Nature

Tropical glaciers in South America and Africa started retreating simultaneously at the end of the last Ice Age - about 20,000 years ago, according to a Dartmouth study. The research, published in Science Advances, backs the exceptional scientific consensus on the role of carbon dioxide in making climate change but adds further levels of complexity to understanding Earth’s climate and how ice

1. Yuan, J., Amin, P. & Ofengeim, D. Necroptosis and RIPK1-mediated neuroinflammation in CNS diseases. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 20, 19–33 (2019). 2. Zhang, X., Dowling, J. P. & Zhang, J. RIPK1 can mediate apoptosis in addition to necroptosis during embryonic development. Cell Death Dis. 10, 245 (2019). Article Google Scholar 3. Newton, K. et al.

1. Boyd, B. The evolution of stories: from mimesis to language, from fact to fiction. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Cogn. Sci. 9, e1444 (2018). Google Scholar 2. Azéma, M. & Rivère, F. Animation in Palaeolithic art: a pre-echo of cinema. Antiquity 86, 316–324 (2012). Article Google Scholar 3. Mithen, S. in Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric

(Photo : pixabay) Some people just want a new beginning, and it’s always a good time to have one! If you have grown tired of your current living situation and town, it may be time to shake things up. There is nothing like experiencing a brand new city for the first time. You might live

A smartphone snaps an image of curved OLED TVs at an electronics trade fair.Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images As scientists race to find low-carbon technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, energy is a hot research topic in materials science. It is obvious, then, that the search for better batteries is a focus for some emerging stars in

Space debris has been cluttering the space just beyond the Earth’s clouds and outside of the average person’s notice. Whenever satellites are launched into space, they are expected to continue to follow a path of orbit to bounce a signal back to ground stations. These are built to last in outer space, but when they

China is taking dramatic steps to improve the quality and international reputation of its home-grown science journals. Publishers of hundreds of Chinese titles will receive generous government funding as part of a major five-year plan to elevate the country’s publications to among the world’s best. The government said in August that it wants to publish

Behavioural science was key to pedestrianizing the approach to London’s busy Oxford Street.Credit: Loop Images/UIG/Getty There was a time when ‘sustainable development’ meant economic development, or perpetual economic growth — not, as we know it today, environmentally sustainable development. The change in meaning can be traced to the 1987 report Our Common Future, chaired by

The Montreal Protocol, an international agreement signed in 1987 to stop chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from destroying the ozone layer, now seems to be the first successful  international treaty to slow the rate of global warming. New research published today in Environmental Research Letters has revealed that today’s global heats are considerably lower. The Earth will be least 1 degree

Modern research is far removed from that done by the independent scientist of Charles Darwin’s day. But that model still underpins what we reward. And the tension is showing. The number of authors listed on published papers has increased fivefold. But our system of incentives — accreted haphazardly as science evolved from hobby to career

A trip to New York City is on a lot of bucket lists. It is a city of infinite possibilities. Full of locations that have been immortalized by movies and literature for centuries – New York is usually never a disappointing trip. But we should not forget that while New York is beautiful and adventurous,

Twentieth century German–Swiss philosopher Karl Jaspers is best-known proponent of Axial Age theory.Credit: Fritz Eschen/ullstein bild/Getty It’s an idea that has been influential for more than 200 years: around the middle of the first millennium BC, humanity passed through a psychological watershed and became modern. This ‘Axial Age’ transformed an archaic world of divine rulers,

Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here Police officers patrolling in Kashgar, a city in China’s western Xinjiang region. Credit: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Springer Nature and Wiley are reviewing the ethics of publishing DNA or facial-recognition research involving scientists backed by China’s government to

When you research the benefits of CBD, you’ll find information about a few different things. One of those things is that CBD can support a “feeling of calm.” But when you just read that with no other context, it’s easy to become confused. What does it mean to have a feeling of general calm? What

Pepper the robot greets visitors to Berlin’s Futurium.Credit: David von Becker Thirty years ago, the future became passé. When the Berlin Wall fell in late 1989 and the communist regimes that hid behind it collapsed, political scientist Francis Fukuyama called the event “the end of history”. But he also cast it as the finale of

The beloved clownfish popularized in “Finding Nemo” may be about to vanish for good as its unique mating habits put it at risk from climate change, according to scientists. Researchers from France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and colleagues observed the vibrantly colored clownfish - which live in anemones – for

The earthquake that devastated San Francisco, California, in 1906 arose from the San Andreas fault — which might be linked to another major fault zone to the north.Credit: Underwood Archives/Getty Two of North America’s most fearsome earthquake zones could be linked. A controversial study argues that at least eight times in the past 3,000 years,

While there is no cure for cancer and there is no treatment to stop a person from getting cancer there is a vaccine that can reduce the risk of getting a specific type of cancer. HPV is a type of cancer that affects the reproductive system and can be easily passed with sexual contact. There

Police officers patrolling in Kashgar, a city in China’s western Xinjiang region. Credit: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Two science publishers are reviewing the ethics of research papers in which scientists backed by China’s government used DNA or facial-recognition technology to study minority groups in the country, such as the predominantly Muslim Uyghur population. Springer Nature (which publishes

Whether you like it or not, parasites live within your intestines. Some parasites do not affect your daily life. Other parasites can cause or affect severe health problems in your body.  You might think of a parasite as a large creature destroying your internal organs, but that’s only partially correct. Most parasites are small invaders

Electrons (orange circles) and light pulses (pink) cross paths at a memory cell (small red bar). Both types of signal can encode information on the cell. Credit: Nikolaos Farmakidis Optics and photonics 06 December 2019 A memory-storage device can bank information delivered by either light or electronic signals. Physicists have found a way to squeeze

Elena Schneider-Futschik encourages scientists to take active part in academic societies. Credit: Gavan Mitchell/The University of Melbourne As a freshly minted PhD student at my first big conference, I was overwhelmed by the packed scientific programme and slightly intimidated by all the smart attendees. It was 2015, and I was one of more than 7,000

Almost everyone is having a smartphone and utilizing various types of mobile applications as per their needs. Having an iPhone is a dream for many of us and making use of mobile applications in the iPhone is a challenging one for each customer. This is because; Apple iPhones are viewed as a symbol of Pride

Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here The earthquake that devastated San Francisco, California, in 1906 arose from the San Andreas fault — which might be linked to another major fault zone to the north.Credit: Underwood Archives/Getty Two of North America’s most fearsome

Cybersecurity concerns are evolving and with data privacy laws cracking down on the way companies manage consumer data, one of the biggest questions for businesses is how to develop security strategies that could effectively combat data breaches, malware, and limit vulnerabilities within the already existing system.  Trend Micro cites out of date security systems, weak

Cells of Wilms tumour (artificially coloured), a cancer that often arises from expansive patches of tissue harbouring telltale DNA changes. Credit: National Cancer Institute/SPL Cancer 06 December 2019 Genetic changes in utero set the scene for a paediatric kidney tumour. A childhood kidney cancer often arises from tissue that becomes predisposed to cancer during an

Credit: Francis Tsang/Cover/Getty Margarita Salas discovered a new mechanism for the replication of DNA. The enzyme she isolated as the key to it has transformed the process of amplifying DNA from very small samples, and is now widely used in forensics, studies of ancient DNA and oncology, as well as in basic research. Her invention,

The ongoing examination of Bennu – and its sample that will eventually be returned to Earth – could potentially shed light on why this intriguing phenomenon is occurring. The OSIRIS-REx team first observed a particle ejection event in images captured by the spacecraft’s navigation cameras taken on Jan. 6, just a week after the spacecraft

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s (centre) Conservative party has promised to raise UK spending on research to 2.4% of gross domestic product.Credit: Alastair Grant/AP/Shutterstock The United Kingdom’s three main political parties have each pledged to increase spending on science, ahead of a general election overshadowed by the country’s vote two and a half years ago to

This was found in a collaborative study by the University of Helsinki, Aarhus University and the Finnish Environment Institute. The researchers don’t know the exact effects yet. The researchers investigated changes in the amount of organic carbon by exploring water-quality monitoring data for 30 rivers and a period of 25 years. The data demonstrated that

Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here Charged particles that flow around and away from the Sun can disrupt radio networks on Earth.Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/S. Wiessinger NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has caught the best-ever glimpse of the birthplace of the solar wind — a

Adopting a cat from a shelter is a very good decision, and not only because it is the most inexpensive way to get a pet. By accepting a homeless cat, you not only save the life of this animal, but you also make room for the next pet that needs help. However, before making a

Protective bacteria (left) carpet a portion of a mouse’s intestine but are less dense in mice lacking nerve cells that keep the bacteria in place. Credit: Nicole Lai, Anja Nordstrom and Isaac Chiu Immunology 05 December 2019 Gut neurons that trigger unpleasant symptoms also rally the body’s defenses against Salmonella. Nerve cells in the gut

When I left for the first time, there were tears in your eyes, and you grasped my hand with a quiet, desperate affection. “It’s only a year,” I whispered, words lost to the song of idling stardrives, the clatter of shuttle lifts and the din of the spaceport swallowing our goodbyes like the singularity I

The world’s efforts to stop climate change have so far been “utterly inadequate,” and dangerous global warming could pass the “point of no return,” United Nations (UN) said. Speaking before the start Monday of a two-week international climate conference in Madrid, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the impact of increasing temperatures and extreme weather is already being

The World Health Organization says that improved efforts to prevent, detect and treat malaria are allowing several countries to eliminate the disease.Credit: Edwin Remsberg, VWPICS/SPL The number of malaria infections recorded globally has fallen for the first time in several years, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which published its annual World Malaria Report

We all have family members or friends who prefer receiving gifts which embrace practicality too much. Instead of funky or hilariously weird items, they might ask for something functional, and that’s okay.  However, it might be a lot trickier to think of a gift for them. After all, there is a high chance that they

1. El-Ganainy, R. et al. Non-Hermitian physics and PT symmetry. Nat. Phys. 14, 11–19 (2018). 2. Feng, L., El-Ganainy, R. & Ge, L. Non-Hermitian photonics based on parity-time symmetry. Nat. Photon. 11, 752–762 (2017). 3. Miri, M.-A. & Alù, A. Exceptional points in optics and photonics. Science 363, eaar7709 (2019). 4. Ren, J. et al.

Mike Flannigan.Credit: Xinli Cai Mike Flannigan is a professor with the Department of Renewable Resources at the University of Alberta, Canada. Here he speaks to Nature about his work and the boom in wildfires worldwide. How did you get into wildfire research? I’ve always been interested in fire. When I turned one year old, I

When you become a yoga instructor, you have started a new and rewarding career. You can go to the yoga studio every day to teach classes, or you might teach private lessons in a client’s home. Plus, you can open your own studio and employ other instructors. If you plan to do all this work

Some Chinese universities have agreements with the People’s Liberation Army (pictured).Credit: Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Forty-three Chinese universities should be considered ‘very high’ or ‘high’ risk collaborators because of their involvement in research for military and defence purposes, according to an Australian think tank. The risk assessment comes just weeks after the Australian government released guidelines

It is no longer only tree-huggers or green-fingered zero-wasters that are buying and receiving sustainable gifts.  With climate change being considered an international emergency by many, individuals are beginning to take responsibility for their part in protecting Mother Earth, since we know there is no Planet B. It is possible to gift cool items that

Chinstrap penguins (with black stripe under the chin) and gentoo penguins in waters near the Antarctic Peninsula. In recent decades, gentoos have flourished but chinstraps have floundered. Credit: Rachael Herman/Stony Brook University Animal behaviour 03 December 2019 As the world warms, an adaptable Antarctic bird thrives while the fortunes of a specialist relative fall. Populations

Across the world, DNA databases that could be used for state-level surveillance are steadily growing. The most striking case is in China. Here police are using a national DNA database along with other kinds of surveillance data, such as from video cameras and facial scanners, to monitor the minority Muslim Uyghur population in the western

After NASA’s Mars Rover captured some stunning images recently, an entomologist professor from a university in Ohio claimed that these images also show evidence of fossilized and living creatures on the dwarf planet’s surface. Based on these pictures – which were sent back to Earth by the Mars Rover – the professor declared something which none of

Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here The Copernicus Sentinel-6 satellite undergoing tests near Munich, Germany. Credit: S. Corvaja/ESA The European Space Agency (ESA) will get €12.5 billion (US$13.8 billion) in 2020–22, compared with €8.6 billion approved in 2016. The increase means the

Millions of travelers returning home after Thanksgiving suffered from severe weather around the United States – as some flights were canceled and delayed and roads in the Midwest were closed. ABC News forecasted two storms expected to hit over 30 states from coast to coast – one in the Northeast and one moving inland on the

When Adam Siepel was building algorithms for evolutionary genomics as part of his PhD, he wasn’t thinking about visualization. But, as a graduate student in the laboratory of computational biologist David Haussler, at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), he happened to sit next to the software engineers who were building and maintaining a