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Penguins live on thousands of microsleeps
Briefing penguin-puzzle star Leif Penguinson believes in getting a solid 8 hours a night — but chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarcticus) prefer a little nap. They sleep more than 10,000 times a day for an average of 4 seconds at a time. Researchers wanting to understand penguin sleep observed 14 birds over 10 days, and found that the most they ever slept for was a 34-second snooze — though the microsleeps add up to more than 11 hours of daily rest.
Local teams make more breakthroughs
In-person teams do more ‘disruptive’ science than remote groups, suggests an analysis of 20 million papers and 4 million patents published over six decades. It’s not clear why this is, given that remote collaborators can benefit from greater collective knowledge. “It probably has to do something with the intensity,” says economist and study co-author Carl Frey. “And the fact that, when something is tacit and when an idea isn’t quite crisp yet, it’s actually quite hard to communicate.”
Features & opinion
How to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic
“We now have the tools and knowledge to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic as a threat to public health — and to do so by 2030,” write John Nkengasong, Mike Reid, Ingrid Katz at the US AIDS-relief programme PEPFAR. The goal: to reach the ‘95-95-95’ targets of at least 95% of people living with HIV knowing their status; at least 95% of those people being on life-saving antiretroviral therapy; and at least 95% of those people having an undetectable viral load. To get there, argue the authors, will require the use of behavioural-science approaches to reach populations that are most in need.
Futures: Stuck in the middle
A person rethinks the wisdom of investing in a robot body in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.
Five best science books this week
Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes the first systematic study of all graphical symbol systems and the surprisingly meaningful answers to ten simple questions.