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Melt water courses across the Greenland ice sheet, the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere.Credit: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty
Greenland’s ice sheet can be saved
The massive ice sheet covering most of Greenland could experience runaway melting if the average global temperature increases by 2.3 ℃ above pre-industrial levels. But even if temperatures soar past this threshold, a complete meltdown could be prevented if warming is throttled back to 1.5 °C within a few centuries, suggest climate models. This doesn’t mean that humanity should wait to take action against climate change, the researchers say, because the melting ice sheet could still cause devastating sea-level rise. “It gets only harder the longer we wait,” says climate scientist and study co-author Nils Bochow.
How bird flu evolved to be so deadly
The bird flu strain that has killed millions of wild birds globally since 2020 emerged from interactions of an H5N1 avian influenza virus with non-deadly varieties. An analysis of more than 10,000 viral genomes reveals that the virus acquired mutations that allow it to adapt to diverse species and make it extremely deadly. Many bird flu outbreaks begin in poultry, but spillover into wild birds is making the virus difficult to control, says virologist and study co-author Vijaykrishna Dhanasekaran.
Sleeping people can still follow commands
Deep sleep doesn’t cut us off from the outside world as much as scientists had thought. In a study of 49 people, participants who were asked to frown or smile while they slept responded accurately to at least 70% of these prompts. Rates were even higher during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when we’re most deeply asleep but the brain remains quite active.
Reference: Nature Neuroscience paper
NIH hearing highlights politicization
Cancer surgeon Monica Bertagnolli, US President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was in the hot seat as she answered questions posed by a Senate committee yesterday. “The NIH became a lightning rod for partisan debates during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that eroded trust between the NIH and the public,” senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) said to Bertagnolli at the hearing. “You will be tasked to rebuild the relationship with Congress.”
Features & opinion
The unsung scientists behind quantum dots
What is it like to be part of a piece of scientific history? The scientists who worked alongside this year’s chemistry Nobel prizewinners — Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov — reminisce about the early days of quantum-dot research. “It was very different than anything else that was happening in the [chemistry] department,” says Manoj Nirmal about his motivation for joining Bawendi’s laboratory. Alexander Efros, who collaborated with Ekimov in the Soviet Union, recalls that a KGB officer came to question him about Brus’s work: “[Ekimov and I celebrated] because we learnt that somebody else in the world is working on nanocrystals.”
Tips for making complex methods accessible
Published papers often don’t contain enough detail to replicate the results – particularly if the study uses new wet-lab methods. Online protocols can make complex techniques understandable, says neuroscientist Lars Borm. He recommends that scientists deposit their protocols on platforms such as Nature Protocol Exchange, Cell Press’s STAR Protocols, PLOS Lab Protocols and Bio-protocol, Protocols.io or OpenWetWare.org; include pictures or video to document key steps; and communicate common pitfalls and describe even the ‘obvious’ parts.
When your hands forget how to play
“The morning after performing the concert of my life, I could no longer play the flute,” writes physician Lynn Hallarman, a skilled musician who experienced the shocking onset of dystonia. She could type, play piano — and even “air-play an invisible flute with virtuosity” — but with an instrument in her hands, her fingers “curled into a claw, stuck in spasm”. Two years on, she describes the medical labyrinth she had to navigate on her journey to find a cure — or even a reason — for the condition.
