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John Griffin standing at a black board

Topologist Dennis Sullivan has won the 2022 Abel Prize.Credit: John Griffin/Stony Brook University/Abel Prize

Topology virtuoso wins Abel Prize

Mathematician Dennis Sullivan has won one of the most prestigious awards in mathematics, for his contributions to topology — the study of qualitative properties of shapes — and related fields. The Abel Prize, which is given by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, is worth 7.5 million Norwegian Kroner (US$854,000). The Abel is considered a lifetime-achievement award. Sullivan says that the result he is proudest of is one he obtained in 1977, which distils the crucial properties of a space using a tool called rational homotopy.

Nature | 4 min read

Implant lets ‘locked in’ man chat with son

For the first time, a person who is completely paralysed can form sentences using an implanted device that reads brain signals. The 36-year-old man has motor neuron disease. He was able to make sentences at a rate of about one character per minute by changing the audible tone of an output device to navigate through letters. He eventually explained to researchers that he modulated the tone by trying to move his eyes. In both German and English, he was able to communicate with his wife and 4-year-old son, and could express his food and physical preferences. Among his statements were “I would like to listen to the album by Tool loud,” and “I love my cool son.”

Science | 7 min read

Reference: Nature Communications paper

Features & opinion

Cartoon showing several researchers feeding and pouring data into a machine that creates graphs and charts on screens

Illustration by David Parkins

Lessons from the COVID dashboard wizards

The scientists, programmers and designers who built some of the most influential artefacts of the pandemic — the data dashboards — share what they learnt about communicating science in a crisis. A common thread is that data that are this important for public health should be freely available, machine-readable and standardized. Another is that the best data visualization might not be the most pleasing to the eye. And it’s important to be transparent about data sources, methodologies and any gaps or errors that could lead viewers astray.

Nature | 13 min read

User testing: Three chart types used in a UK COVID-19 dashboard survey to determine which was most liked and most useful.

Source: P. Hadjibagheri/UK Health Security Agency

Molecular barcodes reveal tumour lineages

Like the barcode on a box of food at the grocery store, molecular barcodes label cells so that researchers can identify, track and study the populations that arise from them. They are built of nucleic acids or proteins, and cancer biologists use them to home in on a tumour’s origins or to understand how its mutations change over time. But reading molecular barcodes usually requires breaking cells open to sequence DNA. Now, researchers are expanding the tumour-barcoding toolkit to avoid destroying barcoded cells.

Nature | 11 min read

Infographic of the week

Africa's neglected genomes. Scaled circles comparing how many African plant and animals have been sequenced to known totals.

Sources: Analysis by T. E. Ebenezer et al./Ref. 1/S. Hotaling et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 118, e2109019118 (2021)

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“It’s OK to mourn the things that we are missing out on — to attend conferences in person, to do certain kinds of research. But we can’t blame ourselves for things outside of our control.”

Nutritional biochemist Gwen Chodur is one of five PhD candidates who spoke to Nature about coping with the ways that the pandemic disrupted their careers. (Nature | 11 min read)