News Feature in 2014

Innovative ways of teaching, learning and doing research are helping universities around the globe to adapt to the modern world.

Arizona State University is trying to reinvent academia by tearing down walls between disciplines.

As the Large Hadron Collider prepares to come back to life after a two-year hiatus, physicists are gearing up to go beyond the standard model of particle physics.

Nobel prizewinners May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser have spent a career together near the Arctic Circle exploring how our brains know where we are.

After humans arrived in South America, they quickly spread into some of its most remote corners.

The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina has spent almost ten years looking for the source of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays — but to no avail. Now the observatory faces an uncertain future.

The United States has plenty of strong winds offshore, but it has struggled to harness them for energy.

A hospital in Sierra Leone has struggled to continue its research amid the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

The sciences can be a sanctuary for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals, but biases may still discourage many from coming out.

Destructive lionfish are invading coral reefs in the Americas, but fishing competitions can help to keep the problem species in check.

Technologies are allowing doctors to do what was once unheard of: restore blind people's sight. Now the real challenges begin.

Using a wildlife version of fitness trackers, biologists can finally measure how much energy animals need to stay alive.

Sometimes, the brightest stars in science decide to leave. Nature finds out where they go.

Volcanic eruptions, oil spills and bacterial outbreaks all land in the laps of government science advisers, and put them to the test.

In the haze of incomplete data, scientists are divided over the risks and benefits of electronic cigarettes.

Samples from a lake hidden under 800 metres of ice contain thousands of microbes and hint at vast ecosystems yet to be discovered.

Giant academic social networks have taken off to a degree that no one expected even a few years ago. A Nature survey explores why.

The race is on to build a machine that can synthesize any organic compound. It could transform chemistry.

As the United States destroys its old dams, species are streaming back into the unfettered rivers.

DNA circulating in the bloodstream could guide cancer treatment — if researchers can work out how best to use it.