Curated News: Nature (journal)

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Methanogens are microorganisms that produce methane when little or no oxygen is present in their surroundings.

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Researchers have designed the first ‘living medicine’ to treat lung infections.

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Nearly 100 million years ago, the Earth experienced an extreme environmental disruption that choked oxygen from the oceans and led to elevated marine extinction levels that affected the entire globe.

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Environmental DNA analysis of microbial communities can help us understand how a particular region’s water cycle works. Basel hydrogeologist Oliver Schilling recently used this method to examine the water cycle on Mount Fuji.

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Research led by the University of Southampton has revealed how supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are feeding off gas clouds which reach them by travelling hundreds of thousands of light years from one galaxy to another.

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UC San Diego researchers describe how pancreatic cancer stem cells leverage a protein in a family of proteins that normally suppress tumors to instead do the opposite, boosting their resistance to conventional treatments and spurring growth.

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In the vast and diverse Universe, the initial mass distribution at the birth of a new population of stars determines the fate of galaxies.

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A temperature reconstruction from ice cores of the past 1,000 years reveals that today’s warming in central-north Greenland is surprisingly pronounced.

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Columbia researchers invent a multimodal sequencing technique that achieves high-quality results from small volumes of frozen tumor specimens--the ability to study cancer tissues archived in biobanks should increase the number and variety of tumor samples available for scientific analysis and advance the discovery of biomarkers and drug targets.

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Researchers have developed a new system for developing gene drives for areas ranging from human health to global food supplies. The new “hacking” system converts split gene drives into full drives, offering new flexibility for safely conducting gene drive experiments in a range of applications.

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The first laboratory realization of the long-standing but never-before confirmed theory of the puzzling formation of planets, stars and supermassive black holes by swirling surrounding matter has been produced at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

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Columbia Engineering neuroscientists identified a specific neural mechanism in the human brain that tags information with emotional associations for enhanced memory. The team demonstrated that high-frequency brain waves in the amygdala, a hub for emotional processes, and the hippocampus, a hub for memory processes, are critical to enhancing memory for emotional stimuli. Disruptions to this neural mechanism, brought on either by electrical brain stimulation or depression, impair memory specifically for emotional stimuli.

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A collaboration led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Max Born Institute (MBI) published a study in Nature in which they used a novel analysis technique—called coherent correlation imaging (CCI)—to image the evolution of magnetic domains in time and space without any previous knowledge. The scientists could not see the “dance of the domains” during the measurement but only afterward, when they used the recorded data to “rewind the tape.”

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Researchers have been looking to replace silicon in electronics with materials that provide a higher performance and lower power consumption while also having scalability. An international team is addressing that need by developing a promising process to develop high-quality 2D materials that could power next-generation electronics.

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Given the choice of three different “spin” orientations, certain particles emerging from collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), an atom smasher at Brookhaven National Laboratory, appear to have a preference. Recent results reveal a preference in global spin alignment of particles called phi mesons.

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A new study analyzes what fair and equitable burden-sharing means for nature-based carbon dioxide removal in developing countries.

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Just as a highly transmissible variant prompts officials to extend COVID-19 emergency status, one of the largest surveys ever conducted shows people are more willing to get vaccinated when health workers reveal how many others are doing so.

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If you take a magnifying glass and a torch and look at your teeth very carefully in the mirror, in places you can spot a pattern of fine, parallel lines running across your teeth. These correspond to the striae of Retzius that mark the growth of our tooth enamel.

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Scientists developed a way to make carbon-based molecules with a unique structural feature: interlocking rings.

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Tropical forests are crucial for sucking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But they’re also subject to intense storms that can cause “windthrow” – the uprooting or breaking of trees. A new study finds that more extreme thunderstorms from climate change will likely cause a greater number of large windthrow events in the Amazon, which could impact the rainforest's ability to serve as a carbon sink.

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New research finds that ice-sheet-wide collapse in West Antarctica isn’t inevitable: the pace of ice loss varies according to regional differences in atmosphere and ocean circulation.

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A new test that ‘fishes’ for multiple respiratory viruses at once using single strands of DNA as ‘bait’, and gives highly accurate results in under an hour, has been developed by Cambridge researchers.

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Negative emotions, anxiety and depression are thought to promote the onset of neurodegenerative diseases and dementia. But what is their impact on the brain and can their deleterious effects be limited?

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UC San Diego scientists discover a molecular pathway critical to the initiation of pancreatic tumors. The findings may inspire new chemotherapeutic drugs targeting early stages of tumor formation and spread.

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In the past decade, researchers have begun to appreciate the importance of a two-way communication that occurs between microbes in the gastrointestinal tract and the brain, known as the gut–brain axis.

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Human cells are often a mixture of both abnormal and normal DNA – a mosaic, so to speak, and like the art form, this complex montage is difficult to understand. Neuroscience researchers are training computers to unveil new methods for DNA mosaic recognition.

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Half a million lives could be saved each year in sub-Saharan Africa by taking action to reduce reliance on traditional wood- and charcoal-burning stoves, a new study shows.

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The more-than 1.2 million km of fibre-optic cables that criss-cross the planet carry the world’s phone calls, internet signals and data.

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An international consortium led by UC San Diego has identified at least some of the genetic drivers of a mysterious form of pediatric epilepsy.

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Morteza Mahmoudi, an assistant professor in MSU’s Department of Radiology, explains why addressing disagreements with stronger standards will help ensure future nanomedicines are safe, effective and successful.

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Integration is not only a problem of social significance among humans, but also an issue for the cells that form us as humans.

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A team of researchers led by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has developed a novel delivery system for messenger RNA (mRNA) using extracellular vesicles (EVs). The new technique has the potential to overcome many of the delivery hurdles faced by other promising mRNA therapies.

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About a quarter of the world’s electricity currently comes from power plants fired by natural gas. These contribute significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions (amounting to 10% of energy-related emissions according to the most recent figures from 2017) and climate change.

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In the Arctic, plant community type strongly impacts how energy is exchanged between the land and atmosphere.

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Understanding HIV latency at the molecular level is crucial for efforts to eliminate the viral scourge that causes AIDS.

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There are two fundamentally different cell types in the brain, neurons and glial cells. The latter, for example, insulate the "wiring" of nerve cells or guarantee optimal working conditions for them.

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In many ways, Madagascar is a biologist’s dream, a real-life experiment in how isolation on an island can spark evolution.

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A new study by a team of international scientists including Liliana M. Dávalos, PhD, from Stony Brook University, reveals that it would take three million years to recover the number of species that went extinct from human activity on Madagascar. Their findings are published in Nature Communications.

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The chemistry of planet formation has fascinated researchers for decades because the chemical reservoir in protoplanetary discs—the dust and gas from which planets form—directly impacts planet composition and potential for life.