Featured
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Correspondence |
Half measures in One Health fail people and the environment
- Andrew Peters
- & Carlos das Neves
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Editorial |
Sustainability at the crossroads
A look back at 2021 through the Sustainable Development Goals.
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Article
| Open AccessOstrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa
By tracing the changing size of ostrich eggshell beads, climate is shown to have an important role in influencing when and where regional African populations interacted.
- Jennifer M. Miller
- & Yiming V. Wang
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Nature Video |
Pluto’s mysterious polygons explained
Surface patterns seen by New Horizons mission are driven by sublimation.
- Shamini Bundell
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Where I Work |
A partridge in hand on the Spanish steppe
As part of his PhD research into the effects of farming and hunting on endangered bird populations in Spain, Xabier Cabodevilla tracked birds and collected faecal samples from roosting sites.
- Jack Leeming
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News & Views |
Gravity, AlphaFold and neural interfaces: a year of remarkable science
Highlights from News & Views published this year.
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News |
The science events to watch for in 2022
Omicron, Moon missions and particle physics are among the themes set to shape research in the coming year.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News |
What Biden’s $2-trillion spending bill could mean for climate change
Research models shed light on how the Build Back Better bill might reshape the US energy landscape.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Article |
Deep-mantle krypton reveals Earth’s early accretion of carbonaceous matter
The krypton isotopic pattern of Earth’s deep mantle indicates that volatile-rich material from the outer Solar System was delivered early in Earth’s accretion history.
- Sandrine Péron
- , Sujoy Mukhopadhyay
- & David W. Graham
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Article |
A large West Antarctic Ice Sheet explains early Neogene sea-level amplitude
Variations in Miocene sea level can be explained by a large marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
- J. W. Marschalek
- , L. Zurli
- & Zhifang Xiong
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Nature Podcast |
Pluto's strange ice patterns explained by new theory
An explanation for giant ice structures on Pluto, and dismantling the mestizo myth in Latin American genetics.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Benjamin Thompson
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Article |
Uncovering global-scale risks from commercial chemicals in air
A new framework is proposed for assessing the risks of the atmospheric transformation products of commercial chemicals, combining laboratory and field experiments, advanced techniques for screening suspect chemicals, and in silico modelling.
- Qifan Liu
- , Li Li
- & John Liggio
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Perspective |
Biogeochemical extremes and compound events in the ocean
High-temperature, high-acidity and low-oxygen extremes may pose a particular threat to marine ecosystems, requiring a major effort to understand them and the ability of marine life to respond to them.
- Nicolas Gruber
- , Philip W. Boyd
- & Meike Vogt
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Article |
Sublimation-driven convection in Sputnik Planitia on Pluto
A modelling study describing the formation of the polygonal surface structures in Sputnik Planitia on Pluto shows that convection driven by ice sublimation can generate planetary-scale surface patterns.
- Adrien Morison
- , Stéphane Labrosse
- & Gaël Choblet
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Article
| Open AccessExperimental evidence for recovery of mercury-contaminated fish populations
In a 15-year whole-ecosystem, single-factor experiment, stopping experimental mercury loading results in rapid decreases in methylmercury contamination of fish populations and almost complete recovery within the timeframe of the study.
- Paul J. Blanchfield
- , John W. M. Rudd
- & Michael T. Tate
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News Feature |
Nature’s 10: ten people who helped shape science in 2021
An Omicron investigator, a Mars explorer and an AI ethics pioneer are some of the people behind the year’s big research stories.
- Ewen Callaway
- , Holly Else
- & Richard Van Noorden
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Book Review |
The loss of the world’s frozen places
Two very different books explore the past, present and future of glaciers.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
The science news that shaped 2021: Nature’s picks
From Omicron to a Mars helicopter to an Alzheimer’s firestorm, our news editors choose the defining moments in science and research this year.
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News |
NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
The Parker Solar Probe has passed through a boundary and into the Sun’s atmosphere, gathering data that will help scientists better understand stars.
- Alexandra Witze
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Where I Work |
Something in the air: gathering dust that’s crossed an ocean
Edmund Blades manages an atmospheric observatory at Ragged Point, Barbados.
- Amber Dance
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Correspondence |
Chile: elect a president to strengthen climate action, not weaken it
- Maisa Rojas
- , Juan Carlos Muñoz
- & Humberto González
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Research Highlight |
Heatwaves afflict even the far north’s icy seas
Arctic waters have notched a growing number of extreme events called marine heatwaves, raising fears for the region’s more heat-sensitive sea creatures.
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News |
COVID evolution and the Webb telescope — the week in infographics
Nature highlights three key infographics from the week in science and research.
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Editorial |
The UN must get on with appointing its new science board
The decision to appoint a board of advisors is welcome — and urgent, given the twin challenges of COVID and climate change.
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News & Views |
Constraints on estimating the CO2 fertilization effect emerge
Plants offset a large fraction of Earth’s carbon dioxide emissions, but estimating the size of this carbon sink relies on differing terrestrial-biosphere models. Combining multiple models with data has now reduced the uncertainty.
- Chris Huntingford
- & Rebecca J. Oliver
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Comment |
Brazil is in water crisis — it needs a drought plan
To avoid crop failures and soaring power costs, Brazil needs to diversify sources, monitor soil moisture, model local hydroclimate dynamics and treat water as a national security priority.
- Augusto Getirana
- , Renata Libonati
- & Marcio Cataldi
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Career Q&A |
An IPCC reviewer shares his thoughts on the climate debate
Saad Amer describes what it was like to work on a report produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — and why he is pushing for change.
- Sarah O’Meara
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News Round-Up |
Metal planet, COVID pact and Hubble telescope time
The latest science news, in brief.
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Article |
RETRACTED ARTICLE: A constraint on historic growth in global photosynthesis due to increasing CO2
An emergent constraint combining biosphere models and carbon budget estimates suggests that the increase in the global terrestrial carbon sink is caused largely by a CO2-induced increase in photosynthesis.
- T. F. Keenan
- , X. Luo
- & S. Zhou
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Comment |
Build solar-energy systems to last — save billions
To withstand extreme weather, rapid innovation and rock-bottom prices, solar installations need tighter quality control, standards and testing.
- Dirk Jordan
- , Teresa Barnes
- & Ingrid Repins
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Technology Feature |
Python power-up: new image tool visualizes complex data
The image viewing and analysis software napari has filled a gap in the programming language’s scientific ecosystem.
- Jeffrey M. Perkel
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Research Highlight |
Famous space family has a surprisingly peaceful history
The seven planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1 were largely spared cosmic collisions, raising questions about where these worlds got their water.
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Research Highlight |
Surging plastic use is fed by coal power — with deadly results
Coal-fired power plants are satisfying the world’s voracious appetite for plastic, but their emissions are causing a wave of disease and deaths.
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News |
This tiny iron-rich world is extraordinarily metal
The discovery of GJ 367b, which orbits its star in about 8 hours, demonstrates astronomers’ prowess at finding extreme planets.
- Alexandra Witze
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Research Highlight |
Shutting ‘super-polluters’ slashes greenhouse gases — and deaths
Early retirement for climate-damaging power plants would also cut emissions of air pollution that endanger human health.
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Matters Arising |
Non-trivial role of internal climate feedback on interglacial temperature evolution
- Xu Zhang
- & Fahu Chen
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: Non-trivial role of internal climate feedback on interglacial temperature evolution
- Samantha Bova
- , Yair Rosenthal
- & Cheng Zeng
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News & Views |
Robotic sample return reveals lunar secrets
A mission to unexplored lunar territory has returned the youngest volcanic samples collected so far. The rocks highlight the need to make revisions to models of the thermal evolution of the Moon.
- Richard W. Carlson
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Editorial |
‘BRICS’ nations are collaborating on science but need a bigger global platform
A policy paper published 20 years ago led to expanded research collaboration between emerging economic powers. But its main recommendation was ignored.
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Nature Podcast |
What’s the best diet for people and the planet?
Designing a nutritious and planet-friendly diet, and an AI that guides mathematicians.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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News & Views |
Earth’s eccentric orbit paced the evolution of marine phytoplankton
Analysis of plankton fossils has revealed pulses of size diversity that are inextricably linked to the degree of circularity of Earth’s orbits. Could this orbital variability provide a beat that dictates the rhythm of evolution?
- Rosalind E. M. Rickaby
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News Feature |
What humanity should eat to stay healthy and save the planet
What we eat needs to be nutritious and sustainable. Researchers are trying to figure out what that looks like around the world.
- Gayathri Vaidyanathan
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Article |
Cyclic evolution of phytoplankton forced by changes in tropical seasonality
.Morphometric analysis of coccolith assemblages spanning the last 2,800,000 years suggests that the evolution of coccolithophores is linked to seasonality changes, paced by Earth’s orbital eccentricity with implications for the carbon cycle.
- Luc Beaufort
- , Clara T. Bolton
- & Martin Tetard
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News |
China’s Mars rover has amassed reams of novel geological data
Data collected by the Tianwen-1 mission and Zhurong Mars rover are offering insights into a previously unexplored region of Mars’s northern hemisphere.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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Career Column |
Women and the environment: power on the ground and in academia
We taught a course that created a dialogue between academia and social movements.
- Nuria Pistón
- , Míriam Starosky
- & Mariana M. Vale
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News Feature |
How record wildfires are harming human health
As fires get bigger and rage for more of the year, scientists are racing to understand the lingering impacts.
- Max Kozlov
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Article |
Mechanical forcing of the North American monsoon by orography
The core North American monsoon arises through topographic steering of the jet stream, and should be considered as convection-enhanced orographic rainfall produced by a mechanically forced stationary wave.
- William R. Boos
- & Salvatore Pascale
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