Volume 618 Issue 7963, 1 June 2023

India’s curriculum body needs to explain why it has removed foundational topics from school textbooks.

Our voices were crucial in persuading UN states to back legal obligations to act on climate change. Here’s how we did it.

Free-flying mosquitoes gravitate toward pads that emit carbon dioxide, which is found in human breath.

Bolts begin as a series of short pulses both on Earth and on its much bigger, gassier neighbour in the Solar System.

Scientists have worked out the precise combination of ingredients needed to ensure that gummies keep their chew.

Bacteria that snip fluorine–carbon bonds can degrade certain kinds of PFAS, a class of environmental pollutant.

The twin gravitational-wave detectors have started a new observation run after a major upgrade.

Researchers are preparing to march against legislation that some say could harm basic science.

Talks that conference attendees could see in person are more likely to be cited than talks they most likely missed.

With rocket lift-offs set to increase drastically, a team will monitor the effects of noise pollution at a California spaceport.

Studies tackle who’s most likely to lose weight on the new generation of anti-obesity medications.

The device provides a connection between the brain and spinal cord, allowing thought to control movement.

The huge watery cloud spurting from Enceladus could carry the ingredients for life farther into space than previously known.

The planet is on track to reach the 1.5 ºC average by the 2030s — although a new report suggests a single year will probably cross the line much sooner.

An explosion of skeletal editing methods to insert, delete or swap individual atoms in molecular backbones could accelerate drug discovery.

The London museum is a treasure chest of medical specimens both fascinating and ghoulish — now with a renewed focus on questions about how its collections came to be.

Collaboration and openness are essential to minimize the risks of future pandemics, says the World Health Organization’s scientific advisory group, SAGO.

Biased hiring practices are limiting efforts to attract and retain researchers of colour.

Cultural and heritage researcher Arianna Traviglia uses robotic technology to painstakingly reconstruct 2,000-year-old mural paintings in Pompeii.

Census data from across Africa reveal that religion is a strong predictor of whether a child is likely to complete more or less education than their parents. The analysis calls into question current approaches to closing education gaps.

Astronomers have used observations of infrared light to measure the heat emanating from an Earth-sized exoplanet known as TRAPPIST-1b. Their findings reveal that the planet is a bare rock, devoid of any atmosphere.

Bright colours that signal toxicity can deter predators, but how such colours initially evolve without first endangering conspicuous organisms is a contentious issue. Analysis of amphibians offers an answer to the puzzle.

A protein has been discovered that binds to the lighter members of the rare-earth family of metals more strongly than to the heavier ones — an amazing feat, given the chemical similarities of these elements.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Efforts to tackle pancreatic cancer by harnessing immune cells have had limited success. A clinical trial reports promising results from testing a personalized approach to boosting immune responses to such tumours.

Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b has little or no planetary atmosphere and no detectable atmospheric absorption of carbon dioxide.

Saturn-mass exoplanet HD 149026b has an atmospheric metallicity 59–276 times solar, which is greater than Saturn’s atmospheric metallicity of roughly 7.5 times solar and more correlated with bulk metallicity than planet mass.

A direct search for effective electromagnetic interactions between dark matter and xenon nuclei that produce a recoil of the latter is carried out and the first constraint on charge radius of dark matter is derived.

Bilayer graphene allows the realization of electron–hole double-quantum dots that exhibit near-perfect particle–hole symmetry, in which transport occurs via the creation and annihilation of single electron–hole pairs with opposite quantum numbers.

High-integration-density 2D–CMOS hybrid microchips for memristive applications are made demonstrating in-memory computation and electrical response suitable for the implementation of spiking neural networks representing an advance towards integration of 2D materials in microelectronic products and memristive applications.

Combining alloy design with additive manufacturing process design creates α–β titanium–oxygen–iron alloys that are both strong and ductile, with the potential to revitalize off-grade sponge titanium and thereby reduce the carbon footprint of the titanium industry.

Using a specialized tip as a detector, the fingerprints of a single atom of iron and terbium are observed in synchrotron X-ray absorption spectra, allowing elemental and chemical characterization one atom at a time.

All-perovskite triple-junction solar cell devices have been fabricated, with a certified efficiency of 23.3%; these devices retain 80% of their initial efficiency following 420 hours of operation.

A self-assembled monolayer of (4-(7H-dibenzo[c,g]carbazol-7-yl)butyl)phosphonic acid is integrated in wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells, which enables a high power conversion efficiency and low open-circuit voltage deficiency, as well as efficient centimetre-scale all-perovskite tandem solar cells.

A study biochemically and structurally characterizes a lanmodulin from Hansschlegelia quercus with an oligomeric state sensitive to rare-earth ionic radius.

Analysis of data from the Canadian National Forest Inventory database suggests that greater tree diversity in natural forests is associated with increases in soil carbon and nitrogen stocks.

A metabolically bioactivated selective imidazothiazole nematicide shows comparable effectiveness at controlling plant root infection by Meloidogyne incognita to commercial nematicides, which are traditionally nonselective and toxic.

Deeply conserved syntenic characters unite sponges with bilaterians, cnidarians, and placozoans in a monophyletic clade to the exclusion of the comb jellies (ctenophores)—placing ctenophores as the sister group to all other animals.

In the Drosophila central-pattern-generating neural network, a mechanism for network desynchronization relying on weak electrical synapses and specific excitability dynamics of the coupled neurons translates unpatterned premotor input into stereotyped neuronal firing with fixed sequences of cell activation, ensuring stable wingbeat power.

A reliable digital bridge restored communication between the brain and spinal cord and enabled natural walking in a participant with spinal cord injury.

Religion-specific measures of intergenerational mobility in education using census data for 21 African countries indicate that Christians have fared considerably better than their Muslim or Animist peers even when comparing individuals residing in the same district born to households with similar characteristics.

A phase I clinical trial of an adjuvant personalized mRNA neoantigen vaccine, autogene cevumeran, in patients with pancreatic ductal carcinoma demonstrates that the vaccine can induce T cell activity that may correlate with delayed recurrence of disease.

A metabolite screen of pancreatic cells shows that pancreatic cancer cells metabolize uridine-derived ribose via UPP1, supporting redox balance, survival and proliferation.

A new specific, small-molecule activator of the PI3Kα isoform (UCL-TRO-1938) identified through high-throughput screening can transiently activate PI3K signalling and biological responses in cells and tissues, with potential therapeutic applications in tissue protection and regeneration.

Small-molecule RNA-targeted degradation can be leveraged to convert strong, yet inactive, binding interactions into potent and specific modulators of RNA function.

Subunits of SWI/SNF act as mitotic bookmarks to safeguard cell identity during cell division.

Integrative structural biology combining quantitative live imaging, cryo-correlative microscopy, subtomogram averaging and molecular modelling enables in situ determination of the structure of the endoplasmic reticulum–mitochondria encounter complex in yeast.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of mouse trace amine-associated receptor 9 reveals structural motifs involved in odorant ligand recognition, including a unique disulfide bond linking the N terminus to extracellular loop 2.