Friday briefing: To really understand animals, embrace the ctenophores, the sponges and the placozoans

Hello Nature readers,

Today we celebrate the asymmetrical animals, learn how to to foster collaborative research, and reveal our pick of the best images, features and culture from the week in science.

Physicists finally uncover Higgs ‘bottom’ decay

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have observed a previously undetected way that the Higgs boson can decay— into an elementary particle called the bottom quark, and its antiparticle. The finding by physicists at CERN confirms a theoretical prediction about the Higgs, a particle that is part of the mechanism that gives other particles their masses. The discovery of the Higgs in 2012 put in place the final piece of the standard model of particle physics.

Nature | 1 min read

Wellcome Sanger Institute investigates bullying allegations

An investigation into allegations of bullying is under way at one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious scientific institutes, The Wellcome Sanger Institute. According to The Guardian, ten former and current staff members have accused leaders at the institute of bullying, mistreatment of staff and gender discrimination. Institute director Michael Stratton declined to comment while the investigation is ongoing. The institute is owned by the Wellcome Trust, which unveiled a landmark bullying policy in May that saw it withdraw a £3.5-million (US$4.5-million) grant from geneticist Nazneen Rahman earlier this month.

Nature | 2 min read

Meet the new neuron

Neuroscientists have introduced the world to a new kind of neuron, which is believed to exist only in the human brain. Dubbed ‘rosehip’ neurons because of their shape, they seem to act as inhibitory cells. “They can really act as a sort of brake on the system,” says neuroscientist Ed Lein.

Wired | 6 min read

Reference: Nature Neuroscience paper

Scientists can guess which papers can’t be reproduced

Only 62% of high-profile social-sciences studies proved to be reproducible in a test — and scientists were remarkably good at predicting which results would stand and which would fall. Researchers who attempted to replicate 21 social-sciences studies in Science and Nature found that 13 showed an effect in the same direction as was observed in the original study (albeit at about half the strength, on average). The researchers also created a ‘prediction market’, in which experts could bet on how reproducible a claim was likely to be. The market predictions correlated well with the actual results, and generated an expected overall replication rate nearly identical to the one observed.

Nature | 6 min read

Reference: Nature Human Behaviour paper

FEATURES & OPINION

To really understand animals, get weird

You may not consider yourself similar to a fly, worm, mouse or zebrafish, but we sit comfortably with all these traditional lab animals in the same group: creatures with bilateral symmetry. To learn what really defines an animal, we have to expand our view to include three phyla that are wildly different from humans: the ctenophores, the sponges and the placozoans. “We need to keep that breadth, and it’s sort of jolting,” says biologist Sally Leys. “It helps people understand things that are not always typical in mammalian systems.”

LabAnimal | 18 min read

How rising seas will parch Miami

Miami sits on top of a massive sponge-like aquifer. Its geography makes it uniquely vulnerable to climate change: not only will rising seawater inundate the city above ground, but it also threatens to contaminate the precious fresh water below the surface. Salt water is already being pushed into the aquifer, forming a wall of brine that’s creeping inland.

Bloomberg Businessweek | 16 min read

Barbara Rae-Venter: genealogical detective

Barbara Rae-Venter, a former biologist and patent attorney (whose ex-husband is high-profile geneticist J. Craig Venter), stumbled into an intense post-retirement hobby as a genetic genealogist. Last week, she allowed investigators to reveal that she was key to cracking the unsolved case of the Golden State Killer. She tells The New York Times about the tangled path she followed to track down the accused serial murderer, and the ethical quandaries that ensnare the field.

The New York Times | 9 min read

The cold war over supercooled water

Perfectly pure water can be supercooled until it crystallizes almost instantaneously, around –40 °C. Two teams who tried to simulate this mysterious tipping point ended up locked in a seven-year dispute that peaked in an on-stage conference shouting match.

Physics Today | 5 min read

Reference: Journal of Chemical Physics paper

INFOGRAPHIC OF THE WEEK

India, the United States and Ethiopia are among the countries that have made significant commitments to reforestation.

SCIENTIFIC LIFE

How to foster collaborative research in your lab

Two principal investigators reveal how they set the tone for joint science to flourish in their labs. The explore how to eliminate a ‘zero-sum’ mindset, establish parameters for collaboration, and encourage students to make authorship decisions after they collect data.

Nature | 4 min read

How lab leaders can be poisoned by power

The extreme power that lab heads have over their trainees creates a breeding ground for toxic dynamics, says organizational researcher Sherry Moss. She calls for research institutions to do more to eliminate abusive supervision. In the meantime, she advises researchers looking for a new job to listen for subtle warnings and not to be swayed by a big name.

Nature | | 5 min read

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

BOOKS & ARTS

Fred Rogers: a quiet revolutionary

On the 50th anniversary of the iconic US show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, a new book explores the educational innovator and his collaboration with child psychologist Margaret McFarland. McFarland’s expertise informed Rogers’s unique vision: a serene, thoughtful programme in which every word and gesture was carefully designed to support children’s emotional development.

Nature | 6 min read

Schrödinger’s cat among biology’s pigeons

Physicist and Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger crystallized key concepts of modern molecular biology in his 1944 book What Is Life? Science writer Philip Ball revisits the influential publication that inspired the public and a number of scientific luminaries — but which exasperated others.

Nature | 8 min read

Five best science books this week

Barbara Kiser’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes thinking like a mountain, how we really make decisions, and the power of a button.

Nature | 2 min read