Volume 620 Issue 7974, 17 August 2023

Those urging world leaders to take action on inequality should study why earlier efforts did not translate to changes in policy.

Training from institutions on publishing norms could help to thwart predatory publishers.

An organic material makes a solid electrolyte in lithium-ion batteries.

Supplementing human expertise with an automated program means catching more cancers.

Fossils suggests that a dog-sized swimmer sifted prey with plates similar to baleen, in an example of convergent evolution.

Tree-cutting driven by the switch to farming is linked with warmer summers in southern Europe.

Precision test of particle’s magnetism confirms earlier shocking findings — but theory might not need a rethink after all.

Deforestation has dropped, but researchers who spoke to Nature say that he needs to take a stronger stance on fossil fuels.

ProMED staff members look for rescue options, after going on strike and calling for new leadership and financing.

The Luna 25 spacecraft will attempt to land at the lunar south pole for the first time in a hunt for valuable water ice.

The lack of legal protections for large coastal animals is leaving them — and their ecosystems — at risk, researchers say.

Local management of runoff and fishing intensity bolsters reef health but is no match for climate-induced heatwaves.

Clinical-trial data suggest that semaglutide, sold under the name Wegovy, slashes risk of heart attacks and other cardiovascular incidents.

A Nature survey reveals scientists’ reasons for leaving the social-media platform now known as X, and what they are doing to build and maintain a sense of community.

Mathematics has a reputation of being all about cold, calculating logic — but that couldn’t be further from the truth, says Eugenia Cheng.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Mathematician and programmer who transcended barriers of race and gender.

Africa is disproportionately exposed to catastrophic climate, hydrological and meteorological risks. Well-funded weather monitoring, nowcasting and early-warning systems must become a priority.

Landing that first job in industry requires planning, homework and networking — and a bit of soul-searching.

By combining single-cell sequencing with methods to map the spatial location of gene expression, scientists are unravelling the extraordinary cellular diversity of the brain.

Ecologist Elena Tamburini hopes to show that shellfish farming efficiently absorbs carbon.

How has river quality in Europe changed over time? A detailed analysis of invertebrate data provides a picture of biological recovery from past problems, but also points to remaining challenges.

X-ray and optical imaging have revealed the intricate process through which droplets freeze during the formation of rain. The results could help to explain how clouds are able to produce enough ice particles to make rain.

It has long been thought that the fly Drosophila melanogaster can detect Earth’s magnetic field and offers an ideal system in which to examine this enigmatic sense. However, a rigorous replication of key studies fails to support this idea.

Humans can be picky eaters. One such behaviour is an aversion to food associated with food allergy. The immunological basis for this response has been uncovered in mice, revealing the role of neuroimmune connections.

Glaciers should be prioritized in conservation agendas — and soon. Analysis suggests that glaciers could lose around half their area by the century’s end, with uncertain consequences for postglacial ecosystems.

The challenges and opportunities for the design of field-effect transistors are discussed and a vision of future transistors and potential innovation opportunities is provided.

 Observations with the sensitive mid-infrared spectrometer MIRI on board JWST reveal the presence of a water vapour reservoir in the terrestrial plant-forming zone of the young planetary system PDS 70.

Equilibrium-like state variables, related by an equation of state, are identified in a study of turbulent cascade of matter waves in a far-from-equilibrium ultracold atomic Bose gas.

High-resolution scanning tunnelling microscopy is used to observe the quantum textures of the many-body wavefunctions of the correlated insulating, pseudogap and superconducting phases in magic-angle graphene.

In the layered magnetic semiconductor CrSBr, emergent light–matter hybrids (polaritons) increase the spectral bandwidth of correlations between the magnetic, electronic and optical properties, enabling largely tunable optical responses to applied magnetic fields and magnons.

We report organic molecules showing both efficient luminescence and near-unity generation yield of excited states with high spin multiplicity, simultaneously supporting a high efficiency of initialization, spin manipulations and light-based readout at room temperature.

A dimethylacridine-based molecular doping process is used to construct a well-matched p-perovskite/indium tin oxide contact, along with all-round passivation of grain boundaries, achieving a certified power conversion efficiency of 25.39%.

We report that fatigue cracks in pure metals can undergo intrinsic self-healing; they were observed to heal by crack flank cold welding induced by local stress state and grain boundary migration.

Optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction are used to study the freezing of water droplets in vacuum, leading to the development of a seven-stage model of freezing and the mapping of ice structures and crystal order.

By 2100, the decline of all glaciers outside the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will produce new terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems, posing both challenges and opportunities for conservation.

We create a three-dimensional model of inner core fine-scale heterogeneity, showing that inner core scattering is ubiquitous and that it substantially increases in strength 500–800 km beneath the inner core boundary.

New experiments show that most carbonates in carbonate-rich crustal rocks survive devolatilization and hydrous melting in cold and warm subduction zones, demonstrating their role in driving the deep carbon and chlorine cycles since the Mesoproterozoic.

Improvements in European freshwater biodiversity occurred mainly before 2010 but have since plateaued, and communities downstream of dams, urban areas and cropland were less likely to experience recovery.

A well-preserved partial skeleton (Upper Triassic, Brazil) of the new lagerpetid Venetoraptor gassenae gen. et sp. nov. offers a more comprehensive look into the skull and ecology of dinosaur and pterosaur precursors.

Following testing of magnetic field effects on 97,658 flies moving in a two-arm maze and on 10,960 flies performing spontaneous escape behaviour (negative geotaxis), no evidence was found for magnetically sensitive behaviour in Drosophila.

The burial community at Gurgy ‘les Noisats’ (France) was genetically connected by two main pedigrees, spanning seven generations, that were patrilocal and patrilineal, with evidence for female exogamy and exchange with genetically close neighbouring groups.

By using phylogenetic analyses of multiple microdissected samples from both cancer and non-cancer lesions, unique evolutionary histories of breast cancers harbouring a common driver alteration are shown, providing new insight into how breast cancer evolves.

Experiments in zebrafish and human tissues show that, during retinal morphogenesis, emerging photoreceptor cells migrate in a bidirectional manner, which lessens competition for space and helps to ensure that the retina is formed correctly.

 Prophage lysogeny-to-lysis transitions are controlled by regulatory modules consisting of transcription factors and partner small proteins that are activated through DNA-damage-independent pathways, including by quorum sensing, and these modules determine inter-prophage competition outcomes.

Mast cells are shown to function as sensor cells linking antigen recognition in type 2 immunity to antigen-specific avoidance behaviour, preventing immune activation and inflammation.

A study using mouse models of food allergy shows that allergic sensitization drives antigen-specific avoidance behaviour mediated by immunoglobulin E antibodies and mast cells.

Anti-cancer treatment often results in a subset of the clonal cell population developing resistance to therapy, with resistant cells displaying a diversity of fate types resulting from the intrinsic variability among the clonal population before treatment.

Fanzor is shown to be an RNA-guided DNA endonuclease, demonstrating that such endonucleases are found in all domains of life and indicating a potential new tool for genome engineering applications.

Structural and biochemical studies of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Rpd3 small complex in free and H3K36me3 nucleosome-bound states reveal multiple nucleosome-binding modes and provide insights into mechanisms underlying epigenetic regulation by histone modification.

Structural studies on the complex containing G-protein-coupled receptor kinase 2 (GRK2), neurotensin receptor 1 (NTSR1), Gα_q and the arrestin-biased ligand SBI-553 provide insights into these interactions and a foundation for the design of arrestin-biased ligands for G-protein-coupled receptors.