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Close up view of a chambered Nautilus shell cross section under colored light.

The chambers of the nautilus shell can be described by 3D soft cells.Credit: James L. Amos/Getty

Mathematicians discover new class of shape

Good news, tilers: mathematicians have described a new class of shape — soft cells. These shapes have corners that are deformed into thin points with internal angles of zero, which let them tessellate on a 2D plane with no gaps. Soft cells are common in nature, from the inside of onions to mollusc shells, but this new work is the first time they’ve been formally described. “Simply, no one has done this before,” says mathematician Chaim Goodman-Strauss. “It’s really amazing how many basic things there are to consider.”

Nature | 6 min read

Reference: PNAS Nexus paper

Soft tilings: Examples of a new shapes called a soft cells which tessellate on a plane and have curved edges.

Source: Ref. 1

COVID origin at Wuhan market, says study

The hunt for the origins of COVID-19 has circled back to an animal market in Wuhan, China that was linked to many of the earliest cases of the disease. Researchers reanalysed genomes collected from the market shortly after it was shut down on 1 January 2020. They identified several animal species that could have passed SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, to people. The study establishes the presence of animals and the virus at the market, although it does not confirm whether the animals themselves were infected with the virus. The researchers argue that their reanalysis adds weight to the market being the site of the first spillover events, in which animals infected humans.

Nature | 6 min read

Reference: Cell paper

AI shows flair for scientific originality

An artificial intelligence (AI) ideas generator came up with more original research ideas than did 50 scientists, according to a preprint study. The ideas were blind evaluated by reviewers, who scored AI-generated concepts as more exciting, but slightly less feasible, than those from people. Critics say that pitting scientists against an LLM that can generate thousands of ideas in hours isn’t exactly a fair fight. “You have to compare apples to apples,” says computational social scientist Jevin West.

Nature | 5 min read

Reference: arXiv preprint (not peer reviewed)

A scientist’s guide to personal defence

Researchers have united to create a defence playbook for scholars dealing with intimidation and harassment because of their work. The advice, published by the Researcher Support Consortium, starts with steps for individuals such as removing personal information from public sites. But it also makes clear that the onus is on employers to provide support. “It’s universities and the academic institutions that have the primary responsibility to act,” says political scientist and consortium co-founder Rebekah Tromble.

Nature | 5 min read

Should kids take anti-obesity drugs?

As more adults turn to anti-obesity drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, attention is shifting to whether they should be prescribed to children. Some of the drugs, which mimic the effects of the appetite-suppressing hormone GLP-1, are already approved in the United States and Europe to treat obesity in teenagers. Now a trial has shown that they work in children as young as six. But there is concern about whether people must stay on the medications for life to maintain the benefits. And the long-term effects of these drugs on kids’ growing bodies is unknown.

Nature | 6 min read

Reference: The New England Journal of Medicine paper

57 days

Starting 29 September, the period during which the near-Earth object 2024 PT5 will temporarily orbit our planet — giving us, for a short time, two moons. (Reference: Research Notes of the AAS paper)

Three Mile Island nuclear plant to restart

Part of the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the United States will be reopened to power Microsoft data centres. Unit 1, which was closed in 2019, will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Centre. Unit 2, which experienced a partial meltdown in 1979, will remain closed. It’s rare that a nuclear plant is restarted — this is only the second such programme in the United States — but the move could become more common as tech giants seek low-carbon energy sources for power-hungry artificial-intelligence (AI) systems. Microsoft has invested in an AI chatbot trained on nuclear regulations in the hopes of streamlining the multi-year process of getting a new nuclear-power plant approved.

Financial Times | 5 min read & The Wall Street Journal | 6 min read (paywall)

Antimicrobial resistance

How to save millions of lives

Last week, we learnt that more than 39 million people could die from antibiotic-resistant infections by 2050. But it doesn’t have to be that way, argues epidemiologist Ramanan Laxminarayan — if we make sure that people in low- and middle-income countries get the appropriate antibiotics they need. “Even a fairly modest global investment — in the range of hundreds of millions of US dollars — to help prevent bacterial infections and improve access to relatively inexpensive antibiotics could avert millions of deaths,” he writes.

Nature | 5 min read

Reference: The Lancet report

Straightforward solutions to AMR

Better sanitation, improved infection control practices at health-care facilities and increased vaccination are among the solutions proposed by four specialists — from Bangladesh, Brazil, Nigeria and the Middle East — who spoke to Nature ahead of a United Nations meeting on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). For example, microbiologist Iruka Okeke says that access to clean water and toilets in Nigeria could reduce gastric infections and AMR simultaneously, yielding an estimated return of US$5 or more for every $1 spent.

Nature | 10 min read

Where I work

Rebecca Hsu from the Taiwan Forestry Research Insitute climbs a 75m high giant Taiwania she has named 'Great White' due to its pale trunk.

Rebecca Hsu is a forest ecologist based in Taiwan.Credit: Dave Tacon for Nature

Forest ecologist Rebecca Hsu studies vascular epiphytes — plants that live on other plants, but do not parasitically steal their nutrients. Her research is taking her to new heights — in this case, almost 2,000 metres above sea level in the canopy of a giant Taiwania tree. “Some climbers will panic, but when I reach the high tree canopy, I feel good,” she says. “Every tree climb is an adventure. You never know what you’re going to meet in the canopy until you’re there.” (Nature | 3 min read)

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“When we imagine futures, we imagine dystopias. It would be nice to imagine a future where things got better.”

Biologist Chris Sandom, humanities researcher Jo Waldon and artist Daniel Locke wrote and illustrated a 29-page comic, Dark Clouds, Bright Skies, envisioning what they hope a sustainable future could look like, in just 24 hours. (Comic | Leisurely scroll)