Biomolecular analysis shows that unusual book coverings are made of sealskin, hinting at far-flung trade networks.

Oil and water contained in a cylinder with magnetic nickel particles form the shape of a Grecian urn.

A host of legal claims aim to roll back the Trump administration’s grant terminations, indirect-cost cap and more.

Blimp-shaped experiment shows the particle is at least one million times lighter than an electron.

Damage done to the skin can increase the risk of an allergic reaction in other organs.

Heaviest known elementary particles and their antimatter counterparts are detected after nuclear smash-ups at the Large Hadron Collider.

Algorithms for studying knots and other topological objects could have a quantum advantage.

Nature analyses which fields of science and US states are being hit hardest by grant terminations.

How we can reduce our dogs' surprisingly large environmental footprint. Plus, the most detailed wiring diagram of a mammalian brain to date and the complete sequenced genomes of not one, but six ape species.

Analysis of ancient proteins identifies jawbone as belonging to archaic human group.

Correction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08316-w Published online 8 january 2025

Long-COVID advocates in the United States have managed to get millions of dollars in grants cancelled by the Trump administration restored. Plus, the origin of mpox might be a squirrel native to Africa and how vaccines have saved 154 million lives.

The pure mapping class group of an oriented surface acts on the character variety of the surface. We investigate the closure of its orbits under either Zariski or analytic topologies. We show that a generic infinite orbit is dense in an open subset of the corresponding modified relative character variety. Moreover, we specify that being generic can be captured as a combination of passing to a Zariski-open

Social institutions are systems of shared norms and rules that regulate people’s behaviors, often emerging without external enforcement. They provide criteria to distinguish cooperation from defection and establish rules to sustain cooperation, shaped through long-term trial and error. While principles for successful institutions have been proposed, the mechanisms underlying their emergence remain

When soft matter is driven out of equilibrium its constituents interact via effective interactions that escape Newton’s action–reaction principle. Prominent examples include the hydrodynamic interactions between colloidal particles driven in viscous fluids, phoretic interactions between chemically active colloids, and quorum-sensing interactions in bacterial colonies. Despite a recent surge of interest

Metastasis is an inefficient process requiring cancer cells to adapt metabolically for survival and colonization in new environments. The contributions of tumor metabolic reprogramming to lymph node (LN) metastasis and its underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Through single-cell RNA sequencing, we identified rare metastasis-initiating cells (MICs) with stem-like properties that drive early LN metastasis

Differentially private gradient descent (DP-GD) is a popular algorithm to train deep learning models with provable guarantees on the privacy of the training data. In the last decade, the problem of understanding its performance cost with respect to standard GD has received remarkable attention from the research community, which has led to upper bounds on the excess population risk R P in different

Ecosystems are experiencing changing global patterns of mean annual precipitation (MAP) and enrichment with multiple nutrients that potentially colimit plant biomass production. In grasslands, mean aboveground plant biomass is closely related to MAP, but how this relationship changes after enrichment with multiple nutrients remains unclear. We hypothesized the global biomass–MAP relationship becomes

Natural transformation (NT) represents one of the major modes of horizontal gene transfer in bacterial species. During NT, cells can take up free DNA from the environment and integrate it into their genome by homologous recombination. While NT has been studied for >90 y, the molecular details underlying this recombination remain poorly understood. Recent work has demonstrated that ComM is an NT-specific

Monoclonal antibody IE-3 prevents mouse fertilization by binding ZP2, a major component of the oocyte-specific zona pellucida (ZP). We show that an IE-3-derived single-chain variable fragment (scFV) is sufficient for blocking fertilization in vitro and determine the structural basis of IE-3/ZP2 recognition. The high affinity of this interaction depends on induced fit of the epitope, offering insights

Unraveling the relationship between structural information and the dynamic properties of supercooled liquids is one of the great challenges of physics. Dynamic heterogeneity, characterized by the propensity of particles, is often used as a proxy for dynamic slowing. Over the years, significant efforts have been made to capture the structural variations linked to dynamic heterogeneity in supercooled

Researchers are key contributors to innovation. Their migration results in talent circulation and recombination of ideas. Due to data shortage, little is known about subnational mobility of scientists and the interrelationships between their internal and international migration patterns. We used data on 30+ million Scopus publications of 19+ million authors to infer migration from changes in affiliations

In Drosophila ovaries, germ cells differentiate through several stages of cyst development before entering meiosis. This early differentiation program depends on both the stepwise deployment of specific regulatory mechanisms and on maintenance of germline sexual identity. The study of female sterile mutations that result in formation of germ cell tumors has been invaluable in identifying the mechanisms

The evolutionary adaptation of an organism to a stressful environment often comes at the cost of reduced fitness. For example, resistance to antimicrobial drugs frequently reduces growth rate in the drug-free environment. This cost can be compensated without loss in resistance by mutations at secondary sites when the organism evolves again in the stress-free environment. Here, we analytically and numerically

Data centres accounted for roughly 1.5% of global electricity consumption in 2024.

Neurons engineered to evade the immune system could work as cell-replacement therapy.

Researchers are experimenting with audio formats, and debating how to handle reviewer feedback.

Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 09 April 2025

People from modern Pakistan imported their musical technology all the way to what is now Oman.