Continue reading
The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory is now operational. | Continue reading
Computer scientists have thwarted programs that can trick AI systems into classifying malicious audio as safe. | Continue reading
The impacts of technological development on social sphere lack strong empirical foundation. Here the authors presented quantitative analysis of the phenomenon of social acceleration across a range of digital datasets and found that interest appears in bursts that dissipate on dec … | Continue reading
Contrary to the view that urbanization is a major driver of the global rise in obesity, the global increase in body-mass index is shown to be mostly due to increases in the body-mass indexes of rural populations. | Continue reading
Moon formation by a giant impact ejecting material from a magma ocean on Earth reconciles geochemical and dynamical constraints on its formation, according to numerical simulations. | Continue reading
The paper is the third study about the 2016 Kuamamoto earthquake to be retracted. | Continue reading
It is difficult to recover materials for re-manufacturing and re-use from plastics that are compounded with colourants, fillers and flame retardants. Now, it has been shown that alternative plastics based on dynamic covalent poly(diketoenamine)s depolymerize in strong aqueous aci … | Continue reading
At the CarbFix experimental site in Iceland, artificial removal of CO2 from the Earth’s atmosphere is investigated. The authors here propose a new method based on isotope fractionation calculations to estimate the efficiency of CO2 sequestration into calcite in basaltic groundwat … | Continue reading
Early childhood experience with the visual stimulus of Pokémon leads to a new brain representation whose location in high-level visual cortex suggests that the way we look at objects as children determines the functional organization of the cortex. | Continue reading
The Belt and Road Initiative, China’s mega-plan for global infrastructure, will transform the lives and work of tens of thousands of researchers. | Continue reading
Grant reviewers favour ‘broad’ words used more often by men, but proposals using those terms don’t produce better research. | Continue reading
Scientists have shown how light can be used to control a nano-switch, laying the groundwork for atomic-sized devices for use in a range of nanotechnologies. The fabrication of switches with nanoscale dimensions is a fundamental step forward in the further miniaturization of elect … | Continue reading
Though polymer electrolytes with high ionic Seebeck coefficients are attractive for thermoelectric modules, demonstrating high performance n-type polymers required for modules remains elusive. Here, the authors report ambipolar ionic polymer gels with high ionic Seebeck coefficie … | Continue reading
Projects from around the world will delve into questions including how misinformation spreads on social media platforms and who distributes it. | Continue reading
The medical programmes we see in our training as physician-scientists are becoming more progressive and supportive of students. Here’s what academia can learn from them, say Yoo Jung Kim and Erik Faber. | Continue reading
The Micius Quantum Prize celebrates a field that China increasingly values. | Continue reading
The head of the World Health Organization on battling Ebola in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. | Continue reading
Hexagonal boron nitride has been theoretically predicted to have high values for its thermal conductivity which would make it useful for thermal management of devices but these values have not been experimentally achieved. The authors manipulate the isotope concentration of B to … | Continue reading
Under a draft proposal, patients would be able to buy some therapies without regulatory approval. | Continue reading
Jawbone from China reveals that the ancient human was widespread across the world — and lived at surprising altitude. | Continue reading
Theoretical physicist who discovered topological phases of matter. | Continue reading
Jawbone from China reveals that the ancient human was widespread across the world — and lived at surprising altitude. | Continue reading
Multiple observational datasets and reconstructions using data from tree rings confirm that human activities were probably affecting the worldwide risk of droughts as early as at the beginning of the twentieth century. | Continue reading
Technology companies are running a campaign to bend research and regulation for their benefit; society must fight back, says Yochai Benkler. | Continue reading
A protein that regulates the innervation of brown adipose tissue. | Continue reading
Stuart Kauffman’s provocative take on emergence and evolution energizes Sara Imari Walker. | Continue reading
A reaction network that might have contributed to the emergence of life. | Continue reading
Intriguing properties of the neutron-rich nickel-78 nucleus. | Continue reading
Fossil evidence indicates that Denisovans occupied the Tibetan Plateau in the Middle Pleistocene epoch and successfully adapted to this high-altitude hypoxic environments long before the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens. | Continue reading
A deterministic violation of the Bell inequality is reported between two superconducting circuits, providing a necessary test for establishing strong enough quantum entanglement to achieve secure quantum communications. | Continue reading
Analysis of 30 leading institutions found that just 17% of study results had been posted online as required by EU rules. | Continue reading
Climate change represents an existential, global threat to humanity, yet its delocalized nature complicates climate action. Here, the authors propose retrofitting air conditioning units as integrated, scalable, and renewable-powered devices capable of decentralized CO2 conve … | Continue reading
Giovanni Baccolo relates tales of tantalum, an element known, and named, for its inertness, yet one that holds some surprises, such as a naturally occurring nuclear isomer. | Continue reading
The sudden collapse of thawing soils in the Arctic might double the warming from greenhouse gases released from tundra, warn Merritt R. Turetsky and colleagues. | Continue reading