Volume 631 Issue 8019, 4 July 2024

As science becomes more globalized, researchers must safeguard sensitive data from inadvertent legal breaches.

Thousands of people are being displaced across the Arctic. Governments must listen to Indigenous and local communities and act on their advice.

Anchors inspired by skin ligaments connect cell-based composite to robotic visage.

Monthly cash transfers reduce risk of poverty — and higher amounts do not lead to higher spending on tobacco or alcohol.

A molecule increases levels of a protein that maintains telomeres, the caps on the ends of chromosomes.

Tiny predators called comb jellies have cell-membrane lipids that form curving structures under pressure.

Scientists are eager to work on Chang’e-6 rock samples, which touched down in the Chinese autonomous region Inner Mongolia today.

Visa rules, funding and evolving net-zero targets are among scientists’ concerns as UK citizens prepare to vote next week.

Chimeric brain ‘organoids’ promise to help reveal individual variation in brain development and in drug responses.

Project covering one-fifth of the country’s population is one of the largest-ever efforts to share results on genetic health risks with research participants.

The ultra-high-energy neutrino was spotted by deep-sea detectors and could point to a massive cosmic event.

Observatories, experiments and techniques are being developed to spot ripples in space-time at frequencies that currently can’t be detected.

Scientists interested in the brain have tended to avoid studying religion or spirituality for fear of being seen as unscientific. That needs to change.

How do you get your creative juices flowing after spending hours, days or months looking at a blank screen? Researchers share their advice.

Our first global survey of research group leaders and other hiring managers seeks to capture recruitment highs and lows in the current climate.

Loss functions measure algorithmic errors in artificial-intelligence models, but there’s more than one way to do that. Here’s why the right function is so important.

N. M. Ganesh Babu collects, studies and propagates his country’s Indigenous flora for their herbal and aesthetic qualities.

Scientists have long sought to explain how fish can sense the direction of sound, given the challenges that hearing underwater poses. An experimental study testing a variety of models now provides some answers.

Reactions have been discovered that selectively transform nitrogen-containing rings, called pyrimidines, into various other ring systems — enabling rapid preparation of compound libraries for pharmaceutical research.

Models of the human brain’s cortex have been made by combining cells from up to five donors. This approach could enable genetic background to be accounted for in studies of brain development and disease.

Controlled infection with SARS-CoV-2 of people who hadn’t previously been exposed to the virus reveals how molecular and cellular signatures of the immune response portend effective defence against COVID-19.

The mention of a ‘scotoscope’ in Samuel Pepys’s diary is a subject of scrutiny, and Americans satiate British oyster lovers, in the weekly dip into Nature’s archive.

A record spanning two millennia of Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures has revealed the extent to which 2023 was anomalously hot. The finding is a striking confirmation of warming since the pre-industrial period.

This Review considers developments in enzymes, biosynthetic pathways and cellular engineering that enable their use in catalysis for new chemistry and beyond.

Analysis of data from Gaia Data Release 3 and other large spectroscopic surveys shows that nearly 60% of high-quality young clusters within 1 kpc of the Sun originated from just three distinct star-forming complexes.

Unusual electronic states derived from topological helix chains were observed that support the emergent bound states in elemental tellurium.

The charge-density-wave state in RbV₃Sb₅ can be optically manipulated by applying linearly polarized light along high-symmetry directions, which demonstrates the potential of light as a control knob to manipulate complex quantum phenomena in correlated materials.

The spontaneous formation of magnesium-intercalated gallium nitride superlattices by the interstitial intercalation of two-dimensional magnesium results in considerable compressive strain perpendicular to the layers, leading to enhanced hole transport.

Red-emitting perovskite LEDs were fabricated by stabilizing their octahedral structure with a ligand to yield devices with enhanced efficiency, spectral stability and lifetime.

A Ni^(I) metalloradical catalyst enables reversible cis/trans-isomerization of vinylcyclopropanes under chiral inversion.

We present a synthetic method that transforms complex pyrimidine-containing structures into iminoenamines and then uses de novo heterocycle synthesis to obtain substituted pyrimidine and 1,2-azole analogues.

Observations and a reconstruction of the June–August surface air temperatures show that 2023 was the warmest summer over the past 2,000 years exceeding the 95% confidence range of natural climate variability by more than 0.5 °Cs.

Molecular-level experiments are described to develop a detailed assessment of 11 new particle formation mechanisms in a global climate model and, in comparison with simulations and observations, the dominant mechanisms worldwide are mapped.

Analysis of some of the main fault zones in California shows that the presence of complex earthquake fault-network geometries results in geometric locking that promotes stick-slip behaviour, whereas simpler geometries lead to smooth fault creep.

Drought response is structured by water-table depth in higher-fertility Southern Amazonia, whereas lower-fertility Northern Amazonia supports more-drought-resilient forests independent of water-table depth.

A study demonstrates that the fish Danionella cerebrum is able to discriminate the direction of sound by comparing the relative phase of pressure and particle motion.

Genomic analysis of Plasmodium DNA from 36 ancient individuals provides insight into the global distribution and spread of malaria-causing species during around 5,500 years of human history.

A large-scale meta-analysis across eight biobank datasets identifies common genetic variants associated with mosaic loss of the X chromosome in female participants.

An analysis in 3D multidonor Chimeroids—a scalable multidonor human brain organoid model—shows that human genetic background may be an important mediator of neurotoxin susceptibility.

The Tabulae Paralytica, a compilation of four molecular atlases of spinal cord injury, provides a window into the pathobiology of spinal cord injury, establishing a framework for integrating multimodal, genome-scale measurements in four dimensions to study biology and medicine.

Zinc acts as a second messenger in root nodules and regulates nitrogen homeostasis by controlling the transition between the active state and the inactive filamentous state of the novel transcriptional regulator FIXATION UNDER NITRATE (FUN).

A new strategy that involves signalling-molecule-driven differentiation can induce epigenetic reprogramming of human pluripotent stem cell-derived primordial germ cell-like cells to pro-spermatogonia and oogonia-like cells with massive propagation and high efficiency.

Contrary to expectations, offers of free transportation to vaccine sites did not increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake more than text message reminders, a finding that has implications for future policy decision-making to promote vaccination.

A human SARS-CoV-2 challenge study in individuals without previous exposure to the virus or vaccines provides detailed profiles of local and systemic epithelial and immune cell response dynamics over time and infection status.

A screen of a human gut microbiome metagenomic library reveals a cluster of enzymes with an unconventional mechanism and an extremely broad substrate scope.

Defining the composition of the secretome of pyroptotic macrophages reveals the involvement of the component factors in wound healing.

Nascent transcription in genes and enhancers genome-wide at the single-cell level is quantified using global run-on and sequencing (GRO–seq) with click chemistry.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the prime editor bound to a prime editing guide RNA and target DNA, in the pre-initiation, initiation and elongation and termination states, provide insights into the mechanism by which prime editing occurs.

Mammalian respiratory supercomplexes are imaged in their native membrane environment by in situ cryo-electron microscopy, providing insight into their reactive intermediates and conformational dynamics.