Volume 625 Issue 7995, 18 January 2024

The decision to permit exploratory deep-sea extraction of valuable minerals breaks a promise to the other nations on the Ocean Panel and to scientists.

The Peregrine lander was due to deposit several people’s ashes on the Moon. The Navajo Nation is calling for broader discussion.

A dormant immune system before receiving the BCG vaccine is tied to a greater innate immune response afterwards.

Young southern pig-tailed macaques, an endangered species, are less likely to reach their first birthday if they spend time on plantations.

Polymers similar to those used in bulletproof vests are a key component of the water-rich ‘hydrospongel’.

Detectors at the Large Hadron Collider spot the famed particle decaying into a photon and a ‘Z boson’.

Allegations against Claudine Gay have left researchers arguing over academic standards and practices.

Astrobotic, the firm that launched the Peregrine spacecraft, says it will learn from any missteps and look ahead to its next attempt.

A huge cache of ancient genomes spanning tens of thousands of years reveals the roots of traits in modern Europeans.

The 300-kilogram primate couldn’t adapt when a changing environment forced a dietary shift.

The heat stored in the world’s oceans increased by the greatest margin ever in 2023.

Researchers say the Norwegian government ignored warnings of potential ecosystem harm.

A self-driving lab system spent half a year engineering enzymes to work at higher temperatures.

There are dozens of theories of how the brain produces conscious experience, and a new type of study is testing some of them head-to-head.

Humans are increasingly passing pathogens to animal populations, imperilling endangered species such as chimpanzees and gorillas.

When Rosemary Brown identified a strange particle decay 75 years ago, it set events in motion that would rewrite the laws of physics.

Facing challenges including parenthood, mental-health strain and financial pressures, these researchers give advice for navigating the uncertain paths before them.

Richmond Sarpong wishes more people had access to the nitrogen-regulated device.

Infections caused by drug-resistant strains of the bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii have been hard to treat in the clinic. A new class of antibiotics has been identified with the potential to tackle these microbes.

A branch of computer science known as genetic programming has been given a boost with the application of large language models that are trained on the combined intuition of the world’s programmers.

Self-assembling DNA can process information, but the computations have been limited to digital algorithms. A self-assembling DNA system has now been designed to perform complex pattern recognition.

Materials that adhere tightly to human tissues can promote healing and boost the sensitivity of biomedical diagnostic devices. An ‘evolving’ gel has been made that synergizes two strategies for forming interfaces with tissue.

DNA in the cytoplasm can be a sign of abnormalities such as viral infections or cancer. A protein with a role in DNA-damage response was unexpectedly found to activate defences against the threats indicated by cytoplasmic DNA.

We find that the optical emission due to ionized gas that is characteristic of a shock extends 40 kpc in diameter across the host galaxy of an odd radio circle.

A three-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulation of a tidal disruption event (TDE) flare from disruption to peak emission shows how deterministic predictions of TDE light curves and spectra can be calculated using moving-mesh hydrodynamics algorithms.

FunSearch makes discoveries in established open problems using large language models by searching for programs describing how to solve a problem, rather than what the solution is.

A new neuro-symbolic theorem prover for Euclidean plane geometry trained from scratch on millions of synthesized theorems and proofs outperforms the previous best method and reaches the performance of an olympiad gold medallist.

We present comprehensive thermodynamic and spectroscopic evidence for an antiferromagnetically ordered heavy-fermion ground state in the van der Waals metal CeSiI.

We measure efficient heat conductance through the electrically insulating quantum Hall bulk and propose a theoretical model based on the role played by the localized states.

Using valley-resolved scanning tunnelling spectroscopy, twisted WSe₂ bilayers are studied, including incommensurate dodecagon quasicrystals at 30° and commensurate moiré crystals at 21.8° and 38.2°.

Examination of nucleation during self-assembly of multicomponent structures illustrates how ubiquitous molecular phenomena inherently classify high-dimensional patterns of concentrations in a manner similar to neural network computation.

Computers equipped with a comprehensive knowledge-base of mechanistic steps augmented by physical-organic chemistry rules, as well as quantum mechanical and kinetic calculations, can use a reaction-network approach to analyse the mechanisms of cationic rearrangements.

Ytterbium oxide buffer layer for use in perovskite solar cells yields a certified power conversion efficiency of more than 25%, which enhances stability across a wide variety of perovskite compositions.

Analysis of more than 236,000 observations of glacier terminus positions shows that accelerated calving reduced the ice area of Greenland by about 5,000 km² since 1985, producing over 1,000 Gt of freshwater that could influence ocean salinity and circulation.

We report the oldest direct evidence of thylakoid membranes in a parallel-to-contorted arrangement within the enigmatic cylindrical microfossils Navifusa majensis from the McDermott Formation, Tawallah Group, Australia (1.78–1.73 Ga).

A multiproxy record of Gigantopithecus blacki provides insights into the ecological context of this species, which became extinct around 250,000 years ago, when increased seasonality led to a change in forest cover.

We gathered genetic data for 1,763 individuals from 147 populations across 14 African countries, and 12 Late Iron Age individuals, to trace the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples over the past 6,000 years.

Searching online to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles increases the probability of believing the false news articles.

The voltage-gated sodium channel Na_v1.7 has a dual role in osteoarthritis—in chondrocytes, it promotes joint damage, and in dorsal root ganglia neurons, it increases pain transmission.

A tethered macrocyclic peptide antibiotic class described here—which shows potent antibacterial activity against carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii—blocks the transport of bacterial lipopolysaccharide from the inner membrane to its destination on the outer membrane through inhibition of the LptB₂FGC complex.

A mechanism of lipid transport inhibition has been identified for a class of peptide antibiotics effective against resistant Acinetobacter strains, which may have applications in the inhibition of other Gram-negative pathogens.

Structural studies show how the PfRCR complex of Plasmodium falciparum forms a bridge between erythrocyte and parasite membranes, and how PfCyRPA-binding antibodies neutralize invasion through a steric mechanism, opening the way to new approaches in rational vaccine design.

The double-strand break sensor MRE11 is identified as a pivotal mediator of cGAS activation in response to multiple types of DNA damage.

The tumour-specific circular RNA FAM53B is highly immunogenic and can induce anti-tumour responses in mouse models of breast cancer and melanoma, expanding the repertoire of anticancer targets for development.

tRNA display enables the direct selection of orthogonal aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases that acylate orthogonal tRNAs with non-canonical monomers, enabling in vivo synthesis of proteins that include these monomers and expanding the repertoire of the genetic code.

A study reports cryogenic electron microscopy structures of the respiratory syncytial virus polymerase bound to its genomic and antigenomic viral RNA promoters.