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Credit: UC Berkeley
3D printer ‘replicator’ creates entire object at once
A 3D printer that creates an entire object at once rather than building it layer by layer could be used for printing medical components. The machine, nicknamed ‘the replicator’ in honour of the fictional devices in Star Trek, uses a type of synthetic resin that becomes solid plastic when exposed to the right amount of light. Researchers projected hundreds of images onto a rotating container of resin. By controlling the amount of light, they were able to create a solid object in the shape of the image — a miniature of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture ‘The Thinker’.
When pandas put bamboo on the menu
Pandas might have switched to their all-bamboo diet thousands of years ago, not millions, as some research has suggested. Genetic and fossil data support the idea that pandas have been munching on the green stuff for millions of years. But chemical isotopes in panda bones indicate that the monochrome beasts started feeding on bamboo exclusively only around 5,000 to 7,000 years ago.
How to keep dangerous DNA out of terrorists’ hands
Companies that synthesize snippets of DNA on demand for use in the laboratory or clinic could unwittingly help an unsavoury customer to make something nasty, such as a toxin or pathogen. New efforts use machine learning to detect whether a DNA sequence encodes something dangerous, even if it’s been masked with small changes to the genetic code.
Far-flung volcanoes’ surprising climate role
A thousand years of tree-ring and ice-core data indicate that eruptions outside the tropics have triggered relatively more cooling of Earth’s temperature than have tropical eruptions. Conventional thinking says that tropical eruptions have a greater impact, because atmospheric circulation can easily spread sulfur particles from those events.
Nature Research Highlights | 1 min read
Reference: Nature Geoscience paper
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FEATURES & OPINION
How to see evolution in real time
An ambitious experiment has illuminated the full process of evolution by natural selection in a wild population, from the effects on genes and physical traits to those of the environment. The exhausting task took around 500 mice, outdoor enclosures built from nearly 14 tonnes of steel plates filled with light or dark soil, and keeping the mice from escaping or being eaten by snakes and owls for three months — all in a state where many people flinch at the word ‘evolution’.
Celebrate the women behind the periodic table
In this week’s Nature podcast, meet Ida Noddack (who co-discovered Rhenium), Stefanie Horovitz (who proved isotopes exist), Reatha Clark King (who developed fluorine as a rocket fuel) and a score of other women who revealed the building blocks of matter.
Nature Podcast | 22 min listen
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BOOKS & ARTS
Left to right: Nia Calloway, Joel Ripka, Naomi Lorrain, Stephen James Anthony and Cristina Pitter in Behind the Sheet.Credit: Jeremy Daniel
A medical hell recounted by its victims
Behind the Sheet offers a fictionalized retelling of Alabama physician James Marion Sims’s egregious experimental gynaecological surgery on enslaved women in the nineteenth century. Exquisite acting and the focus on the women’s own voices makes the play well worth watching, says medical ethicist and historian Harriet A. Washington. But the introduction of a wholly fictional sexual relationship between the doctor and one of the women muddies the already murky ethical waters.
INFOGRAPHIC OF THE WEEK
Source: Brookings Institution
SCIENTIFIC LIFE
Ten tips for creating an edited volume
Fancy seeing your name on the cover of an edited volume or anthology? Read this advice from communication scientist Jessica Eise, who wrangled 17 researchers while co-editing her book How to Feed the World. Her top tip: cutting-edge researchers are always the most attractive as contributors, but they’re also the busiest. Be patient with them, or seek out other experts who might have more time.
How to write effectively for international journals
Two university language teachers and researchers in Hong Kong offer advice for scholars whose first language is not English about publishing research in international journals. They suggest using research-management tools such as Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote, studying research articles in target journals and learning face-to-face from language teachers.
Just by coincidence, we’re giving away a free Gold-level English-language editing service from Springer Nature Author Services to one lucky Briefing reader.
IMAGE OF THE WEEK
Oblique lighting provides the best-yet view of Kuiper belt object 2014 MU69, informally known as Ultima Thule, as captured on New Horizons’ fly-by on New Year’s day. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
