Daily briefing: Why PIs are struggling to find postdocs

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Australian wildfires damaged ozone layer

Smoke from Australia’s extreme wildfires between December 2019 and February 2020 increased atmospheric temperatures and probably made the hole in the ozone layer bigger. Satellite observations show that the plumes of smoke that rose into the atmosphere caused temperatures to spike by 3 °C over Australia. Globally, temperatures in the lower stratosphere rose by 0.7 °C. The temperature spike lasted for around four months. Models indicate that chemical reactions between the smoke and ozone in the atmosphere exacerbated the Antarctic ozone hole. “The scale of that bush-fire season was just off the charts,” says palaeoclimate scientist Nerilie Abram.

Nature | 4 min read

Reference: Scientific Reports paper

Lab leaders wrestle with paucity of postdocs

Principal investigators (PIs) are facing a postdoc crunch. Researchers in the United Kingdom, the European Union and elsewhere have reported a sudden drop in applications from qualified applicants, a sign of a potentially drastic shift in the scientific labour market. “I don’t know anyone worldwide who currently doesn’t complain how hard it is to find postdocs,” says cancer researcher Florian Markowetz. The reasons behind the shortage are complex: politics, economics and shifting career priorities for new PhD holders all play a part. “It’s not just about postdocs. You see really established PIs starting to leave academia,” says neuroscientist Madeline Lancaster. “There are private institutions offering that same intellectual freedom with better salaries and working conditions. What is academia even offering any more?”

Nature | 8 min read

US life expectancy declines again

Babies born in the United States this year have a life expectancy 76.1 years — the lowest since 1996. The second consecutive year of decline is driven by COVID-19, drug overdoses and fatal accidents. American Indian and Alaskan Native people have been particularly hard hit: their life expectancy is 65.2 years. The numbers are in contrast to other high-income countries, where the impact of COVID-19 on death rates is diminishing. “Even small declines in life expectancy of a tenth or two-tenths of a year mean that on a population level, a lot more people are dying prematurely than they really should be,” says Robert Anderson, a specialist in mortality statistics.

The New York Times | 7 min read

Reference: US National Vital Statistics System report

Features & opinion

Tools to fine-tune your English writing

A growing suite of free or low-cost artificial-intelligence (AI) tools offer help to researchers who want to publish in English-language journals. Applications such as DeepL Translate and Grammarly can fine-tune English style and spelling. Writefull is trained on academic publications, making it especially handy for scientists. But tools should be used with caution, say scientific-communication specialists, because their suggestions aren’t always right. Ultimately, developing your own writing abilities — ideally with support from peers — will build valuable skills.

Nature | 8 min read

How to rebuild Ukraine’s science

With countries around the world increasingly focusing on problems at home, the urgent need to reconstruct Ukraine’s research and educational infrastructure must not be forgotten, argues a Nature editorial. The good news is that plans are being made: in June, the leaders of the science academies of Ukraine, the United States and a number of European countries agreed some outline steps for continued science collaboration. At an international conference on reconstruction for Ukraine, held in July in Lugano, Switzerland, many governments committed to a set of principles (the Lugano Principles) on how they would approach rebuilding the country. But winter is coming in the Northern Hemisphere, and it will put further strain on international resolve. “It is a test we cannot fail,” says the editorial.

Nature | 4 min read

Doppelgängers have similar DNA

An ongoing photographic project by artist François Brunelle captures the arresting appearance of doppelgängers — people who look alike but aren’t related. It inspired scientists to investigate what makes them look so similar. Researchers analysed the DNA of 32 pairs of look-alikes identified by Brunelle. The 16 pairs that facial-recognition software said were the most similar had many more genes in common than the others. "In the world right now, there are so many people that eventually the system is producing humans with similar DNA sequences," says geneticist and study co-author Manel Esteller. That means you probably have a doppelgänger out there, too — I know I do (hi Alex!).

CNN | 8 min read

Reference: Cell Reports paper

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