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Afghans who hope to be evacuated head through flooded streets towards Kabul’s airport.Credit: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/Shutterstock
Afghanistan’s scientists see gains slip away
For 20 years, science has blossomed in Afghanistan. Now many researchers are fleeing and those who remain face lost funding and the threat of persecution. Humanitarian organizations such as Scholars at Risk are working to find places for researchers overseas, but leaving the country is extremely difficult. Scientists told Nature that they fear for themselves and their families, and mourn the loss of a flourishing science infrastructure. “We spent all our money, energy and time in Afghanistan to build a brighter future for ourselves and our children,” says medical physicist Musa Joya. “I really see a dark future.”
Research highlights: 1-minute reads
A newly described fossil of the pterosaur Tupandactylus navigans (artist’s impression) preserves the soft tissue of its huge head crest, which might have made it clumsier in the air.Credit: Victor Beccari
Why gassy planets are bigger around more-massive stars
During formation, the planets can draw a greater amount of hydrogen and helium around themselves, causing them to increase in size.
Scattered light yields full picture of tiny motions
Optical technique overcomes limitations of standard imaging methods.
Pollution gives giant clams a growth spurt
Human-made particles help the huge molluscs to achieve their massive size faster than their ancestors did.
So much ice is melting that Earth’s crust is moving
As the continents’ frozen burden dissipates, the ground deforms — not only in the immediate area, but also in far-flung locations.
Are 20 seconds of handwashing really necessary? Physics says yes
A simple model suggests that there’s no fast way to rid hands of virus-sized particles.
Get more of Nature’s research highlights: short picks from the scientific literature.
Features & opinion
Carolyn Shoemaker, comet discoverer
Astronomer Carolyn Shoemaker co-discovered the comet Shoemaker–Levy 9, which collided with Jupiter in 1994, resulting in dramatic explosions visible from Earth and igniting interest in what happens when comets strike planets. Trained in the humanities, Shoemaker “never really considered herself a scientist”, writes her former collaborator David Levy. Nevertheless, her uncanny ability to spot details in astronomical images made her unmatched at discovering comets. For many years, she held the record for the greatest number of comets discovered by an individual: between 1980 and 1994, she found 32 comets and more than 400 asteroids. Shoemaker died on 13 August, aged 92.
Webcast: how to green your lab
Ready to go green in your lab? A recorded webcast from Nature Careers will get you started. Experts share tips, advice and resources for dealing with waste, unrecyclable materials, always-on equipment and environmentally dangerous chemicals.
Futures: science fiction from Nature
In this week’s collection of short stories for Nature’s Futures series:
• A woman fighting her way out of a violent relationship takes advantage of unusually large-scale quantum behaviour in Zeroing out his wavefunction.
• A DNA donor faces her clone — and her decision to condemn her double to a very different life — in The reunion.
Five best science books this week
“Seashells were money before coin, jewellery before gems, art before canvas,” says science writer Cynthia Barnett in her arresting meditation on shells and ocean history. Discover this and more of the top five science books to read this week.
Audio: Female athletes and concussion
A growing body of data suggests that female athletes are at significantly greater risk of a traumatic brain injury event than male athletes. They also fare worse after a concussion and take longer to recover. Possible explanations range from differences in the microstructure of the brain to the influence of hormones, coaching regimes, players’ level of experience and injury management. One thing scientists agree on is the need for more research in female athletes to inform sports-concussion protocols, which are currently based on data almost exclusively from men.
Nature audio long-read | 13 min listen
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Where I work
Fabio Deelan Cunden is a mathematician and theoretical physicist at the University of Bari, Italy.Credit: Cosimo Sanitate for Nature
Mathematician and theoretical physicist Fabio Deelan Cunden studies chaos at the quantum level, where atoms and subatomic particles interact. “The blue ‘string art’ here is an example of a ruled surface, a complex shape that you can generate by moving a simple straight line,” he says. “The white object is a Clebsch surface, another complex surface that is based on simple equations. On the lower left are red dice of different shapes, which I selected because they provide a primitive example of what I study at the University of Bari, Italy — probability and randomness.” (Nature | 4 min read)
