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Crawford Lake in Canada has been proposed as the official site marker for the start of a new geological epoch.Credit: Brock University
This lake could mark dawn of Anthropocene
Sediment from a small Canadian lake near Toronto could become the ‘golden spike’ — the official marker — for the Anthropocene, the geological epoch in which humanity has profoundly affected Earth. Crawford Lake’s unusual shape means that its layers of sediment preserve a record of environmental conditions, revealing human impacts including those of Iroquois-speaking Indigenous peoples in the thirteenth century. The year proposed for the golden spike could be 1950 — when several environmental changes accelerated — or 1952, when the levels of radioactive plutonium from nuclear-bomb testing rose sharply. “The difference is 2 millimetres, but philosophically it matters,” says micropalaeontologist Francine McCarthy. Three geological organizations must approve the choice for it to become the official marker.
Reference: The Anthropocene Review paper
Analysis uncovers a long COVID gene
The first genome-wide hunt to find genetic risk factors for long COVID has yielded a hit: a DNA sequence near a gene called FOXP4, which is active in the lungs and in some immune cells. The study used data collected from 6,450 people with long COVID across 16 countries. Researchers hope that this analysis will be just the beginning: a vast amount of data are required to unpick a disorder as complex as long COVID, which has been associated with more than 200 symptoms, including severe fatigue, nerve pain and difficulties with concentration and memory.
Reference: medRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
Can a new leader save the CDC?
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is facing a pivotal moment, fuelled by chronic underfunding and controversy about the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now the agency has a new director to try to put things right: Mandy Cohen, a physician who served as North Carolina’s health secretary until the end of 2021, started her tenure on Monday. Among the challenges that she inherits are restoring public and political support for the agency, rebuilding its infrastructure and improving its ability to make quick decisions in the face of emergencies. Public-health specialists say that Cohen’s experience at the state level has equipped her to tackle the task.
Climate scientists want bigger computers
A network of supercomputer centres where hundreds of scientists run ultra-high-resolution climate models could help to whittle away uncertainties about the effects of global warming. Supporters say this ambitious proposal would solve the problem of current climate models straining the limits of computing power. The modelling centres would produce freely accessible data and would help to democratize climate science by involving researchers from lower-income countries. A first large-scale test of these ideas is already under way in Europe. Critics question the proposal’s cost, practicality and scientific pay-off, and worry that it would ultimately centralize climate modelling.
Features & opinion
An artificial-intelligence tool called RFdiffusion designed a protein that binds to the parathyroid hormone, shown in pink.Credit: Ian C. Haydon/UW Institute for Protein Design
‘Midjourney for proteins’ dreams up options
Tools that harness artificial intelligence (AI) are bringing the creation of custom proteins — until recently a highly technical and often unsuccessful pursuit — to mainstream science. Their creators are inspired by AI software that synthesizes realistic images, such as Midjourney (which produced the viral ‘Pope in a puffa’ image). A similar conceptual approach, researchers have found, can churn out realistic protein shapes meeting criteria that designers specify — meaning, for instance, that it’s possible to speedily draw up proteins that should bind tightly to another biomolecule. And early experiments show that when researchers manufacture these proteins, a useful fraction do perform as the software suggests.
Equality is best medicine for global health
When the United Nations set its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the COVID-19 pandemic had not yet left millions of people living with disability and disrupted health-care systems worldwide. So progress towards number 3 — “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages” — has been stuttering, at best. “But that does not mean that the targets embedded in this goal should be lowered when world leaders gather in New York City in September to assess progress towards achieving the SDGs, argues a Nature editorial. “Instead, the health goal should be strengthened by increasing focus on the economic, social and power inequities that drive disease and disability worldwide — and researchers must play their part in making that happen.”
Image of the day
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI)
On the first birthday of the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA has released this stunning picture of the star-forming region closest to Earth. It shows an area in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, 120 parsecs (390 light years) away, that contains roughly 50 young stars. The vertical and horizontal red streaks on the upper and right-hand side of the image are molecular hydrogen illuminated by jets of material produced by newborn stars. The paler veils of dust in the bottom half of the picture surround a single star larger than the Sun. (Nature | 3 min read)
