The Best of nature
20+ most popular nature articles, as voted by our community.
Research, News, and Commentary from Nature, the international journal of science. For daily science news, get Nature Briefing: http://go.nature.com/naturebriefing
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New this Week
These are fresh off the press.
Chronic stress can inflame the gut — now scientists know why
Signals originating in the brain make their way to gut nerve cells, leading to a release of inflammatory chemicals.
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Five things I wish academia understood about my social anxiety
I’ve learnt to overcome some aspects of my social anxiety, but I hope sharing my experiences can help others recognize the difficulties faced by scientists like me.
Light waves squeezed through ‘slits in time’
A mirror that rapidly turns on and off alters the waveform of a reflected laser pulse in a way characteristic of Thomas Young’s classic double-slit experiment.
Mars rocks await a ride to Earth — can NASA deliver?
The stakes are high as the agency contemplates the technological and financial hurdles ahead for its sample-return mission.
Ageing-associated changes in transcriptional elongation influence longevity
Increases in transcriptional elongation speed with age affect organismal lifespan and ageing-related changes could be reversed with lifespan-extending interventions.
Cellular senescence and senolytics: the path to the clinic
Cellular senescence has emerged as a promising therapeutic target for disorders across the lifespan; this Review highlights the most promising strategies for translating senescence-targeting interventions into clinical use in the near future.
nature on Cancer
Cancer: The Ras renaissance
Thirty years of pursuit have failed to yield a drug to take on one of the deadliest families of cancer-causing proteins. Now some researchers are taking another shot.
nature on Health
Your brain could be controlling how sick you get — and how you recover
Scientists are deciphering how the brain choreographs immune responses, hoping to find treatments for a range of diseases.
What humanity should eat to stay healthy and save the planet
What we eat needs to be nutritious and sustainable. Researchers are trying to figure out what that looks like around the world.
«“which sea foods can we choose that are healthy for the ecosystem as well as healthy in the diet”»
nature on Medicine
AI in health and medicine
AI has the potential to reshape medicine and make healthcare more accurate, efficient and accessible; this Review discusses recent progress, opportunities and challenges toward achieving this goal.
nature on Nature
The best science images of 2022
An almighty eruption, the cosmos remastered, swirling cells and more.
First monkey–human embryos reignite debate over hybrid animals
The chimaeras lived up to 19 days — but some scientists question the need for such research.
«Japan lifted its ban on experiments with animal embryos containing human cells in 2019 and began funding such work that year.»
nature on Psychiatry
How ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry
Regulators will soon grapple with how to safely administer powerful psychedelics for treating depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
On the troubling trail of psychiatry’s pseudopatients stunt
Susannah Cahalan’s investigation of the social-psychology experiment that saw healthy people sent to mental hospitals finds inconsistencies.
nature on Quantum Computing
Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor
Quantum supremacy is demonstrated using a programmable superconducting processor known as Sycamore, taking approximately 200 seconds to sample one instance of a quantum circuit a million times, which…
Towards quantum computers that are robust to errors
In a superconducting quantum processor, error suppression improved as the system size was increased.
nature on Racism
‘It’s a constant hum’: a planetary geologist calls out racism in academia
Martha Gilmore has faced not only accusations of theft and lying, but also quiet isolation and the pain of watching racism bear down on others.
nature on Science
Adding is favoured over subtracting in problem solving
People tend to solve problems by adding features.
«Moreover, people could assume that existing features are there for a reason, and so looking for additions would be more effective.»
How philosophy is making me a better scientist
Rasha Shraim’s education helped her to think more deeply about ethics, logic and other big questions.
«Philosophy has expanded my critical and creative thinking. Philosophical arguments often lead to imaginative edge cases and a dive into hypotheticals, which I frequently find creatively stimulating.»
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Tips from neuroscience to keep you focused on hard tasks
Understanding cognitive control can help your working life, says David Badre.
«returning to a hard task in this way comes with a ‘restart’ cost»
Can lab-grown brains become conscious?
A handful of experiments are raising questions about whether clumps of cells and disembodied brains could be sentient, and how scientists would know if they were.
Why thinking hard makes us feel tired
Difficult tasks can lead to build-up of a signalling molecule in the brain, triggering fatigue.
«participants who spent more than six hours working on a tedious and mentally taxing assignment had higher levels of glutamate — an important signalling molecule in the brain.»
The hidden links between mental disorders
Psychiatrists have a dizzying array of diagnoses and not enough treatments. Hunting for the hidden biology underlying mental disorders could help.
Unseating big pharma: the radical plan for vaccine equity
Charity failed to provide adequate vaccines for the global south. Now, 15 countries are seeing whether an open-science model can end a dangerous legacy of dependency.
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