Volume 614 Issue 7949, 23 February 2023

From this week, Nature will be publishing an additional type of research paper — designed to encourage rigour and replication.

Presidential candidates pay lip service to the role of science and technology in solving Nigeria’s problems — researchers must come together to be heard.

Scientists repair a mutation that causes heart-muscle abnormalities and can kill without warning.

Adipose tissue in mice dumps fat during early workouts rather than late ones.

Physicists nail down the most precise value yet of the electron magnetic moment, surpassing a value measured 14 years ago.

Immature lacewings had long, spindly ‘necks’ that might have helped them hide their bodies from their prey.

China, the United Arab Emirates and other countries are adding area by converting wetlands and shallow waters into solid land.

Ten components come together to form a complex structure called a triakis tetrahedron.

The difference between wait times for higher- and lower-income people in the United States is subtle, but it adds up.

He Jiankui refused to answer researchers’ questions about his controversial 2018 experiments at weekend event.

African health officials worry that as the mpox outbreak wanes in wealthy countries, so too will the global interest in research and funding.

A controversial policy change threatens to upend large social-media studies.

Control measures such as quarantine could end the outbreak in Equatorial Guinea quickly — good news for inhabitants but a mixed blessing for clinical trials.

Researchers have asked the American Geophysical Union to reverse actions it took against scientists who demonstrated at a December meeting.

Brain cells are crucial for triggering fights — but also become active when mice merely observe fights.

The US has shot down four flying objects over fears of spy balloons. But what else are high-altitude balloons used for?

Researchers say science is bleeding in Ukraine — but they are determined to sustain their work with help from other nations.

Scientists are deciphering how the brain choreographs immune responses, hoping to find treatments for a range of diseases.

Transporting water trapped in icebergs to drought-plagued regions is pooh-poohed by scientists — but some see it as a huge opportunity.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Conflict pressures are pushing the world closer to autonomous weapons that can kill without human control. Researchers and the international community must join forces to prohibit them.

You can work successfully with a romantic partner. Meet the researchers who have cracked it.

With a dizzying range of strategies available, laboratories must weigh up their options to find the best fit for their projects

Art conservator Jiro Ueda uses traditional techniques and natural solutions to repair priceless paintings and artefacts.

An assessment of juniper tree-ring samples from central Turkey, together with other types of dating analysis, demonstrate that a devastating drought in 1198–1196 bc contributed to the end of the Hittite empire.

The rise in species diversity towards the tropics is a striking and unexplained global phenomenon. Ocean microfossil evidence suggests that this pattern arose as a result of ancient climate cooling and polar-climate dynamics.

Two microscopy techniques have been merged into a tool for twisting ultrathin sheets of atoms relative to each other. The approach offers a new angle for studying the electronic properties of exotic layered materials.

Signals from gut microorganisms to the brain might be involved in neurodegeneration. It emerges that the gene APOE — variants of which each confer a different risk of Alzheimer’s disease — has a role in modulating this gut–brain communication.

A computational tool called CellOracle can predict how networks of genes interact to program cell identity during embryonic development. The tool should help to hone efforts to understand how development is regulated.

An unprecedented glimpse of a distant planet reveals clues about how it might have formed. Scientists explain why it’s a win for atmospheric chemistry, and celebrate the technology that made it possible.

This Perspective reviews recent developments in the design and use of chimeric antigen receptors in treatments for cancers and other diseases.

Transmission spectroscopy observations from the James Webb Space Telescope show the detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the gas giant exoplanet WASP-39b.

Time-series observations from the JWST of the transiting exoplanet WASP-39b show gaseous water in the planet’s atmosphere and place an upper limit on the abundance of methane.

A broad-wavelength 0.5–5.5 µm atmospheric transmission spectrum of WASP-39b, a 1,200 K, roughly Saturn-mass, Jupiter-radius exoplanet, demonstrates JWST’s sensitivity to a rich diversity of exoplanet compositions and chemical processes.

The medium-resolution transmission spectrum of the exoplanet WASP-39b, described using observations from the Near Infrared Spectrograph G395H grating aboard JWST, shows significant absorption from CO₂ and H₂O and detection of SO₂.

The transmission spectrum of the exoplanet WASP-39b is obtained using observations from the Single-Object Slitless Spectroscopy mode of the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph instrument aboard the JWST.

A study demonstrating increasing error suppression with larger surface code logical qubits, implemented on a superconducting quantum processor.

A quantum twisting microscope based on a unique van der Waals tip and capable of performing local interference experiments opens the way for new classes of experiments on quantum materials.

By using new on-chip terahertz spectroscopy techniques to measure the absorption spectra of a graphene microribbon as well as the energy waves close to charge neutrality, hydrodynamic collective excitations are observed.

An electrolyte design strategy based on a group of soft solvents is used to achieve lithium-ion batteries that operate safely under extreme conditions without lithium plating and with the capability of fast charging.

An assessment of ice-dam failures in six mountain regions shows that extreme peak flows and volumes have declined sharply since 1900, and that ice-dam floods today originate at higher elevations and earlier in the year.

Quantification of planktonic fossils from the past 40 million years shows that the present-day diversity gradient arose only 15 million years ago as the climate started to cool.

Analysis of Triton, a high-resolution dataset documenting the macroperforate planktonic foraminifera fossil record, reveals a global climate-linked equatorward shift of ecological and morphological community equitability over the past 8 million years.

Tree-ring analysis is correlated with stable isotope data and historical texts to identify an unusual multi-year period of drought from around 1198 to 1196 bc associated with the collapse of the Hittite Empire.

A study using calcium imaging in the mouse forepaw system identifies neurons in the posterior insular cortex that respond to cooling and/or warming with distinct response dynamics.

A neuron-specific activity-dependent DNA repair mechanism is identified, the impairment of which may lead to neurodevelopmental disorders, neurodegeneration and ageing.

A machine-learning-based strategy called CellOracle combines computational perturbation with modelling of gene-regulatory networks to analyse how cell identity is regulated by transcription factors, and correctly predicts phenotypic changes after transcription factor perturbation in the developing zebrafish.

Immune responses to influenza vaccination are affected by previous mild COVID-19 in a sex-dimorphic manner.

Through iterative cycles of viral challenge and rechallenge over ten years, mouse T cells are demonstrated to have essentially infinite potential for population expansion and longevity without malignant transformation or loss of functional competence.

Dysfunctional telomeres activate innate immune responses through mitochondrial TERRA–ZBP1 complexes to eliminate cells that are destined for neoplastic transformation.

A deep-learning-based strategy is used to design artificial luciferases that catalyse the oxidative chemiluminescence of diphenylterazine with high substrate specificity and catalytic efficiency.

Cryo-EM is used to visualize the SARS-CoV-2 RTC bound to each of the natural NTPs as well as remdesivir triphosphate (RDV-TP) in states poised for incorporation, explaining the interactions required for NTP recognition and RDV-TP selectivity.

Using cryo-electron microscopy, the structures of human Na–Cl cotransporter are determined alone and in complex with a thiazide diuretic.