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How to build Moon roads
A beam of concentrated sunlight could melt lunar dust into paving slabs for use in building roads on the Moon. In a laboratory experiment, scientists melted a substance resembling Moon dust with a laser that gives out the same amount of power as an imagined ‘sunlight concentrator’. Roads could provide areas for spacecraft to land or move around without churning up fine Moon dust, which can damage instruments.
Reference: Scientific Reports paper
Largest map of the human brain
More than 3,000 cell types — many of them new to science — have been revealed in the largest-ever atlas of human neurons and other brain cells. One team that contributed to the huge project, which involved hundreds of scientists, sequenced the RNA of more than three million cells. Another uncovered links between certain types of brain cell and neuropsychiatric disorders. “This is only the beginning,” says molecular biologist Bing Ren.
Reference: 21 papers in Science, Science Advances and Science Translational Medicine
First glimpse inside burnt Roman scrolls
A 21-year-old undergraduate student has cracked a method for reading charred, unopenable scrolls from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum. Luke Farritor trained a machine-learning algorithm on fragments of unrolled scrolls, detecting spots where the ink causes a tiny difference in texture. He then analysed closed scrolls that had been penetrated using X-ray computed tomography scans. The breakthrough could unlock the contents of hundreds of never-before-seen writings that were buried by Mount Vesuvius in October AD 79.
Features & opinion
AI drug discovery needs a reality check
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) can radically shorten the time it takes for a potential new drug to reach clinical trials — or so pharmaceutical companies say. “The findings need to be published in the peer-reviewed literature and authenticated by researchers unaffiliated with the companies involved,” argues a Nature editorial. In particular, this means finding a way to share the results pharmaceutical companies tend to keep secret.
Futures: Taking time
A time traveller makes a cameo at a science-fiction writers’ get-together in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.
Five best science books this week
Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes an exploration of imagination’s role in science, a “mosaic biography” of Albert Einstein and an important, if depressing, analysis of the world’s return to economic nationalism.
Podcast: Pig organs for monkeys
Kidneys from genetically engineered miniature pigs have been transplanted into monkeys, in one case keeping an animal alive for more than two years. The gene edits helped to prevent the monkeys’ immune systems from attacking the organs, although the animals still had to be treated with immunosuppressive drugs. One day, such xenotransplants could overcome the severe shortage of human organs available for transplantation. “A lot of the researchers I talked to are itching to start human trials,” reporter Max Kozlov tells the Nature Podcast.
Nature Podcast | 21 min listen
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