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Male bottlenose dolphins can form lifelong partnerships with other males, and can spend hours chasing each other. Credit: Kirsty Nadine/Getty
Dolphin attacks might be play gone wrong
A rise in dolphin attacks at beaches in Fukui Prefecture, Japan could be down to just one male Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) — who might be trying to play. “Gentle biting is a behaviour that we see often among male bottlenose dolphins in the wild,” says dolphin ecologist Tadamichi Morisaka. “They do this to maintain the relationship — in this dolphin’s mind, he might have already built a friendly relationship with humans.” Local authorities have tried to dissuade dolphins by playing a mishmash of disconcerting underwater sounds near the beaches, but Morisaka would like to see an echolocation-detection system that warns people to get out of the water so that the dolphin gets bored and doesn’t return.
The big questions about mpox
When the World Health Organization declared a public-health emergency over mpox earlier this month, it was because a concerning form of the virus that causes the disease had spread to multiple African countries where it had never been seen before. Now two non-African countries — Sweden and Thailand — have detected cases of the disease in returning travellers. Clade Ib seems to spread largely through human contact, including through sex — a new development in a virus that parts of Africa have grappled with for decades. Nature spoke to researchers about how clade Ib compares to clade II, the version that triggered an international 2022 outbreak, and what the future might hold.
Retracted studies refuse to die
Do you know how many of the references you’ve cited might now be retracted, or come from discredited researchers? A Nature analysis of data from a tool created by computer scientist Guillaume Cabanac shows that, in the most extreme cases identified, the proportion of retracted references is a staggering 65%. “We are not accusing anybody of doing something wrong. We are just observing that in some bibliographies, the references have been retracted or withdrawn, meaning that the paper may be unreliable,” Cabanac says. His ‘Feet of Clay Detector’ is one of several efforts, including those led by Retraction Watch, to clean up the scientific record.
“Regardless of how erroneous results found their way into a published paper, it is important that they are not propagated,” writes Cabanac in an accompanying opinion piece. He calls on journals to update the ways they check papers for problems and to speed up the glacial pace of investigations, corrections and retractions.
Nature News | 10 min read & Nature Comment | 10 min read
Features & opinion
Cutting-edge ways to keep cities cool
There are plenty of low-tech cooling features that can help protect people in rising temperatures, but there are also breakthrough innovations on the horizon. Advances range from high-efficiency air conditioners to special materials that keep surfaces colder than their surroundings without using electricity. Key will be deciding which potential solutions work well in the real world — and how to best motivate cities to use them.
Read more: Low-tech cooling features to keep cities safe (Nature | 8 min read)
China’s race to be first in fusion
Efforts towards building the world’s first viable fusion reactor are escalating in China, with the goal of providing limitless, clean energy for an increasingly energy-intensive country. “We need innovations that reduce carbon — that’s our dream. Nuclear fusion energy can do this,” says plasma physicist Yuntao Song. China aims to have a functioning prototype in the 2030s, when the high-profile International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France will still be running tests.
Take the plunge into local civic engagement
Researchers and engineers have the skills, and often the desire, to get involved with local policymaking efforts — but often don’t know where to start, notes physicist Arti Garg, who founded a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing local civic engagement. “My advice is to ‘show up’ and participate actively,” she writes. Attend local government meetings that are open to the public, seek volunteer opportunities that fit your availability and consider how your participation meshes with the values of scientific objectivity, she advises.
Infographic of the week
The placebo effect — in which the mere expectation of a biological effect can produce that effect — is one of the most effective medical interventions, but we still know little about how it happens. To find out, researchers set up an apparatus with two visually distinct chambers — one warm (30 °C) and one uncomfortably hot (48 °C). After three days, both chambers were heated to 48 °C. Conditioned mice spent more time in the chamber that was previously at 30 °C and showed fewer signs of being in pain than did mice that were not conditioned. By tracing the neural circuits that are active when mice anticipate pain relief, neuroscientists show that the placebo effect is mediated by the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) in the brain’s limbic system, a system well established to be involved in pain. Unexpectedly, however, these neurons send signals to the pontine nuclei (Pn) of the brainstem and the cerebellum. This is a big surprise, given that these regions are usually associated with more-basic functions, such as coordinating movement.
(Nature News & Views | 7 min read or read the accompanying Nature News story, 5 min read — both Nature paywall)
Reference: Nature paper
