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Reindeer put their brains into sleep mode while they chew their food, cutting their need for deep sleep.Credit: Henry Lo/500px via Getty
Reindeer can chew while they doze
Eurasian tundra reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) put their brains into a sleep-like state during rumination — the process of regurgitating and re-chewing food. The more they ruminated, the less actual sleep the reindeer seemed to need. The ability probably helps to maximize food intake during bountiful Arctic summers, suggests study author and neuroscientist Melanie Furrer.
Reference: Current Biology paper
Psychedelic drug banishes PTSD
Ibogaine, a psychoactive substance made from the bark of the shrub Tabernanthe iboga, could help treat the psychological effects of traumatic brain injury. A study of thirty male US veterans found that the drug decreased symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression by more than 80% on average, one month after treatment. Researchers did not administer the drug — study participants had sought out treatment in Mexico, where the use of ibogaine is not restricted. The study is a “proof of concept” that proper screening and administration can lower the risk of harmful side effects, says clinical psychologist Maria Steenkamp.
Reference: Nature Medicine paper
Harvard president resigns
Political scientist Claudine Gay, the first Black president of Harvard University, resigned on 2 January following controversial testimony in the US Congress over anti-semitism on campus. Gay was subject to mounting allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work, while facing “repugnant and in some cases racist vitriol” from some critics, said Harvard’s primary governing board. University of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill stepped down just days after testifying at the same congressional hearing.
Features & opinion
The double curse of long COVID
Much of the world’s research on long COVID is conducted in wealthy countries, leaving sufferers in poor regions understudied and ignored. Long COVID is a complex condition linked to more than 200 symptoms, including brain fog, chronic fatigue and muscle weakness. A lack of data and recognition is hampering action and treatment in many countries, including Brazil.
What worms tell us about ageing well
In her new book How We Age, geneticist Coleen Murphy gives a lively and personal account of the state of ageing research. Murphy doesn’t provide any silver bullets for remaining youthful, writes reviewer and geneticist Linda Partridge. But she does offer a paean to invertebrate model organisms, such as worms and fruit flies, in which genes that prolong life suggest that ageing is a malleable process.
Podcast: What to expect in 2024
On this week’s podcast, Nature reporter Miryam Naddaf takes us on a whistle-stop tour of some of the developments set to shape research in 2024, including:
• Results from a solar telescope with a 10-metre-long magnet that aims to capture dark-matter particles called axions.
• The second round of neuroscience experiments to test two leading hypotheses about the neural basis of consciousness — after the first round ended in favour of philosophy.
• An opinion from the International Court of Justice on whether nations are legally obliged to combat climate change.
Nature Podcast | 14 min listen
Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify, or use the RSS feed.
Half the world’s mines are undocumented
Scientists Victor Maus and Tim Werner reviewed satellite images of almost 120,000 square kilometres and found that more than half of the mines they spotted were operating off the radar, with no production information listed in the most popular commercial database. Some are illegal, some abandoned and some just aren’t reported. The result is “we know surprisingly little about what’s going on in the sector globally and how mining affects the environment and communities near mines,” they write. They propose four steps “to address the ‘known unknowns’ of the mining sector”.
Sources: Refs 5 & 6; S&P Capital IQ Pro; V. Maus et al. Sci. Data 7, 289 (2020).
Where I work
Yann Lacube is a diving and aquarium project manager at CRIOBE, a centre for research into coral-reefs in Mo‘orea, French Polynesia.Credit: Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty
Some of the corals in this artificial nursery in Mo‘orea, French Polynesia, have turned white. “This bleaching happens when the water temperature rises above normal for a long period,” explains aquariology engineer Yann Lacube. The coral polyps expel the microalgae they rely on for food and eventually starve. Lacube wants to find out whether certain polyps are more resilient to temperature stress. “Finding answers might help us to protect corals, but of course what would really help is an end to pollution and global warming,” he says. (Nature | 3 min read)
