From artificial intelligence to ancient shipwrecks, via brain mapping and Donald Trump: it's our multimedia editors' top picks of 2016.
The computer that mastered Go
Go is an ancient Chinese board game, often viewed as the game computers could never play. Now researchers from Google-owned company DeepMind have proven the naysayers wrong, creating an artificial intelligence - called AlphaGo – which has beaten a professional Go player for the first time. We went behind the scenes to learn about the game, the programme and what this means for the future of AI.
Future generations
A special episode about the future. How can we future-proof our world, or fight our natural bias against planning for the future? And what does the science of today mean for the health of tomorrow?
24 hours in a synchrotron
A synchrotron is a high powered X-ray generator, running 24 hours day and night to provide high frequency light beams for scientific research. In order not to waste any time or money, the researchers make full use of every second they are allotted. We spent a day and a night at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility to reveal the science that never sleeps.
Music, health gadget data, cancer-fighting bacteria
The perils of tech in health, tumour fighting bacteria, and the science of what sounds good.
Skeleton uncovered at ancient Antikythera shipwreck
The famous shipwreck that brought us the mysterious Antikythera mechanism has revealed a new secret: a two-thousand-year-old human skeleton. The team hopes to extract DNA from the skull - a feat never attempted before on bones this old that have been underwater.
Conflict
A special issue on conflict. The psychological toll of war, how to count the dead, and predicting conflict in the 21st century.
The brain dictionary
Where exactly are the words in your head? Scientists have created an interactive map showing which brain areas respond to hearing different words. The map reveals how language is spread throughout the cortex and across both hemispheres, showing groups of words clustered together by meaning. The beautiful interactive model allows us to explore the complex organisation of the enormous dictionaries in our heads.
Trump on science, Trump on climate, Nature on politics
Donald Trump’s impact on research and climate action, and how Nature should discuss politics.
Back to the thesis: Sara Seager
Astrophysicist Sara Seager accidentally founded a field when she did her PhD on extrasolar planets in the late 1990s. We take her back to the thesis in the second episode of our three-part series.
'Try Catch Throw': A science fiction motion comic
To celebrate 50 years of Star Trek and 150 years since the birth of H. G. Wells, Nature commissioned a short graphic novel, adapted here as a motion comic.
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Top multimedia picks of 2016. Nature (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2016.21184
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2016.21184