Volume 640 Issue 8057, 3 April 2025

Europe is advertising itself as a destination for embattled US scientists. It seems many are considering leaving.

Many firms are misusing the ‘open source’ label. The scientific community, which relies on transparency and replicability, must resist this trend.

As governments fight to regulate access to materials important for many technologies, the people mining them are left behind.

Greek engineers who moved to Egypt in the fourth century BC might have imported the devices.

Machine-learning method shows declining oxygen levels in thousands of lakes as their waters warm.

A newfound ability to produce an antibiotic helped a strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to take over a hospital.

Study of more than 100,000 people supports your parents’ advice: eat your veggies.

Several high-profile incidents in the past month have scientists on edge.

Working with multi-dimensional entities could make calculations more efficient and reduce errors.

Study dispels myth that order of names in a paper’s author list dictates perception of success.

Data from 300,000 births reveal how essential biological measurements are altered by carrying and delivering a baby.

Studies on climate change and South Africa are also on the latest list of grants to be terminated, according to updated documents obtained by Nature.

Another man also regained some movement, but two others experienced minimal improvement.

The molecule targets bacteria in a way that other drugs don’t.

Masaki Kashiwara is the first Japanese person to be awarded the most prestigious prize in mathematics.

Regulatory efforts to purge PFASs from drinking water have led to a rush for technologies that can capture and destroy the chemicals.

Researchers are debating the strength of evidence connecting technology to surging rates of adolescent mental illness. But they have some clear advice for parents.

An exploration of weird and wonderful birds across the world sometimes takes theories of sexual selection to the extreme — but entertains throughout.

Overcoming these obstacles in carbon markets can speed up decarbonization.

The sudden withdrawal of almost half of global funding for nutrition suddenly will have dire consequences for decades.

Some low-profile meetings are helpful for parts of the scientific community. Others look like more of a cash grab.

Marine ecologist Gemma Galbraith builds remotely operated vehicles and uses them to assess how coral reefs are being affected by climate change.

A multi-century climate record suggests that current Atlantic jet-stream variations are not the cause of an increase in extreme weather events.

Excavations at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, reveal evidence of the systematic use of animal bones as a raw material for prehistoric tools.

Mirror-image isomer blends have been converted into a single isomer by a light-activated copper catalyst — a challenging reaction that prevents the waste of materials.

Why really good trombones sound the way they do, and the peculiar motion of creatures in the ocean, in this week’s dip into Nature’s archive.

A compilation of genomes from species in the genus Solanum could help scientists to blend the best aspects of productive staple crops and genetically diverse but under-studied indigenous crops.

Current approaches to pain relief are falling short. Chemically modifying a synthetic cannabinoid could enable scientists to capitalize on the body’s natural pain-killing pathway without evoking drug tolerance or psychoactivity.

A quantum microsatellite, with a payload weighing only 23 kilograms, in combination with portable ground stations that weigh merely 100 kilograms, is capable of performing space-to-ground real-time quantum key distribution.

Pair density modulation, an unusual superconducting state whose superconducting gap is modulated by the wavelength corresponding to the lattice periodicity, is described and observed in exfoliated thin flakes of the iron-based superconductor FeTe_0.55Se_0.45.

A process based on perovskite semiconductors is described to downscale micro-LEDs and nano-LEDs to below the conventional size limits, demonstrating average external quantum efficiencies maintained at around 20% across a wide range of pixel lengths.

A standard commercial CMOS FET can exhibit synaptic-like long-term potentiation and depression or neuron-like leaky-integrate-and-fire and adaptive frequency-bursting behaviour when biased in a specific but unconventional way.

A millimetre-scale bioresorbable optoelectronic system with an onboard power supply and a wireless, optical control mechanism is developed for general applications in electrotherapy and specific uses in temporary cardiac pacing.

Raman spectroscopy measurements of water at the interface with oil droplets show a perturbed hydrogen-bond network and evidence for a strong interfacial electric field.

A longstanding challenge in organic synthesis—the catalytic allylation of unprotected saccharides in an aqueous medium, a key step for the synthesis of Millad NX 8000—is achieved through a simple and efficient indium-catalysed nucleophilic allylation using a three-carbon-unit allylboronic acid or its pinacol ester.

This study highlights a protocol that converts various perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), including fluoroplastics, into valuable fluorochemicals through a solvent-free mechanochemical process, thereby enabling fluorine recovery and contributing to a sustainable circular fluorine economy.

A chiral copper catalyst, generated in situ from commercially available components, can be used to achieve photoinduced deracemization of alkyl halides through carbon–halogen bond cleavage.

As the early Earth solidified, gravitational segregation of dense, iron-rich melts drove mantle evolution, injecting geochemical signatures of shallow silicate fractionation into the deep mantle and inevitably forming a basal magma ocean.

A meta-analysis of more than 1,000 studies reveals the global ecosystem functions provided by termites, ants and earthworms as they improve soil quality by making biogenic structures such as termite mounds, ant hills and earthworm casts.

Bone tools shaped by knapping found within Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania precede any other evidence of systematic bone tool production by more than 1 million years.

Gene duplication and subsequent paralogue diversification are major obstacles to genotype-to-phenotype predictability.

Evolutionary modelling and expert review are applied to integrate experimentally supported knowledge accumulated in the Gene Ontology knowledgebase to create a draft human gene ‘functionome’.

The principle of peak selection is described, by which local interactions and smooth gradients drive self-organization of discrete global modules.

Insight into the algorithmic form and learning principles underlying cognitive maps in the hippocampus is provided.

The analysis of pairs of identical SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences enables characterization of transmission patterns between geographies and age groups.

Analyses of five treponemal genomes representing ancient relatives of Treponema pallidum suggest that this pathogen originated in the Americas.

A strategy is introduced that infers whole-animal metabolic flux wiring from transcriptional phenotypes in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and several features in its adult metabolism are discovered that are validated by stable isotope tracing.

Systems-level Worm Perturb-Seq of metabolic genes reveals design principles of transcriptional metabolic rewiring, many of which can be explained by a compensation–repression model.

A study in a mouse model of obesity and prediabetes demonstrates that recruitment of macrophages to nerves has a protective role in diet-induced peripheral neuropathy.

The use of two mouse models of pulmonary fibrosis helped the identification of the transcription factor RUNX2 as a regulator of the transition of alveolar fibroblasts to pathological fibroblasts.

Mouse models of colorectal cancer show that adenoma formation following deletion of Apc is dependent on a proximity effect of mutant crypts and increased chromosome accessibility at specific enhancers.

Transcription termination or pausing during DNA replication in bacteria and humans results in DNA damage with exposed 3′ single-stranded DNA ends and mutations.

A study describes the design of de novo ligand-binding transmembrane proteins, demonstrating their specific binding and activation of fluorogenic ligands.

A study reports that the structural maturation of the matrix ___domain of the Gag protein of HIV-1 is induced by the proteolytic release and binding of the spacer peptide SP2.

A peripherally restricted CB1 agonist (VIP36) targeting a cryptic receptor pocket was developed, showing high efficacy in mouse pain models with minimal side effects and tolerance, potentially revolutionizing chronic pain treatment and GPCR drug design.