Volume 620 Issue 7975, 24 August 2023

The world is consuming more efficiently, but still using more stuff. More-concerted efforts to change both consumer and producer behaviour are needed.

The current global mishmash of rules on whether innovations made using artificial intelligence are patentable impedes AI-rich fields such as drug discovery.

Laser-based system penetrates the deep forest covering the site of a key battle in the Second World War.

The right configuration of pacers could lead to the fastest marathon ever run.

The number and DNA content of power-producing organelles in the brain account for part of the behavioural variation among mice.

An analysis of almost 10,000 species identifies the life-history traits that explain why some birds flaunt a rainbow of ornamental colours.

The planet has warmed 1.2 ºC on average, but that’s enough to produce big extremes.

Efforts to replicate the material have pieced together the puzzle of why it displayed superconducting-like behaviours.

Given that global efforts to eradicate the poliovirus were recently described as unsuccessful, how are Afghanistan and Pakistan now on the verge of eliminating it?

Wildfires are not new to Hawaii but they are becoming increasingly devastating. More traditional land use and better data dissemination could help to prevent future tragedies.

A platelet factor joins the list of blood components that might have anti-ageing effects.

Lead attorney Julia Olson lays out what’s needed for future victories.

Climate change, deforestation and other human threats are driving therainforest towards a tipping point of sustainability. Researchers are racingto chart the Amazon’s future.

The Human Brain Project wraps up in September after a decade. Nature examines its achievements and its troubled past.

Now lying forgotten in many a drawer, the modern computer’s handheld predecessors heralded an era of effortless calculation — an innovation 42,000 years in the making.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Researchers and policymakers often exist in different worlds and speak different languages. Here are three ways to bridge the divide.

In a scientific culture that eschews admitting failure, some researchers are staring it in the face — and finding success.

Seventeen-year-old Zahra Ronizi jump-starts her dream of becoming an astronaut and going to Mars by joining a simulated mission in a Spanish cave as a crew biologist.

A careful analysis of satellite images has revealed marked changes in the suspended-sediment concentrations of many rivers around the world. The study links these changes directly to river mining activities in the affected areas.

As the resources required by artificial intelligence increase unsustainably, an analog design provides an energy-efficient alternative to digital computer chips — and one that is ideally suited to neural-network computations.

A genetic analysis provides the most-detailed glimpse yet of how genetic variants in nuclear DNA regulate the copy number and variability of DNA housed in organelles called mitochondria.

A newly discovered fossil of an extinct whale from Peru indicates that the animal’s skeleton was unexpectedly enormous. This finding challenges our understanding of body-size evolution.

Understanding the diverse ways in which the natural world provides value aids informed policy decisions. The generation of a detailed catalogue of this diversity, and ways to assess values, paves the way to a more sustainable future.

This Review provides a perspective on the development of non-cancer therapies based on human genetics studies and suggests measures that can be taken to streamline the pipeline from initial genetic discovery to approved therapy.

The detection of thermal emission from the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c using the Mid-Infrared Instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope reveals a dayside brightness temperature that disfavours a thick, CO₂-rich atmosphere.

Transport measurements of dual-gated devices constructed by slightly rotating a monolayer graphene sheet atop a thin bulk graphite crystal are performed, showing that moiré potential transforms the electronic properties of an entire graphitic thin film.

The electronic states in three-dimensional crystals such as graphite can be tuned by a superlattice potential occurring at the interface with crystallographically aligned hexagonal boron nitride.

A moiré quasicrystal constructed by twisting three layers of graphene with two different twist angles shows high tunability between a periodic-like regime at low energies and a strongly quasiperiodic regime at higher energies alongside strong interactions and superconductivity.

A low-power chip that runs AI models using analog rather than digital computation shows comparable accuracy on speech-recognition tasks but is more than 14 times as energy efficient.

Many aspects of materials chemistry rely on singlet–triplet spin conversion, but spin–vibronic effects are shown to accelerate the process when vibronic coupling causes the quantum-mechanical mixing of spin states.

A study using high-resolution scanning electrochemical cell microscopy attributes proton permeation through defect-free graphene and hexagonal boron nitride to transport across areas of the structure that are under strain.

The assembly and analysis of a 37-year satellite database covering almost 400 mining districts in 49 countries shows that a rise in river mineral mining has substantially increased riverine sediment load in tropical rivers worldwide.

Bridgmanite-enriched rocks in the deep lower mantle of Earth have a larger grain size and higher viscosity than those of the overlying pyrolitic rocks, which explain the mid-mantle viscosity jump.

Distributed acoustic sensing technology is utilized to image four high-frequency rupture subevents of the 2021 Antelope Valley, California, earthquake; the results indicate that the subevents are due to the breaking of fault asperities.

Protected areas across mega-diverse Southeast Asia are associated with elevated vertebrate biodiversity inside their boundaries and in surrounding areas.

Following a wide-ranging review of studies, reports and policies about nature’s multiple values, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation of nature, address barriers to uptake in decision-making, and make transformative changes towards more just and sustainable futures.

Perucetus colossus, a basilosaurid whale from the middle Eocene epoch of Peru with an extremely pachyosteosclerotic postcranium, is estimated to have a greater skeletal mass than any known mammal or aquatic vertebrate.

Around 1% of the A subgenome of modern bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) originates from einkorn (Triticum monococcum), the first domesticated wheat species.

We quantify mitochondrial DNA copy number and heteroplasmy levels and study their association with nuclear genetic loci in population-scale biobanks.

Surveys conducted in 15 European countries in 2016 and 2022 show stable attitudes towards asylum seekers and refugees with different attributes over this period with a slight increase in support for asylum seekers in general.

The availability of translated consent documents improves recruitment of patients with limited English proficiency to clinical trials, indicating a potentially modifiable barrier to the inclusion of patients with limited English proficiency.

A new reprogramming strategy used to produce human induced pluripotent stem cells from somatic cells results in epigenetic and functional profiles that are highly similar to those of human embryonic stem cells.

The well-characterized HIV restriction factor TRIM5α also restricts orthopoxviruses and is countered by the viral protein C6 and the proviral activity of CypA, which in turn is antagonized by CsA and derivatives alisporivir and NIM811.

Lactate produced by dendritic cells (DCs) suppresses T-cell-mediated autoimmunity through a mechanism in which lactate activates HIF-1α–NDUFA4L2 signalling in DCs and thereby limits DC-mediated pro-inflammatory responses such as the development of encephalitogenic T cells.

This study highlights the role of mitochondrial complex I-dependent NAD⁺ regeneration in directing lung epithelial cell fate during postnatal alveolar development by preventing pathological integrated stress response induction.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures and mass spectrometry analyses show that TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43) forms amyloid filaments with a distinct fold in type A frontotemporal lobar degeneration with TDP-43 pathology (FTLD-TDP) compared with TDP-43 filaments in type B FTLD-TDP and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Structures of the glucagon receptor bound to β-arrestin 1 are reported, providing further information about the arrestin-mediated modulation of G protein-coupled receptors.