Volume 623 Issue 7987, 16 November 2023

Our view of the effectiveness of past pandemic responses is influenced by our present vaccination status. Public inquiries and future research must take this factor into account.

Continued efforts to maintain the ban on chemical weapons depend on nations sharing information to further build trust and global safety.

Guidelines for research can level the playing field for scientists in low-resource settings — but diverse voices are needed to ensure that people worldwide can actually follow them.

Seinfeld episodes help scientists to distinguish between the brain regions involved in understanding and appreciating humour.

Virus that quashes survival of male moth embryos arose independently of other microorganisms that skew sex ratios.

An object that orbits the Sun beyond the main asteroid belt and occasionally sports a tail is spotted in archival images.

Climate change is intensifying straight-line winds, which can be as damaging as tornadoes.

Ancient-genomics studies are boosting efforts to save Scotland’s endangered ‘Highland tigers’ — and keep them separate from domestic cats.

Electrical stimulation improved his mobility, although researchers say that a larger study is needed to assess the device.

An unpublished analysis suggests that there are hundreds of thousands of bogus ‘paper-mill’ articles lurking in the literature.

Four groups in the field of experimental psychology successfully replicate each other’s work by following best practices.

The work paves the way for scientists to use chimeric primates to study human diseases.

Highly edited strain survives and replicates despite containing 7.5 artificial chromosomes.

Scientists warn that it will take multiple methods to stop the disease, which is also known as breakbone fever and was once confined to the tropics.

Article-processing charges levied by publishers on authors have become an integral — and sometimes unpopular — part of the open-access revolution. Other options are being explored.

Researchers, educators and companies are experimenting with ways to turn flawed but famous large language models into trustworthy, accurate ‘thought partners’ for learning.

From floods to wildfires, and tsunamis to volcanic eruptions, early-warning systems can stop natural hazards becoming human disasters. But more joined-up thinking is urgently needed.

With quantum technologies heading for the mainstream, undergraduate courses are preparing the workforce of the future.

Nataly Castelblanco Martínez works to raise awareness of the perils faced by the much-loved marine mammals.

Echinoderms such as starfish are unusual for their five-fold body symmetry. Maps of gene-expression patterns show how this body plan was acquired, and that the genes specifying head structures do the heavy lifting.

Molnupiravir, an antiviral drug used to treat COVID-19, induces numerous mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 genome that can increase the rate at which the virus evolves — yielding viral variants that might survive and be passed on.

A 3D printer uses machine vision to solve a problem that has plagued 3D inkjet printers, increasing the range of materials that can be used, and enabling the rapid production of complex objects such as a robot hand.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Bacteria and archaea are microorganisms that often use RNA-guided defences called CRISPR to destroy the genomes of viruses that infect them. It now emerges that viruses make RNAs that act as mimics to divert such defences.

By casting large-language-model-based dialogue-agent behaviour in terms of role play, it is possible to describe dialogue-agent behaviour such as (apparent) deception and (apparent) self-awareness without misleadingly ascribing human characteristics to the models.

We report observations of ceers-2112 that show that this galaxy, at a redshift of 3, unexpectedly has a barred spiral structure.

Using upgraded hardware of the multiuser Cold Atom Lab (CAL) aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) of two atomic isotopes are simultaneously created and used to demonstrate interspecies interactions and dual species atom interferometry in space.

Minimization of kinetic energy leads to ferromagnetic correlations between itinerant electrons in MoSe₂/WS₂ moiré lattices even in the absence of exchange interactions.

A high-throughput, non-contact framework is described that uses the laser-induced vibrational signatures of metamaterials to non-destructively quantify their omnidirectional elastic information, dynamic linear properties, damping properties and defects.

We have developed an automated and high-throughput, three-dimensional, vision-controlled inkjet deposition process that enables the high-resolution, contactless printing of a range of materials with varying elastic moduli to create complex structures and robots.

The use of anion–π interactions during perovskite film formation is shown to give better quality perovskite layers with high phase purity, leading to improved photovoltaic devices with high power conversion efficiency.

A new method is described that uses arenium-ion-catalysed halodealkylation of silanes with four alkyl groups, typically considered synthetic dead ends, to convert Me₄Si and related quaternary silanes into orthogonally substituted (functionalized) silanes.

Dipolar precipitation change in High Mountain Asia during summer is primarily driven by weakened westerly jet and decadal variations in the South Asian monsoon, and the dipolar pattern is projected to shift to a monopolar wetting trend in the 2040s.

Computed tomography analysis of the braincase of the Early Devonian placoderm fish Kolymaspis sibirica suggests a skeletal gill support was involved in the origin of the shoulder girdle and provides new evidence reconciling historic theories about the evolution of paired fins.

RNA tomography and in situ hybridization in echinoderms suggest a new ambulacral-anterior model to relate echinoderm pentaradial symmetry to the ancestral bilateral symmetry.

The Drosophila R8 photoreceptor separates signals for image perception and circadian photoentrainment by co-releasing histamine and acetylcholine, and this segregation is further established in the postsynaptic circuitry in the medulla.

Behavioural and electrophysiological studies in simultaneously thirsty and hungry mice reveal a neural basis for resolving conflicts between needs, in which choices are guided by a persistent and distributed neural goal state that undergoes spontaneous transitions between goals.

TDP-43 binds to N¹-methyladenosine on CAG repeat RNA, resulting in the formation of gel-like TDP-43 aggregates in the cytoplasm that resemble those observed in neurological disease pathology.

How people remember various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including their own behaviour, perception of risk and attitudes towards science and governmental policies, is biased by their perceptions and behaviour today.

A specific class of long phylogenetic branches, distinguished by a high proportion of G-to-A and C-to-T mutations, are almost exclusively found in sequences from 2022, after molnupiravir treatment was introduced, indicating that molnupiravir treatment can give rise to viable mutagenized viruses.

In response to bacterial CRISPR–Cas immunity, phages and plasmids have evolved small non-coding RNA anti-CRISPRs, known as Racrs, that sequester Cas proteins in abberrant complexes and thereby inhibit immunity.

Genomics analyses reveal that in vitro culture of CAR T cells can lead to reactivation of a latent herpesvirus, which might be involved in complications in patients receiving associated cell therapies.

Single-cell transcriptomic and proteomic data from synovial tissue from individuals with rheumatoid arthritis classify patients into groups based on abundance of cell states that can provide insights into pathology and predict individual treatment responses.

An enzyme called UXS1 that converts one sugar nucleotide to another is needed more in some cancer cells than in normal cells, providing a potential weakness that can be exploited therapeutically.

Trinucleotide-repeat-containing 18 (TNRC18), which has poorly understood functions, is now identified as an H3K9me3-specific reader that silences endogenous retroviruses.

The epigenetic modification H3K9me3 is asymmetrically partitioned at long interspersed nuclear element retrotransposons for their silencing in S phase, a newly discovered mechanism that is mediated by the HUSH complex and the DNA polymerase Pol ε.