Volume 627 Issue 8002, 7 March 2024

To address the chronic-pain crisis, digital health technologies must break out of their silos and become integrative and holistic.

It’s not just global warming that’s driving the growth in destructive wildfires. Better land management is the first step to mitigating the risks.

Some 7,300 years ago, the Kikai volcano in Japan produced up to 457 cubic kilometres of ash and other debris.

Analysis of more than 1,000 viral genomes reveals patterns in how the disease circulated through various communities.

The surface of a white dwarf is marked with metallic patches — souvenirs of its encounter with an asteroid or planet.

Fossil analysis suggests the reptiles were already huge when they rode ocean currents to the islands thousands or even millions of years ago.

A study suggests that the asthma treatment omalizumab can reduce the risk of dangerous allergic reactions to peanuts and other foods.

Changes to chemical tags on DNA in mice dial down the activity of a gene without cuts to the genome.

An elegant run of experiments in mice reveals the genetic changes that led humanity’s ape ancestors to lose the appendage.

Large language models are transforming scientific writing and publishing. But the productivity boost that these tools bring could have a downside.

Decades-long quest ends as the landmark observatory detects signs of the 1987 blast’s central neutron star.

Elon Musk announced this week that his company’s brain implant has allowed a person to move a computer mouse with their mind.

Haiti and Turkmenistan are among the nations with the highest earthquake fatality load, a measure of the burden imposed by quake-related deaths.

Some of the world’s biggest carbon emitters are going to the polls this year — the results could determine whether humanity can correct its trajectory of dangerous global warming.

Robert Oppenheimer’s isn’t the only film-worthy story from the nuclear age. Kurt Gödel’s cameo as a secret agent was surprising — and itself a bomb.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Researcher who established the role of cellular senescence in cancer and ageing.

Astrophysicist whose radio-wave observations confirmed the Big Bang origin of the Universe.

An advanced light source for research would boost growth in the Greater Caribbean region — scientific, economic and societal.

Earth’s oceans are awash with ageing energy infrastructure. A change in the law is needed to ensure that these structures are decommissioned in ways that maximize environmental and societal benefits.

Institutions are taking notice of a handful of programmes designed to address the issues scientists face when choosing to take a long-term absence.

In 2023, Jenny Hoffman ran across the United States in 47 days, smashing the women’s world record. But she still found time to lead a research team.

Need to digitize field notes or historical documents? Researchers share their best practices.

Yang Li’s research has developed a high-precision chronology of rocks.

Networks filled with self-propelled fluids display meandering patterns that have been shown to follow rules similar to those of sudoku puzzles — offering design principles for microfluidic devices, and the possibility of ‘active fluid’ logic.

Mammals make sounds when air flow causes paired tissue folds in their voice box to oscillate. However, such air flow in the baleen group of whales takes an unusual path, enabling them to make sounds in a previously unknown way.

Small solvent molecules have been found to enable a previously unknown ion-transport mechanism in battery electrolytes, speeding up charging and increasing performance at low temperatures.

Active neurons can stimulate the clearance of their own metabolic waste by driving changes to ion gradients in the surrounding fluid and by promoting the pulsation of nearby blood vessels.

By adapting a device designed to create extremely high pressures into one that can sense magnetic fields, researchers have obtained evidence that a hydrogen-rich material is a superconductor, eliminating long-standing doubts.

The proliferation of artificial intelligence tools in scientific research risks creating illusions of understanding, where scientists believe they understand more about the world than they actually do.

A study examining how cities can foster well-being and positive mental health in young residents synthesizes opinions from researchers, practitioners, advocates and young people, highlighting factors that policymakers and urban planners should consider.

An extensive analysis of the JWST-NIRSpec spectrum of GN-z11 shows a supermassive black hole of a few million solar masses in a galaxy 440 million years after the Big Bang.

An axisymmetric, equatorial jet in Jupiter’s interior has a wavelike fluctuation with a 4-year period, revealing hidden aspects of the magnetic field within the metallic hydrogen region and constraining the dynamo that generates the magnetic field.

Laser-based micro-focused angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy reveals both fractionalized and marginal quasiparticles in C₃-symmetric electron pockets near the Brillouin zone centre of the ferromagnetic kagome metal Fe₃Sn₂.

In order to explore superconductivity in hydride materials, local magnetometry inside a diamond anvil cell is performed with sub-micron spatial resolution at megabar pressures using nitrogen-vacancy colour centres.

An integrated lithium niobate photonic processing engine performs integration and differentiation of analogue signals, solves ordinary differential equations, generates ultra-wideband microwave signals and detects edges in images.

A quasi-true time delay is demonstrated for a microwave device implemented in a CMOS technology to miniaturize true-time-delay components of beam-steering systems, addressing the fundamental channel-capacity limitations and increasing data transmission in wireless communications.

An integrated device that combines optical parametric oscillation and electro-optic modulation in lithium niobate creates a flat-top frequency-comb-like output with low power requirements.

An electrolyte design using small-sized fluoroacetonitrile solvents to form a ligand channel produces lithium-ion batteries simultaneously achieving high energy density, fast charging and wide operating temperature range, desirable features for batteries working in extreme conditions.

High-resolution vertical land motion and elevation datasets combined with projections of sea-level rise of 32 major US coastal cities shows that a considerable amount of land area, population, and properties are threatened by relative sea-level rise by 2050.

Conversion of rainforest to plantations in Sumatra leads to higher energetic losses in animal food webs aboveground than belowground, with the belowground energy being reallocated from diverse arthropod communities to invasive earthworms.

Studies of vocal production in baleen whales show that their larynx has evolved unique structures that enable their low-frequency vocalizations but limit their active communication range.

Genetic screening identifies a rich catalogue of regulators of micronucleus formation.

Audio and visual stimulation at 40 Hz promote cerebrospinal and interstitial fluid flux in mouse brain and result in amyloid clearance via the glymphatic system in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease.

Rhythmic neural activity drives cerebrospinal fluid perfusion through brain parenchyma to enhance brain cleansing.

Arachnoid cuff exit points create openings in the arachnoid barrier enabling the drainage of cerebrospinal fluid and exchange of molecules and cells between the dura and the subarachnoid space, therefore physically connecting the brain and the dura.

Behavioural tracking and wireless neural and eye-tracking recordings show that freely moving macaques learn to cooprate using visually guided signals along the visual-frontal cortical network.

Reconstruction of four Treponema pallidum genomes associated with human remains from around 2,000 years ago suggests that T. pallidum existed in the Americas and diverged to its modern subspecies before the fifteenth century European contact with the Americas.

The cryo-electron microscopy structure of the human phagocyte NADPH oxidase in the activated state provides insight into how cytosolic factors bind to and promote the activating conformational changes of NOX2, facilitating its efficient electron transfer.

In neutrophil progenitor cells, stopping the process of loop extrusion by depleting nipped-B-like protein (NIPBL) results in the assembly of polymorphonuclear structures and the activation of a neutrophil-specific gene program.

Studies using genetic screening, biophysical characterization and structural reconstitution elucidate the mechanism of action and enable rational design of a new class of functional compounds that glue target proteins to E3 ligases via intramolecularly bridging two domains to enhance intrinsic protein–protein interactions and promote target ubiquitination and degradation.

Circular RNAs are exported from the nucleus by Ran-GTP, exportin-2 and IGF2BP1 in a mechanism analogous to protein export rather than mRNA export.

The mechanisms of action and resistance of valemetostat, an EZH1–EZH2 dual inhibitor, in patients with adult T cell leukaemia/lymphoma who initially responded but later showed disease progression are explored.