Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Scientific conferences are usually staid affairs. Presenters share their latest findings to polite, short-lived applause. But a talk can leave a lasting mark — a new disease treatment, a challenge to accepted paradigms, or the dawn of a new field. Nature spoke to four scientists about conference presentations that changed their careers.
Some fat cells convert energy into heat, so targeting them to induce weight loss is appealing. The discovery that a subset of the cells burns glucose, rather than both glucose and lipids, could improve our ability to do just that.
Many long-term diseases of the liver lead to scarring, or fibrosis, that restricts the organ’s functions. Evidence that fibrosis can regress has spurred the search for therapies that suppress scar-tissue formation to restore liver health.
Almost half a century ago, it was predicted that the confinement of quantum fluctuations could induce mechanical rotation — the Casimir torque. This prediction has now been confirmed using liquid crystals.
A study in mice identifies a brain adaptation that underlies the compulsive behaviour associated with drug addiction, and which might explain why some drug users behave compulsively whereas others do not.
Clinical trials reveal that personalized vaccines can boost immune-cell responses to brain tumours that don’t usually respond to immunotherapy. The findings also point to how to improve such treatments.
Millimetre-wavelength observations of the bipolar planetary nebula K4-47 show very high abundances of the rare isotopes 13C, 15N and 17O, providing clues about the possible origin of the nebula.
Quantum many-body calculations of superfluid fission dynamics reveal that heavy fragments from asymmetric fission of actinides are associated with considerable octupole (pear-shaped) deformation acquired on the way to fission.