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As members of a 400-million-year-old genus, Takakia mosses have retained characteristics of early land plants, such as leaves that don’t have a distinct topside and underside. They also lack modern plants’ ability to ‘breathe’.
Living-fossil moss faces extinction
An ancient moss that saw the dinosaurs come and go is under threat from climate change. The two species in the Takakia genus are thought to be among the oldest living land plants. Researchers who sequenced the DNA of one of the species, T. lepidozioides, discovered that it boasts the largest number of fast-evolving genes in a plant — some of which help it to survive at high altitudes in the Himalayas. Despite this apparent genetic flexibility, populations of the moss on the Tibetan plateau have declined by 1.6% annually over the last decade, faster than other local mosses.
Video: Strangely rolling shapes
An algorithm can design objects that roll along almost any repeating path downhill. The algorithm creates these ‘trajectoids’ by drawing the rolling path across the surface of a sphere. The researchers then tested real-life, 3D-printed versions of the strange shapes. What started out as a fun challenge for the mathematicians could have unexpected applications in quantum physics. Changes in quantum states are often represented as paths across a spherical surface, similar to the way the rolling paths were drawn.
How Brazil’s president is doing on climate
Seven months after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office as Brazil’s president, his performance on environmental protection has received mixed ratings from researchers. Deforestation in the Amazon from last August to last month fell by 7% compared with the same period the year before — but deforestation in the Cerrado savannah has increased by 17% over the past year. One scientist lauded Lula’s swift response to a health crisis among the Yanomami people, caused by illegal gold mining. Critics suggest that Lula needs to take a stronger stance on fossil fuels, bolster personnel in environment agencies and fight internal efforts to delay environmental progress.
Features & opinion
Why we need to move beyond GDP
Continuous economic growth, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), that is good for both people and the planet is one of the ideas behind the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8. However, researchers disagree on whether growth can be green. A Nature editorial urges the two sides to talk to each other. The definition of GDP is currently under revision, and it’s a chance for researchers to work together and improve the index to account for sustainability and well-being.
The roots of racism in maternal health
A perfect storm of factors has led to huge disparities in maternal health care, reports a new podcast co-produced by Nature and Scientific American. ‘Racism in health’ investigates the factors that have contributed to these stark inequalities, exploring the historical links between racism and gynaecology and tracing the systemic erasure of Black midwives in the United States. Maternal mortality in the country is three times higher for non-Hispanic Black people than for white people. People of colour experience higher rates of mistreatment in medical settings, and Black women are more likely to undergo caesarean sections unnecessarily.
The Manhattan Project’s lost women
The movie Oppenheimer glosses over or leaves out the contributions of hundreds of women involved in the project that produced the atomic bomb. The creators of the Lost Women of Science project are now highlighting some of the hidden figures of the Manhattan Project, such as mathematician Naomi Livesay. She performed implosion simulations on the newly installed IBM punched-card machine that proved crucial in finalizing the design of the Trinity bomb. And explosives technician Frances Dunne helped to conduct the early explosives testing — her small fingers fit inside the devices to set the triggers, which her male colleagues couldn’t reach.
