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The MeerKAT 64-dish radio telescope array in the Karoo region of South Africa will be integrated into the Square Kilometre Array

An existing 64-dish array in South Africa is set to become part of the Square Kilometre Array.Credit: Mujahid Safodien/AFP/Getty

US$1-billion needed for world’s largest telescope

An independent panel of reviewers has approved the design of what will be the world’s largest telescope — the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) — but it comes with a hefty price tag. If the SKA collaboration cannot raise the US$1 billion needed for construction to begin in time, it will turn to a scaled-back design costing several hundred million less. This design has reduced computing power, and its dishes and antennas are squeezed closer together.

Nature | 4 min read

US no longer the ‘uncontested leader’ in science

The United States is increasingly “seen globally as an important leader rather than the uncontested leader” in science and engineering, with China closing the gap on research and development funding, says a report from the US National Science Foundation. There are also indications that the United States is losing some of its appeal for foreign-born students and workers.

Nature | 4 min read

Survey reveals lowlights of science careers

Highly competitive and often-hostile environments are damaging the quality of research. That’s the damning result of a survey of more than 4,000 scientists by the funding agency Wellcome. “These results paint a shocking portrait of the research environment — and one we must all help change,” says Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome. “A poor research culture ultimately leads to poor research.”

Nature | 4 min read

Reference: Wellcome report

Cell that kicked off complex life grown in the lab

For the first time, microorganisms from which all complex life might be descended — the Asgard archaea — have been cultured in the lab. The tentacled microbe was isolated from deep-sea sediment and painstakingly grown over 12 years. The archaeon — ‘Candidatus Prometheoarchaeum syntrophicum’ — offers tantalising hints as to how an ancient single cell might have engulfed another to create more advanced eukaryotes.

The New York Times | 6 min read

Go deeper with the expert view in the Nature News & Views article.

Reference: Nature paper

Research highlights: 1-minute reads

How 600-year-old ginkgo trees stay youthful

By some measures, ancient Ginkgo biloba trees in China have equal vigour to whippersnappers a few decades old. Researchers investigating the longevity of the trees — some survive for more than 1,000 years — found that old trees produce less growth hormone but have similar gene activity and produce seeds that are just as viable.

The Monument is a lab once more

Researchers have carried on Robert Hooke’s legacy in the iconic London tower that he helped to design. The Monument — a 60-metre-tall column built to commemorate the city’s great fire of 1666 — also served as Hooke’s laboratory, where he measured the parallax of stars and varying pressure at altitude. Modern researchers hung a 50-metre-long wire inside the tower to test how it deformed under torsion — an exception to Hooke’s law describing the elastic behaviour of idealized springs.

Teens who rate their family status highly fare better

A teenager’s well-being can be predicted by their perception of their family’s social status. Researchers found that 18-year-olds who thought their families were of high social standing had indicators of better well-being (even after controlling for participants’ actual socio-economic circumstances). When twins held divergent views of their family’s status, the teen who viewed the family’s standing more highly tended to fare better than their twin — despite growing up in an identical family environment.

Get more of Nature’s research highlights: short picks from the scientific literature.

Features & opinion

Time for the Human Screenome Project

Measuring screen time is not enough to understand the impact of our ubiquitous gadgets on well-being, argue three researchers. They call for a Human Screenome Project — a collective effort to produce and analyse recordings of everything people see and do on their screens. They have built a tool to record, encrypt and transmit second-by-second screenshots from a person’s various devices to understand our fragmented media use.

Nature | 12 min read

Global problems need social science

Without human insights, data and the hard sciences will not meet the challenges of the next decade, argues Hetan Shah, the outgoing director of the Royal Statistical Society in London and soon-to-be chief executive of the British Academy. Responding to an unusual job posting for scientists, mathematicians and “super-talented weirdos” to work for the UK government, Shah warns that prioritizing science and technology over the humanities and social sciences will mean essential knowledge is overlooked.

Nature | 4 min read

Why academia is losing black physicians

“I never thought I would leave,” says physician-scientist Uché Blackstock of her impactful work on the faculty of a US academic medical centre. “But I could no longer stand the lack of mentorship, promotion denial, and work environments embedded in racism and sexism.” Blackstock describes the issues that black medical students and faculty members face in academic medicine, and how their loss weakens efforts to improve health inequalities in the United States.

STAT | 6 min read

Quote of the day

“These are entirely new lifeforms. They have never before existed on Earth.”

Biophysicist Michael Levin describes biological machines designed by artificial intelligence and built from living pluripotent stem cells taken from frog embryos. (The Guardian)

Reference: PNAS paper