The Best of nature
20+ most popular nature articles, as voted by our community.
New this Week
These are fresh off the press.
Persistent interaction patterns across social media platforms and over time
Long conversations online consistently exhibit higher toxicity, yet toxic language does not invariably discourage people from participating in a conversation, and toxicity does not necessarily escalate as discussions evolve.
Trending
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The new car batteries that could power the electric vehicle revolution
Researchers are experimenting with different designs that could lower costs, extend vehicle ranges and offer other improvements.
More than 2 million research papers have disappeared from the Internet
An analysis of DOIs suggests that digital preservation is not keeping up with burgeoning scholarly knowledge.
The ‘Bill Gates problem’: do billionaire philanthropists skew global health research?
Personal priorities are often trumping real needs and skewing where charitable funding goes.
Signs of ‘transmissible’ Alzheimer’s seen in people who received growth hormone
The findings support a controversial hypothesis that proteins related to the neurodegenerative disease can be ‘seeded’ in the brain through material taken from cadavers.
Mind-reading devices are revealing the brain’s secrets
Implants and other technologies that decode neural activity can restore people’s abilities to move and speak — and help researchers to understand how the brain works.
nature on Artificial Intelligence
ChatGPT broke the Turing test — the race is on for new ways to assess AI
Large language models mimic human chatter, but scientists disagree on their ability to reason.
«“It was not meant as a literal test that you would actually run on the machine — it was more like a thought experiment,” says François Chollet, a software engineer at Google who is based in Seattle, Washington.»
If AI becomes conscious: here’s how researchers will know
A checklist derived from six neuroscience-based theories of consciousness could aid in the assessment.
nature on Biology
Robust evidence of declines in insect abundance and biodiversity
Long-term standardized monitoring reveals the scale of biodiversity losses.
Parasitic infection increases risk-taking in a social, intermediate host carnivore
Wolf behavioural, spatial, and serological data over 26 years show that wolf territory overlap with areas of high cougar density is a significant predictor of T. gondii infection. Further, infection…
nature on Brain
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.
The brain cells linked to protection against dementia
People with an abundance of specific neurons are more likely to escape cognitive decline despite having signs of Alzheimer’s in their brains.
nature on Cancer
How a controversial US drug policy could be harming cancer patients worldwide
The FDA’s accelerated-approval process was designed to help people access life-saving drugs. But gaps in communication could mean that people are undergoing treatments known to be ineffective.
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 Drugs
Psychedelic drugs take on depression
Mind-altering drugs might provide relief for those who don’t respond to conventional therapies — but does the hype outweigh the hope?
nature on Medicine
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.
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 Psychedelics
Psychedelics promote plasticity by directly binding to BDNF receptor TrkB
Moliner et al. show that psychedelics directly bind to the BDNF receptor TrkB with high affinity and promote BDNF-mediated plasticity and antidepressant-like effects, whereas their hallucinogenic-like…
Characterization and prediction of acute and sustained response to psychedelic psilocybin in a mindfulness group retreat
Shared by 12, including Making Sense Podcast
nature on Quantum Computing
Quantum computers: what are they good for?
For now, absolutely nothing. But researchers and firms are optimistic about the applications.
Fusion-based quantum computation
Fusion gates are common operations in photonic quantum information platforms, where they are employed to create entanglement. Here, the authors propose a quantum computation scheme where the same…
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.»
Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?
A wave of departures, many of them by mid-career scientists, calls attention to widespread discontent in universities.
Popular
These are some all-time favorites with Refind users.
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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