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Polarised light micrograph of crystals of the hormone insulin shown in blue, yellow and orange colours

An insulin crystal viewed under a light microscope. People with type 1 diabetes do not make enough insulin, which helps to control blood sugar levels.Credit: Alfred Pasieka/Science Photo Library

Zap these cells for insulin

Genetically engineered human cells that produce insulin when stimulated by a small electric current could one day be used to develop insulin implants for people with type 1 diabetes. Reactive oxygen species — unstable oxygen-containing radicals that are produced when a current is applied — are involved in a chain that switches on a gene needed to make insulin. Researchers implanted the cells into mice with high blood sugar and used acupuncture needles to apply a current — which triggered the cells to release insulin.

Nature | 4 min read

Reference: Nature Metabolism paper

Trials for long-COVID treatments launched

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has started its first trials of treatments against long COVID. Several existing drugs and interventions will be tested to address some of the most debilitating symptoms, including brain fog and disturbed sleep. One trial will evaluate 15- and 25-day-long regimens of the antiviral Paxlovid. So far, the NIH has recruited only just over half of its goal of 40,000 participants.

Nature | 6 min read

Chatbots are coming to science search

Scopus, Dimensions and Web of Science are introducing conversational search using large language models (LLMs). Scopus AI is intended to be a light, playful tool to help researchers quickly get summaries of topics that they’re unfamiliar with. The bot uses a version of GPT-3.5 to return a fluent summary paragraph, together with references and further questions to explore. The Dimensions chatbot first uses a search engine to retrieve relevant articles and then an Open AI GPT model to generate a summary paragraph around the top-ranked abstracts. Both tools will probably be released widely by the end of this year or the beginning of the next. It’s unclear when Web of Science’s LLM-powered search will become available.

Nature | 5 min read

Features & opinion

Could the world go PFAS-free?

A European agency’s proposal for sweeping restrictions of more than 12,000 per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) has ignited a debate about which uses of these chemicals are truly essential. PFASs are known as ‘forever chemicals’ because they cannot be broken down by natural processes, so they build up in the environment. Many makers of consumer products have pledged to replace PFASs. But for manufacturers of electric cars, microchips, refrigerants and industrial sealants, few alternatives are available because reliance on “PFASs are a block to innovation”, says environmental scientist Martin Scheringer.

Nature | 14 min read

Don’t let small-scale producers disappear

As millions of people move from rural regions to cities, jobs in small-scale food production are disappearing — and with them, intergenerational knowledge about biodiversity and environmental management. This trend needs to be addressed if we want to make progress on goals for sustainable development, writes a group of anthropologists, food-security researchers and biostatisticians. It will require investment in rural sustainability, addressing poverty and inequity and ensuring the economic gains stay local. Crucially, it requires challenging the assumption that small-scale production is unimportant for feeding the world’s people, the group says.

Nature | 12 min read

How to take children on fieldwork

Having to juggle family and field teams sounds like a logistical nightmare. Ecotoxicologist Verónica Laura Lozano and limnologist María Laura Sánchez suggest that this doesn’t have to be the case. On a four-day field campaign to a remote village an 8-hour drive away, they were joined by their three children, all under four. There certainly were challenges, they write. Their partners had to take leave from their jobs, and the families had to be careful to manage health risks. At the same time, they honed their ability to overcome obstacles and came up with effective solutions. “One driving force for both of us is the belief that our daughters will be happier if their mothers pursue their aspirations.”

Nature | 6 min read

Image of the week

A diver with a camera captures the largest migration of animals off the coast of Africa, while two birds dive in next to him.

Credit: Alexis Rosenfeld/Fondation 1 Ocean/UNESCO

A diver jostles for position with hungry seabirds while observing the Great Sardine Run — a mass movement of billions of sardines (Sardinops sagax) along the east coast of South Africa. It’s one of the world’s biggest animal migrations in terms of biomass. The fish gather in shoals that are several kilometres long, and attract swarms of predators including dolphins, sharks, whales and gannets.

See more of this month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.

Quote of the day

“Commodification of nature in the name of conservation seems problematic to me. These solutions are part of the same framework that put us in the crisis we are facing.”

Marine ecologist Anaëlle Durfort says that putting a carbon price on whales isn’t the solution to protecting them. More transformative changes are needed if we want to ensure that human activity doesn’t further erode the giant animals’ role as carbon pumps, she suggests. (Nature | 5 min read)