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A SARS-CoV-2 variant spreading across Europe probably caught a ride to the region with travellers arriving from central Africa.Credit: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty
How a worrisome variant spread unnoticed
Multiple travellers carried a new coronavirus variant from central Africa to Europe, where it has now spread to at least a dozen countries, according to genomic data. The variant, named B.1.620, hosts a suite of mutations that have been linked to increased transmissibility and the ability to escape the immune response. The findings suggest that the variant is circulating widely in central Africa but has been undetected because of limited sequencing, highlighting the risk posed by regional inequities in genomic surveillance.
Read more: Alarming COVID variants show vital role of genomic surveillance (Nature | 6 min read, from January)
Reference: bioRxiv preprint
Brain implant turns thoughts into text
A brain–computer interface for typing could eventually let people with paralysis communicate at the speed of their thoughts. The device was able to decode, in real time, signals from electrodes implanted in the brain of a 65-year-old man with full-body paralysis as he imagined writing. He was able to mentally type 90 characters per minute — not far from the speed at which the average person that age can type on a smartphone.
Scientific American | 5 min read
Go deeper with an analysis by bioengineers Pavithra Rajeswaran and Amy L. Orsborn in the Nature News & Views article.
Voyager 1 captures hum between the stars
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has detected persistent ripples in interstellar plasma, through which it has been travelling since it left the Solar System in 2012. By measuring these waves, astrophysicists have made the first continuous measurements of the density of interstellar plasma, the rarefied medium between the stars. "When the plasma oscillations are converted to an audio signal, it sounds like a tone that varies. It's a bit eerie," says astronomer James Cordes
Reference: Nature Astronomy paper
US authorizes Pfizer vaccines for youths
US regulators have given the go-ahead for 12- to 15-year-olds to get the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The Pfizer jab was already being administered to people as young as 16 in the United States. The news follows an as-yet-unpublished clinical trial that found, among 2,260 children 12 to 15 years old, no symptomatic infections and no serious side effects in those who got the jab. There were 18 cases of COVID-19 in the placebo group.
Read more: COVID vaccines and kids: five questions as trials begin (Nature | 7 min read, from April)
Features & opinion
Nature-based ways to cool the planet
Analyses of nature-based solutions often focus on how much carbon they can remove from the atmosphere. A new analysis explores how these solutions will affect global temperatures — a crucial metric as humanity attempts to limit global warming. It suggests that a nature-based strategy could reduce peak warming by an additional 0.3 °C under a scenario consistent with a 2 °C overall temperature rise by 2085. Climate-change policy analyst Cécile Girardin and seven colleagues explain how projects that manage, protect and restore ecosystems could offer climate, biodiversity and socio-economic benefits — if done properly, and soon.
Source: S. Jenkins et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 45, 2795–2804 (2018).
My PhD defence in 100 memes
Sea-ice scientist Sophie Dufour-Beauséjour chose an unusual way to capture an academic rite of passage, with a little help from her friends. The 60 people who attended her 3-hour virtual PhD defence shared visual inside jokes known as memes, such as the one below capturing fleeting exasperation at a jury member’s question.
Sophie Dufour-Beauséjour asked friends in the audience of her PhD defence to create memes relating to the event.Credit: Elena Sophie Drouin
