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Neanderthals (reconstruction, right, and fossil) and Homo sapiens started to have children together some 47,000 years ago.Credit: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty
Neanderthals & humans: a brief affair
Mixing between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lasted less than 7,000 years — a remarkably short time considering that almost every living individual not of African ancestry carries a substantial amount of Neanderthal DNA. Researchers compared the genomes of individuals who lived between 2,200 and 45,000 years ago with those of modern people and found that the genetic intermingling started around 47,000 years ago. It ended around the time when Neanderthals went extinct.
Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
Ozempic shows benefits for kidney disease
Semaglutide — sold as diabetes drug Ozempic and as obesity drug Wegovy — significantly reduces the risk of kidney failure and death for people with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. In a clinical trial with more than 3,500 people, those taking the drug were 24% less likely to have ‘major kidney disease events’, such as kidney failure, than were those who got a placebo. Participants who received semaglutide were also 29% less likely to die from major cardiovascular events including heart attacks and 20% less likely to die from any cause during the trial period. “These patients benefit broadly,” says nephrologist Katherine Tuttle, who co-ran the trial.
Reference: The New England Journal of Medicine paper
Severe hurricanes forecast for Atlantic
This year could see double the usual number of extreme hurricanes in the North Atlantic. This is partly because ocean temperatures are much warmer than usual and because this year will see a switch from the Pacific Ocean warming pattern El Niño to its opposite, La Niña. This year’s Atlantic hurricane season could rival previous annual record holders — 2005 and 2020 — each of which saw seven major hurricanes (category 3 and above). “All the ingredients are in place” for an intense hurricane season, says Ken Graham, director of the US National Weather Service.
Features & opinion
‘Like living on another planet’
“The astronauts in the International Space Station are closer to other people than we are, any time they fly over a city,” says glaciologist Gabriele Carugati, who works at a research outpost in Antarctica. Scientists working in remote places face isolation in various forms: the physical distance from friends, family and the rest of the research community, and sometimes a systemic lack of resources. “The biggest ‘distance’ between myself and other genomics researchers is funding,” says Lamech Mwapagha, a geneticist in Namibia. Still, research off the beaten track can feel like “being a young person in love”, says conservationist Gérard Rocamora about his work to protect Seychelles’ native wildlife.
Engineering requires social responsibility
A molasses tsunami and car passengers decapitated by airbags are just two examples of how rapid deployment of emerging technology can lead to disaster. In his book Wicked Problems, biomedical engineer and US policy adviser Guru Madhavan argues that engineering can create problems that policy cannot fix. “Wicked Problems is a wake-up call for all engineers to expand their mindset,” says reviewer and engineer Susan Krumdieck. Risks are impossible to eliminate, but they can be diminished through ‘mindful’ workplace cultures and processes, she explains.
Parents shouldn’t pay the price of travel
The current ‘support’ system for researchers with childcare responsibilities to attend conferences is not sustainable — nor is it effective, write three scientist mothers. Many funders acknowledge that parents face inequitable hurdles to travel to career-crucial events, “but in reality, we still rely on the employing research organization to dictate what exactly can be claimed as an expense”, the trio says. They argue that family-conscious grants should be available for all early-career scientists, not just permanent faculty members. And funders need to consider that personal circumstances differ — and can change.
Where I work
Basran Burhan is a PhD student at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.Credit: Ulet Ifansasti for Nature
“The piece of ochre in my hands in this picture was once held by some of the earliest artists in human history,” explains archaeologist Basran Burhan. “After I cleaned the dirt from its surface, I could see scratch marks where the artists had scraped off powder to create their cave wall art.” Burhan was part of a team examining 43,900-year-old hunting scenes drawn on the walls of a cave in Indonesia — the earliest piece of figurative artwork yet discovered. (Nature | 3 min read)
