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A person holdings 3 golden retriever puppies

Ron Levine/Getty

Puppies are hardwired to understand us

Nearly 400 adorable puppies have helped researchers to show that dogs’ ability to understand human pointing — a rarity in the animal kingdom — appears to be hardwired in doggy DNA. The team used 8-week-old labrador and golden-retriever pups in a series of experiments to see how the furballs responded to human cues, such as pointing and ‘puppy talk’. Some puppies were more successful than others, but the researchers found that approximately 43% of that variation in performance was due to genetics. The finding suggests people strongly selected for these abilities in the past, paving the way for dogs to become the human mind-readers they are today.

Science | 6 min read

Reference: bioRxiv preprint

Dwindling songbirds forget their song

Critically endangered regent honeyeaters are forgetting their songs because there are few elder birds to pass them on. The yellow-speckled nectar drinkers — which are Australia’s most imperilled songbirds — learn their complex courting and territorial songs from other birds. So when populations are very small, there’s no one for young honeyeaters to learn from. “The poor birds are not getting the chance to learn what they should be singing,” says ecologist Ross Crates, who adds that this is one of the first examples of the “loss of vocal culture” documented in an endangered bird.

The Guardian | 4 min read

Reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper

Où es tu, Camille Noûs?

Camille Noûs, a French researcher with nearly 200 papers to their name, is racking up citations. But no such person exists. The character was conceived by research-advocacy group RogueESR as a stand-in for collective efforts in science. Some scientists say that Noûs is a harmless way to protest the increasing emphasis on individual accomplishment caused by changes to France’s science legislation. But others object on ethical grounds to the idea of intentionally adding a false author to papers.

Science | 5 min read

COVID-19 coronavirus update

Why herd immunity might be impossible

Even with vaccination efforts in full force, the theoretical threshold for vanquishing COVID-19 looks out of reach, say scientists who are modelling the pandemic’s progress. Most estimates had placed the threshold at 60–70% of the population, but several factors seem to be pushing it up:

• Authorized vaccines can prevent people from getting sick with COVID-19. But it is still unclear to what extent they block infection and transmission. If vaccines don’t prevent SARS-CoV-2 from spreading, then many more people must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.

• A perfectly coordinated global vaccination campaign might have wiped out COVID-19, but the roll-out is wildly uneven. For example, Israel is closing in on the theoretical herd-immunity threshold, but its neighbours Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt have yet to vaccinate even 1% of their respective populations. This leaves pockets of vulnerability where the disease can surge and then spread.

• There are no authorized vaccines for children, so most adults would need to be immunized to achieve herd immunity.

• We’re in a race with new variants of SARS-CoV-2 that might be more transmissible and resistant to vaccines. A new variant could undo our progress.

• It’s not yet clear how long naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 infection lasts, but it’s probably not forever. As immunity wanes, people become susceptible to reinfection and no longer contribute to herd immunity.

• The herd-immunity threshold gets higher when people relax their vigilance. “The vaccine is not bulletproof,” says biomedical data scientist Dvir Aran. Imagine that a vaccine offers 90% protection: “If before the vaccine you met at most one person, and now with vaccines you meet 10 people, you’re back to square one.”

So what does the future look like without herd immunity? The spectacularly speedy development of vaccines that reduce hospitalizations and deaths still implies a hopeful outcome. But in the long term, scientists think COVID-19 might become an endemic disease, much like influenza.

Nature | 10 min read

Read more: The coronavirus is here to stay — here’s what that means (Nature | 11 min read)

A year of immunological insights

As immunologists pivoted to focus on the rise of COVID-19, they produced extraordinary leaps in our understanding of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2. Nature Reviews Immunology steps through a timeline of key discoveries and highlights areas for future investigations.

Nature Reviews Immunology | 40 min read

67

The number of countries where no one has yet been vaccinated, according to The New York Times’s overview of the extreme variations in who can get the jab in different locations. (5 min read)

Notable quotable

“If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that broad social trust is crucial to successful public health initiatives and, ultimately, to our survival.”

We must change the systems that undermine the public’s trust in vaccines, argues Shobita Parthasarathy, a scholar of science and technology studies. (Slate | 4 min read)

Features & opinion

Permafrost microbes could spew carbon

Genomics studies are helping to reveal how bacteria and archaea influence one of Earth’s largest carbon stores — permafrost — as it begins to thaw. Scientists increasingly worry that the melting permafrost will lead to an epic feast for microbes that produce carbon dioxide and methane.

Nature | 11 min read

The Big Thaw. A map of change in Arctic permafrost's active layer.

Sources: Data from Permafrost CCI; J. OBU et al. Data set at CEDA Archive https://doi.org/ghjkb2 (2020)

Futures: Chlorophyllis

A schoolchild’s witty revenge on her bully features in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.

Nature | 5 min read

Five best science books this week

Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes an accidental Nobel laureate, what we owe to our voices and the philosophy of touch.

Nature | 3 min read

Podcast: The AI that argues back

After thousands of years of human practise, it’s still not clear what makes a good argument. Despite this, researchers have been developing computer programs that can find and process arguments. And this week, researchers at IBM are publishing details of an artificial intelligence (AI) that is capable of debating with humans.

Nature Podcast | 23 min listen

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Where I work

James Ball, PhD student at University of Cambridge does forest inventory in Guyana.

James Ball is a PhD student in ecology at the University of Cambridge, UK.Credit: Tom Hattermann

Ecologist James Ball links individual trees to drone pictures of the canopy in this photo taken at the Paracou research station in the Amazon rainforest of French Guiana. Amid the constant buzz and hum of insects and birds, Ball aims to better understand a crucial ecosystem and its response to climate change. (Nature | 3 min read)

Quote of the day

“As long as students are living through their own version of my story, I cannot look away from my past.”

Black physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein describes the pain of doing science while constantly reengaging with her own traumatic experiences at racist institutions as she advocates for change. (Catapult | 9 min read)