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Report reveals racism at top UK university
Evidence of racism and inequality at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) — a prestigious 120-year-old research university — has been reported in an independent review that was commissioned by the institution last year. Fifty-two per cent of survey respondents who were people of colour said they had witnessed or experienced racism at the university, and the review heard of several instances in which the LSHTM had failed to act on complaints about racist behaviour. “It will not be a quick or easy journey, but work is already under way and this review accelerates and strengthens the change that is needed,” says Mohamed Osman, an independent member of the LSHTM’s council and chair of its diversity and inclusion committee.
Reference: LSHTM independent review
Arctic warming faster than rest of world
The Arctic is warming four times as fast as the global average — much faster than even the extreme levels of warming previously reported. Researchers analysed data from NASA and the United Kingdom’s Met Office and found that the widely cited figure that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world was an underestimate. This was because models included swaths of the globe below the Arctic circle and time periods longer than 30 years ago, when conditions were very different. “Everybody knows [the Arctic] is a canary when it comes to climate change,” says climate scientist Peter Jacobs. “Yet we’re misreporting it by a factor of two. Which is just bananas.”
Electronics stretchier than skin
A new kind of wireless electronic membrane could be used to make comfortable wearables and medical sensors. The material is even stretchier than skin and can handle high frequencies. Before now, flexible electronics could only operate at frequencies too low to be useful for many devices.
Features & opinion
Eight charts show how vaccines shaped 2021
The extraordinary roll-out of billions of COVID-19 vaccine doses, in such a short space of time and so soon after their unparalleled rapid development, has been a major force shaping politics, science and everyday human experience. In this graphic-led story, Nature offers a guide to the successes, failures and the impact of COVID-19 vaccines in 2021.
‘Living’ reviews save lives and can do more
Typically, decision makers draw on formal summaries of research evidence called systematic reviews, but during the pandemic these can become out of date almost immediately. We need a ‘living evidence’ approach, argue the members of a task force that produces COVID-19 guidelines for clinicians in Australia. They developed an approach to evidence synthesis that has now been adopted by the World Health Organization and by public-health bodies in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Image of the week
This tropical scene is just one-quarter of a millimetre tall. It is made from molybdenum disulfide nanostructures, shaped using a laser and imaged with a scanning electron microscope. Artificial colours complete the minuscule masterpiece, which won third place in the 2021 Nanoartography competition.
See more of the year’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.