Volume 620 Issue 7973, 10 August 2023

Researchers advocating reform of the world’s main measure of growth have an opportunity to participate in the process that sets the rules.

The pygmy right whale does not migrate to feed in cold waters as its larger relatives do, baleen analysis suggests.

The object’s deep red colour suggests it existed when the Universe was less than 700 million years old.

Two pathogens that cause potentially serious respiratory infections in children are suppressed by a single protein.

Rules on the fuel burnt by ships at sea implemented in 2020 lead to local changes in cloud chemistry.

A landmark genomic study raises the possibility that many more people could find links to distant ancestors through genetic analysis.

Social media is abuzz with chatter about the material, but some scientists are pushing back on the hype.

A clinical health psychologist speaks to Nature about Barbie’s influence on how women and girls view their bodies.

Valeria Souza has long fought the drainage of the Cuatro Ciénegas basin, where ancient microbes offer clues to the origins of life.

Under-representation of people of colour sparks concerns over the safety and efficacy of drugs in diverse populations.

The Scopus, Dimensions and Web of Science databases are introducing conversational AI search.

A guide to how China, the EU and the US are reining in artificial intelligence.

The FDA’s accelerated-approval process was designed to help people access life-saving drugs. But gaps in communication could mean that people are undergoing treatments known to be ineffective.

Professional pride and personal tragedy stymied ideas about how infections spread in the nineteenth century, suggests a show about maverick Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Molecular biologist whose work on isolated genes helped launch the era of recombinant DNA and gene editing.

Holistic approaches to water and land management practised by Indigenous communities worldwide hold the key to a more sustainable future, say co-organizers of the Global Indigenous Youth Summit on Climate Change.

After a spate of high-profile tenure denials, US academics are rethinking how this beleaguered academic process can be made more fair.

Developers want to free scientists to focus on discovery and innovation by helping them to draw connections from a massive body of literature.

Bioprocess engineer Jesús E. Rodríguez’s team dreams of replacing all synthetic plastics with biodegradable products.

Analyses of sediment from a lake in eastern Africa reveal the relationship between temperature and moisture over the past 75,000 years, and hint at why climate-model projections in the Horn of Africa are at odds with modern trends.

When DNA is misplaced inside cells, the cGAS–STING molecular system triggers inflammation. It emerges that stimulation of this mechanism in microglial cells of the brain during ageing contributes to cognitive decline.

An algorithm has been developed for constructing a 3D shape that follows an infinitely repeating path as it rolls under gravity. The approach could have applications in quantum computing and medical imaging.

Understanding how our gut bacteria combine forces to co-exist and produce beneficial molecules will be crucial for developing next-generation probiotics. Key progress towards achieving this goal has been made.

Molecules have been developed that switch a transcription factor from being a repressor of gene expression to an activator — and thereby able to kill cancer cells. The findings offer a fresh strategy for designing anticancer drugs.

It is reported using a consistent climate model that pure steam atmospheres are commonly shaped by radiative layers, making their thermal structure strongly dependent on the stellar spectrum and internal heat flow.

The dayside thermal emission spectrum and brightness temperature map of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-18b obtained from the NIRISS instrument on the JWST showed water emission features, an atmosphere consistent with solar metallicity, as well as a steep and symmetrical decrease in temperature towards the nightside.

Observations by the Curiosity rover at Gale Crater on Mars indicate that high-frequency wet–dry cycling occurred on the early Martian surface, indicating a possible seasonal climate conducive to prebiotic evolution on early Mars.

Evidence for a stratigraphic sequence involving initial barchan dune formation, with the transition in wind regime consistent with the end of the ice age is found, compatible with the Martian polar stratigraphic record.

An algorithm is developed to design a shape, a trajectoid, that can trace any given infinite periodic trajectory when rolling down a slope, finding unexpected implications for quantum and classical optics.

Three-dimensional imaging using a frequency–angular resolving and frequency-modulated continuous-wave LiDAR enabled by a chip-scale acousto-optic beam-steering device has been demonstrated, with the simplicity and low cost of the device making this a promising technology.

The black phase of formamidinium lead iodide perovskite is used to make highly efficient solar cells, and a technique to improve its purity and stability by controlling crystal nucleation could make them even better.

We report assembly of an organic scaffold within perovskite structures, resulting in the suppression of the lone pair expression of Ge and templating the symmetric octahedra.

Climate-proxy data indicate that during the last glacial period in the Horn of Africa higher temperatures were associated with greater moisture availability, whereas during the current interglacial period, as well as historically, higher temperatures have been associated with increased drought.

Most kimberlites erupting in the past billion years on Earth did so about 30 million years after continental breakup, with dynamical and analytical models suggesting a control from rifting-related mantle delamination.

Using a global dataset of traded species, it is found that the highest levels of traded phylogenetic and functional diversity are from tropical regions, where high numbers of evolutionary distinct and globally endangered species occur.

Archaeogenetic analysis of 135 individuals from the zone between southeastern Europe and the northwestern Black Sea region indicates contacts between farming and pastoralist populations at the end of the Copper Age.

A molecularly defined subset of somatostatin-positive inhibitory neurons in the mouse posterior parietal cortex carries a cell-type-specific error-correction signal for navigation.

The cGAS–STING signalling pathway is a critical driver of chronic inflammation and functional decline during ageing, and could be targeted to halt neurodegenerative processes during old age.

The anaerobic gut bacterium Faecalibacterium prausnitzii was isolated and adapted for oxygen tolerance to develop a next-generation probiotic for the treatment of conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease and type 2 diabetes.

A biosensor comprising bacteria engineered to respond to transient inflammatory signals has been packaged with electronic readout and transmission circuits in a small device that could be swallowed to monitor gastrointestinal health.

Induction of APOBEC3A in response to targeted therapies drives evolution of drug-tolerant persister cells, suggesting that its suppression may represent a potential therapeutic strategy in the prevention of acquired resistance to lung cancer targeted therapy.

Netrin-1 is upregulated in cancer models that undergo spontaneous epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, and its targeting blocks the progression of tumour cells to a late mesenchymal state, suggesting possible therapeutic applications.

We describe netrin-1 upregulation in a majority of human endometrial carcinomas and demonstrate that netrin-1 blockade, using the anti-netrin-1 antibody NP137, is effective both in a mouse model and in patients with endometrial carcinomas.

A new class of molecules can recruit downstream transcription factors or endogenous cancer drivers to cell death promoters and activate the expression of these genes.

Protein complexes containing RNA polymerase II and immature RNA are associated with active genes immediately after replication, suggesting that transmission of active transcriptional states to daughter cells may not require any additional epigenetic bookmarks.

Large-scale assays using cDNA display proteolysis are used to measure the folding stabilities of protein domains, providing a method to quantify the effects of mutations on protein folding, with applications in protein design.

Proteins of the Mycobacterium smegmatis Mce1 system assemble to form an elongated ABC transporter complex that is long enough to span the impermeable mycobacterial cell envelope.