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The Ubirajara jubatus fossil is a holotype — a species-defining model specimen.credit: Felipe L. Pinheiro
Controversial fossil will finally return home
A prized dinosaur fossil is on its way home to Brazil, almost three decades after it was exported to Germany. The specimen sent shock waves through the palaeontology community in 2020 after researchers in Germany unveiled a paper (since withdrawn) describing Ubirajara jubatus, the first non-avian dinosaur with feather-like structures found in South America. The small dinosaur is a holotype, a specimen that scientists use to describe a new species. Brazil prohibits holotype exports, and the permit that the team from Germany obtained might not have followed legal processes. This is an “important message against science colonialism in the twenty-first century, and opens a strong precedent for more fossils to go back to their countries of origin”, says palaeontologist Aline Ghilardi.
NSF survey will include LGBT+ questions
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) will, for the first time, include questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in its PhD census this year. Data from the annual survey, expected to gather 52,000 responses, helps government agencies, academic institutions and industry to track the careers of scientists from under-represented groups. In the United States, there are about 20% fewer LGBT+ people in scientific fields than is statistically expected. Depending on the pilot survey’s results, which will be published in late 2025, similar questions could be included in future NSF censuses.
Most powerful explosion ever witnessed
Astronomers have observed the most energetic explosion ever: a fireball 100 times the size of the Solar System and 2 trillion times brighter than the Sun, which has existed for 3 years. The event, dubbed AT2021lwx, might have been caused by an enormous star or cloud of gas being gobbled up by a black hole. The reason why night hasn’t been turned to day here on Earth is that the party is happening 2.5 billion parsecs away. It’s not the brightest event ever seen — that would be the γ-ray burst known as GRB 221009A — but that lasted only a few minutes.
Reference: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society paper
Features & opinion
How to future-proof embryo science
Science moves fast — but regulation often cannot. This is particularly true for embryo science and genome editing. One way for policies to keep up with the pace of research is to design ‘primary’ legislation that can be easily amended by ‘secondary’ legislation. A ‘regulatory sandbox’, a process developed in the finance sector, could allow trials in a small-scale real-world environment. At the same time, asking the wider public should remain a key part of the decision-making, even if that process is slow.
Brain imaging becomes faster and sharper
New brain imaging methods are stirring up excitement among scientists who have long relied on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity. One of fMRI’s limitations is that it’s slow: the changes in blood oxygen levels it picks up happen in seconds, but neurons fire on millisecond timescales. Researchers are looking to detect neuronal activity directly, for example through the electromagnetic fields that it generates or the movement of water molecules into activated neurons, which swell temporarily. Others are working to better fMRI without abandoning blood-oxygen-level signals, including making more powerful MRI magnets and using machine learning to improve image reconstruction.
How one scientist managed burnout
Solar physicist Kelly Korreck realized that she had burnout when “everything at work just felt meaningless”. She talked to a life coach, psychologists, a counsellor and trusted friends, and made the difficult decision to take time off. Initially, Korreck focused on not doing anything: “I booked myself a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains, where the only noise was the wind in the trees.” She then worked with a mentor to find a position that aligned with her new goals.
