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The Microflora Danica project has catalogued the microbial diversity of environmental habitats across Denmark and established an improved taxonomic reference database. As well as providing a special record of nitrogen-oxidizing microorganisms, the data set serves as a national baseline for tracking future microbial responses to factors such as land-use change and global warming.
Transposable elements can insert into genes, disrupting protein-coding potential. Researchers discover a mode of RNA processing, ‘SOS splicing’, that provides a quick fix.
The tension of conventional surgical sutures can affect wound healing and is dependent on the surgeon’s experience. Imaging and simulations reveal that slipknots can reproducibly store and release force, enabling precise and consistent surgical knotting without the need for electronic sensors or specialized equipment.
The emission of photons by excited nuclei has been explored for timekeeping and sensing, but nuclear processes that eject electrons offer practical advantages.
The genetic engineering of mosquitoes offers a potentially transformative, self-sustaining opportunity for malaria control and elimination in Africa. By rendering mosquitoes unable to transmit the malaria parasite, even when they bite humans, the technology provides a mosquito-based intervention to complement existing efforts.
More than 7,000 languages are spoken around the world, but the human brain becomes highly specialized to process speech in an individual’s own language. Recordings from human brains reveal the shared and language-specific neural mechanisms that arise in the superior temporal gyrus to achieve this feat.
Scientists have characterized the broad genetic patterns that are shared across 14 psychiatric disorders. Could it reframe how mental-health conditions are diagnosed?
A Review of the impacts of short-lived halogens on air quality and climate identifies gaps in our knowledge of short-lived halogen emissions, chemistry, and the environmental and climate impacts.
The question of where eddies come from is immortalized in verse, and an earwig emerges remarkably unscathed from inside a vacuum tube, in this week’s peek at Nature’s archive.
Conversations with AI can sway people’s political views. Concerningly, a chatbot’s facts are not always accurate, especially when it supports right-wing positions.
For decades, creating a large, glasses-free 3D display that looks like a real window has been a challenge because screens broadcast image information wastefully. Artificial intelligence has now been used to focus light only on the viewer’s eyes, delivering a seamless 3D experience using a low-cost display the size of a standard computer monitor.
A stem-cell-based monkey embryo model that self-organizes into a comprehensive body plan could lead the way to more-sophisticated models of early human development.
What happens to the thousands of intestinal cells that have tumour-initiating DNA mutations? A study in mouse models shows that most are eliminated by strong negative selection, but those that survive create a more-permissive environment for subsequent mutations, opening up routes for cancer to develop.
Light reflected from satellites pollutes the images taken by telescopes orbiting Earth, as well as those on the ground. Without mitigations, this will only get worse.
A particle called the sterile neutrino could explain anomalies in high-energy physics. The range of conditions in which it could be found has become narrower.
Places in England still using local mean time in 1875, and Niels Bohr delivers a talk on the latest in quantum theory, in this week’s peek at Nature’s archive.
