Volume 633 Issue 8031, 26 September 2024

Online safety is crucial, but so are privacy and decentralization. Computer scientists who set the Internet’s technical standards should be included in governance talks.

Failure to fund education in taxonomy could derail efforts to support conservation in low- and middle-income countries.

Primordial black holes, which are smaller than their better-known cousins, visit the inner Solar System once a decade, simulations suggest.

A bubble of air on its snout extends the water anole’s underwater time by more than a minute.

Severe nosebleeds caused by hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia dwindled in people who took a drug used to treat cancer.

Total alcohol consumed fell at establishments in England that replaced the classic imperial pint with a two-thirds measure.

CERN’s calculation of the W boson’s mass agrees with theory, contradicting a previous anomaly that had raised the possibility of new physics.

Particle measurements at the Large Hadron Collider open the door to future high-energy tests of entanglement.

By 2050, around 2 million people — the majority aged 70 and over — could die from drug-resistant infections each year.

Protein structures predicted by artificial intelligence have charted the evolution of the virus family responsible for dengue and hepatitis C.

Diseases such as West Nile virus and dengue are becoming increasingly common as the insects that spread them move north.

Evidence shows that blockbuster weight-loss medications can reduce obesity even in children aged 6–11 years, but their long-term effects on growing bodies are unknown.

Study links this phenomenon to the brain region that controls movement.

A mechanism for metabolic disease is traced to a defective cellular scaffolding that holds together the brain’s hunger cells.

Scientists have more information than ever on how cells differ — but they still resist easy grouping.

From alcoholism to Parkinson’s, scientists are studying the mechanisms behind the broad clinical potential of weight-loss drugs.

From artificial-intelligence algorithms to zebrafish, this book take a precautionary approach to assessing how sentient such entities are.

Albert Einstein’s sojourns in the English city, as Nazism rose in Germany, were built on the back of a connection with a now largely forgotten don.

As climate and food-security pressures intensify, the world’s most populous continent sees clear opportunities to reimagine meat — just as it did for affordable solar panels.

As a new academic year dawns, international competition, government policies and inflationary pressures could be pushing some universities to the brink of bankruptcy.

Rebecca Hsu works as a forest ecologist for the Taiwan Forestry Institute in Taipei.

The accumulation of a network of proteins and sugars called the extracellular matrix stops insulin from reaching hunger-regulating neurons, disrupting normal food intake and metabolism, and contributing to obesity.

An undersea cable promises to improve Britain’s relationship with Europe, and a poet’s attempt at ornithology is debunked, in Nature’s weekly step back in time.

Many diseases arise from the misplacement of proteins in cells. A potential solution to this problem has been developed: small molecules that help displaced proteins catch a ride with other proteins to return to their proper location.

Microorganisms that normally reside in the gut can help to block microbial infection. A group of bacteria that lives in the human gut has been identified that can consume a nutrient needed by pathogenic bacteria.

JWST has opened a window on exoplanet imaging by observing the planet ε Indi Ab directly. The planet’s existence had been inferred, but its age and temperature made the discovery difficult to confirm — until now.

In brain tumours, immune cells called macrophages scavenge lipid debris from the myelin sheath of neurons. These lipid-laden macrophages cause immunosuppression, and their transfer of lipids to tumours fuels cancer growth.

A new approach to designing robotic systems that interact closely with people, called human-in-the-loop optimization, can improve human–robot interaction, but many important research questions remain before it can reach its full potential.

We report on JWST images of a temperate super-Jupiter in the system Epsilon Ind A—a K5V star at a distance of just 3.6 pc—in the mid-infrared.

The one-dimensional laser cooling of positronium enables testing of quantum electrodynamics and could realize Bose–Einstein condensation in positronium.

Ultrahigh electromechanical response is accomplished by inducing extreme structural instability from competing antiferroelectric and ferroelectric orders.

A method using semi-stable edge of chaos in LaCoO₃ enables continuous signal amplification in metallic conductors without separate amplifiers, potentially revolutionizing electronic chip design.

A micronuclear battery is built based on an autoluminescent americium–terbium compound that couples radioisotopes with energy transducers at the molecular level, resulting in an 8,000-fold enhancement in energy conversion efficiency.

A one-step hydrogen-based redox process turns oxides directly into green alloys in bulk forms, with application-worthy properties.

The distribution and uptake of siderophores across a meridional section of the eastern Pacific Ocean suggests that iron availability limits microbial metabolism in the upper mesopelagic in several large ocean basins.

Climate warming has increased forest fire sizes, amplifying postfire summer warming, with broadleaf trees mitigating this effect; climate-smart forestry should increase broadleaf tree cover to manage future fire risks.

Satellite carbon monoxide observations show that carbon emissions from the 2023 Canadian forest fires are comparable to the annual fossil fuel emissions of large nations.

A study reports the discovery of a parasitoid wasp species that uses the adult stage of Drosophila fruit flies as its host.

Analysis of 46 newly sequenced or re-sequenced Tausch’s goatgrass (Aegilops tauschii) accessions establishes the origin of the bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) D genome from genetically and geographically discrete Ae. tauschii subpopulations.

Through genetic blocking of oligodendrocyte differentiation and myelination in adolescent mice, we demonstrate that oligodendrocytes have a critical role in shaping the maturation and stabilization of visual cortical circuits.

The bidirectional loop circuit between layers 5/6 of the lateral entorhinal cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex encodes item–outcome associative memory in mice.

Using new optogenetic tools to induce distinct ion fluxes, a study shows that these discrete signals trigger different metabolic and transcriptional pathways that allow plants to respond to specific types of stress.

Transplants of consortia with limited numbers of strains of commensal bacteria derived from healthy human stool samples are able to suppress intestinal Enterobacteriaceae by regulating gluconate availability, suggesting potential therapies for infectious and inflammatory diseases.

Mechanical forces act at the core of bird embryonic self-organization, shaping both tissues and gene expression to robustly yet plastically canalize early development.

Post-fast refeeding increases intestinal stem cell function and tumour formation by augmenting protein synthesis via polyamine metabolism.

Fibrin drives inflammation and neuropathology in SARS-CoV-2 infection, and fibrin-targeting immunotherapy may represent a therapeutic intervention for patients with long COVID.

Experiments in mice show that the perineural net has a key role in metabolic disease by controlling insulin access to neurons in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus.

Studying changes in the metabolic properties of kidney cancer in patients reveals an increased need for mitochondrial metabolism as tumors metastasize from the kidney to distant organs.

Cyclin B1 is a mitotic co-factor of CDK5.

Targeted protein relocalization using shuttle proteins with potent ligands amenable to incorporation into targeted relocalization activating molecules could be used to regulate cellular physiology and correct disease states in neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and genetic disorders.

A study presents high-resolution cryogenic electron microscopy structures detailing how the elements of FcεRI assemble and how this receptor complex interacts with the target immunoglobulin E.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of human XPR1 in different bound forms reveal the structural basis for XPR1 gating and regulation by inositol polyphosphates.