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Daily briefing: How feuding map-makers stoked Mars mania
Fierce competition between nineteenth century astronomers has inspired our fascination with the red planet over the years. Plus: why scientists think the virus that causes COVID-19 is here to stay.
A new analysis suggests that wildlife trade is unlikely to ever be sustainable, despite some conservationists arguing that it can be in certain cases. Researchers compared 31 research papers charting the fate of individuals from 133 species of mammals, birds and reptiles to show that wildlife trade nearly always drives population declines, even in protected areas. Global wildlife trafficking generates an estimated US$5 billion–$20 billion a year, but has massively detrimental impacts on biodiversity.
Many human genome studies ask participants to sign a form that gives them little direct control over how their data will be used. But a panel of researchers in Africa says this can fuel distrust between researchers and participants, and needs to change. “Transparent and honest informed-consent processes, as well as fair benefit-sharing, will do much more to enhance research participation and to further scientific discovery than large-scale appropriation of samples and data without consent,” says bioinformatician Nicki Tiffin.
On 18 February, NASA plans to land its latest rover inside Mars’s Jezero Crater. The goal is to explore an area of the planet that was once much warmer and wetter, and perhaps even liveable. Scattered throughout the crater are geological formations hinting at its watery past, including the remains of a lake and a river delta. Studying the make-up of these rocks — in a region where no spacecraft has gone before — will offer the best chance yet at answering the age-old question of whether life ever existed on Mars.
Getting to Mars isn’t easy. In 25 years as a science journalist, I’ve covered missions that have failed spectacularly, from crashing into the planet to mysteriously vanishing in space. (Who could forget the ill-fated Mars Climate Orbiter, doomed on arrival in 1999 because of a mix-up between metric and non-metric units?) On Thursday, however, NASA faces decent odds of landing its Perseverance rover in Mars’s Jezero Crater. Fingers crossed for a safe landing.
Mars missions have allowed us to create detailed maps of the planet’s surface. But people were trying to map Mars long before the advent of spacecraft. In the nineteenth century, astronomers would peer at the red planet through telescopes and try to sketch its features by hand. Fierce competition between map-makers fuelled decades of frenzied observations that have inspired our fascination with Mars over the years.
In January, Nature asked more than 100 immunologists, infectious-disease researchers and virologists working on SARS-CoV-2 whether it could be eradicated. Almost 90% of respondents think that the coronavirus will become endemic — meaning that it will continue to circulate in pockets of the global population for years to come. But failure to eradicate the virus does not mean that death, illness and social isolation will continue on the scales seen so far. The future will depend heavily on the type of immunity people acquire and how the virus evolves.
US mathematician Isadore Singer, known for unifying large areas of mathematics and physics, has died aged 96. His work helped to lay the foundations for areas of theoretical physics such as gauge theory and string theory, which have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the structure of the Universe. Singer “changed how people viewed mathematics by showing that seemingly different areas have deep connections”, says mathematician Jeff Cheeger. “It opened up a whole new world that’s expanded and expanded.”
Virologist Angela Rasmussen laments the spread of unverified claims about the origins of COVID-19. (The Washington Post | 13 min read)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00439-8
When public-policy researcher Eric Hittinger learnt that in France, the term for a pie chart is a ‘camembert’, he was rightly compelled to create a pie chart of pie-chart names. I will from now on be using the Danish term, ‘layer cake diagram’.
Join the debate over international dessert-naming conventions over on Twitter. For anything else, your emails are always welcome at briefing@nature.com.