Volume 621 Issue 7980, 28 September 2023

A new Nature series will explore the many ways in which artificial intelligence is changing science — for better and for worse.

Designing courses on the basis of what really matters to people is a win–win for students and society.

The more people do their jobs from home, the more they cut their greenhouse-gas emissions.

Genetic analysis shows that some stick insects that supposedly reproduce without sex are actually pairing off to have offspring.

Large-scale survey reveals the diversity of viruses in small mammals, which can be sources of viruses that hop to humans.

Device decades in the making senses very small alterations in Earth’s rotation.

Nature explores the United Kingdom and European Union’s research agreements, brokered through seven years of rollercoaster negotiations.

Upgraded laser in California will produce one million X-ray pulses per second to study ultrafast processes at the atomic level.

Base editing, which makes specific changes to a cell’s genome, is put to the test in CAR-T-cell treatments for leukaemia.

An analysis of the controversial work indicates that a one-size-fits-all regulation strategy will have consequences.

The telescope is delivering a cascade of insights about the ‘protoplanetary’ disks where planets take shape.

A Nature survey finds that scientists are concerned, as well as excited, by the increasing use of artificial-intelligence tools in research.

Deceptive videos and images created using generative AI could sway elections, crash stock markets and ruin reputations. Researchers are developing methods to limit their harm.

The physician-researcher who spoke out against misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic says attacks against science are formidable — and getting worse.

In some areas of social science, around half of studies can’t be replicated. A new test-fast, fail-fast initiative aims to show what research is hot — and what’s not.

Research into vaccines, crop seeds and other innovations for low- or middle-income nations could be rewarded by offering longer patent coverage for profitable, non-essential inventions.

Mireille Consalvey draws on years of experience to present a 13-step checklist for success.

It took PhD student Jelle van der Hilst some time to realize that getting data is easy; working out whether they’re useful is harder.

Elizabeth Hilborn is among just a handful of people in the United States who are medically trained to treat honey bees.

All newborn mammals cry. The neural circuit that stimulates mothers to look after crying offspring has been identified in mice — along with a mechanism that promotes maternal behaviour only after prolonged calls from pups.

An organic light-emitting diode has been integrated with an optically driven organic laser to produce laser light from electricity. The design bypasses many of the challenges posed by direct electrical input in such devices.

Analysis of a 458-million-year-old fossil fish reveals anatomical insights about the vertebrate skull and how skull organization evolved from that of ancestral early vertebrates to that of jawed vertebrates.

The discovery that the skull has two groups of stem cell that produce similar types of descendant cell has big implications for the field of stem-cell research — and casts light on a developmental disorder that affects many children.

A test performed on antihydrogen atoms has shown that gravity acts on matter and antimatter in a similar way. The experimental feat is the latest in efforts to probe the crossover between theories of relativity and particle physics.

Structural studies of amyloid filaments purified from brains of people with neurodegenerative diseases link specific amyloid folds with distinct diseases and provide a basis for the development of models of neurodegenerative disease.

This study analyses radio observations of the jet in galaxy M87, from which the existence of a spinning black hole that induces Lense–Thirring precession of a misaligned accretion disk is inferred.

Magnetically confined neutral antihydrogen atoms released in a gravity field were found to fall towards Earth like ordinary matter, in accordance with Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

This study reports the creation of a model thermodynamic engine that is fuelled by the energy difference resulting from changing the statistics of a quantum gas from bosonic to fermionic.

In the dipolar XY model, quench dynamics from a polarized initial state lead to spin squeezing that improves with increasing system size, and two refinements show further enhanced squeezing and extended lifetime of the squeezed state by freezing its dynamics.

Spin squeezing in an optical atomic clock based on arrays of neutral atoms is used to realize measurement performance below the standard quantum limit.

A method is described for the generation of large-scale entanglement that can be used for quantum-enhanced sensing even when systems are limited to short-range interactions in experiments with up to 51 trapped ions.

An electrically driven organic semiconductor laser is achieved by integrating a device structure that efficiently couples an organic light-emitting diode, with extremely high internal-light generation, with a polymer distributed feedback laser.

Irradiation of chiral Al-salen complexes with violet light demonstrates efficient deracemization of cyclopropanes, enabling reactivity and enantioselectivity to be regulated simultaneously, negating the requirement for tailored catalyst–substrate recognition motifs.

Quantification of climate warming in California using machine learning shows increased daily wildfire growth risk by 25%, with an expected increase of 59% and 172% in 2100, for low- and very-high-emissions scenarios, respectively.

Analysis of seismic waves caused by explosions in northern Ukraine recorded by a local network in 2022 demonstrated the ability to automatically identify individual attacks during the Russia–Ukraine conflict in close to real time.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

Computed tomography reveals that the cranial anatomy of Ordovician stem-group gnathostome Eriptychius americanus from the Harding Sandstone of Colorado, USA, is distinct among vertebrates.

Experiments in mice identify a neural circuit that relays information about infant cries from the maternal auditory thalamus to hypothalamic oxytocin neurons to induce the release of oxytocin and modulate maternal behaviour.

In bats engaged in spontaneous collective spatial behaviour, a robust spatial structure emerges at the group level whereby behaviour is anchored to specific locations, movement patterns and individual social preferences, and many hippocampal neurons are tuned to key features of group dynamics.

The calvarial stem cell niche is populated by a cathepsin K-expressing cell lineage and a newly identified discoidin domain-containing receptor 2-expressing lineage, both of which are required for proper calvarial mineralization.

The environmental sensor aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) and diet-derived AHR ligands play an important part in protecting against tissue damage following viral pathogen infection in the lung.

Single-cell transcriptomics and in vivo challenge models establish a key role for the aryl hydrocarbon receptor in regulating the function of enteric endothelial cells in response to environmental cues.

A CRISPR–Cas9 screen in a tumour mouse model identifies CD300ld as a tumour receptor on polymorphonuclear myeloid-derived suppressor cells and in vivo experiments indicate that it is a promising target for cancer immunotherapy.

Phosphoantigen-mediated BTN2A1 association drives BTN3A1 intracellular fluctuations outwards in a thermodynamically favourable manner, thereby enabling BTN3A1 to push off from the BTN2A1 ectodomain to initiate T cell receptor–mediated γδ T cell activation.

Reductive carboxylation of glutamine by isocitrate dehydrogenase 2 (IDH2) has a role in determining the fate of T cells, and inhibiting this enzyme promotes the differentiation of memory T cells.

Conditional genetic ferret models enable ionocyte lineage tracing, ionocyte ablation and ionocyte-specific deletion of CFTR to elucidate the roles of pulmonary ionocyte biology and function during human health and disease.

Imaging mass cytometry is used to map the multicellular dynamics of immune checkpoint blockade-treated triple-negative breast cancer, finding that key proliferative fractions and cell–cell interactions drive response, and immunotherapy distinctively remodels tumour structure.

Calcium-permeable GluA1 AMPA glutamate receptors are structurally and functionally distinct from the prototypical GluA2-containing AMPA receptors, impacting their role in signal transmission, synaptic plasticity and learning.