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The combination of general anaesthesia and neuroimaging holds unique potential for catalysing integrative and translational discovery about human brains and consciousness. By spanning molecular, cognitive and clinical neuroscience, anaesthesia provides a bridge from molecules to mind across species.
Researchers have a wide variety of choices when it comes to careers. Often, post-PhD, we leave academic research for industry. But it is also possible to transition back, when done carefully. In this how-to, I outline how to transition between industry and academic research and vice versa.
We all care about effect sizes. Yet, traditional ways of evaluating them (P< 0.05 and generic benchmarks) are failing us. We propose two paths forward: setting better, contextualized benchmarks or — more radically — letting go of benchmarks altogether. Both paths point to adjusted expectations, more detailed reporting and slow science.
Large language models can generate sophisticated text or code with little input from a user, which has the potential to impoverish our own writing and thinking skills. We need to understand the effect of this technology on our cognition and to decide whether this is what we want.
Given the increasing sophistication of virtual reality systems in providing immersive nature experiences, there is the potential for analogous health benefits to those that arise from real nature experiences. We call for research to better understand the human–nature–technology interaction to overcome potential pitfalls of the technology and design tailored virtual experiences that can deliver health outcomes and wellbeing across society.
Huabing Liu is a counselling psychologist who has worked in universities in the USA and China. She is concerned that students’ worries about mental health stigma stop them from seeking help.
Generative AI tools can quickly translate or summarize large volumes of complex information. This technology could revolutionize the way that we communicate science, but there are many reasons for caution. We asked six experts about the potential and pitfalls of generative AI for science communication.
Effectively engaging with large language models is becoming increasingly vital as they proliferate across research landscapes. This Comment presents a practical guide for understanding their capabilities and limitations, along with strategies for crafting well-structured queries, to extract maximum utility from these artificial intelligence tools.
Being able to deliver a persuasive and informative talk is an essential skill for academics, whether speaking to students, experts, grant funders or the public. Yet formal training on how to structure and deliver an effective talk is rare. In this Comment, we give practical tips to help academics to give great talks to a range of different audiences.
Our understanding of the human past is changing rapidly, and this does not come from new evidence alone. We are seeing an increasing diversity of perspectives among archaeologists, and they are asking new and important questions. But the field still has a long way to go.
Much well-designed and preregistered research is conducted but never published. The reasons for these studies ending up in the ‘file drawer’ are varied. Making this research public would help us all to do better science.
Belonging is an essential part of human identity. But with belonging comes ‘otherness’ — the tendency to label ‘others’ on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, ability or some other dimension. To advance science, we need to recognize how otherness affects research and implement interventions to overcome the biases that it creates.
The importance of reproducible scientific practices is widely acknowledged. However, limited resources and lack of external incentives have hindered their adoption. Here, we explore ways to promote reproducible science in practice.
Political polarization leads to distrust. In universities, this can lead to conflict or silence in classes and hinder learning and engagement. Faculty members and leaders can promote depolarization by encouraging constructive dialogue in and out of class, cultivating viewpoint diversity within boundaries and expanding civic spaces.
Positionality statements describe how researcher identities shape research processes. We must consider how these statements can enact harm upon marginalized researchers.
