Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here.

Pig liver recipient ‘doing very well’

A 71-year-old man has become the first living person to receive a partial liver transplant from a genetically modified pig. The ten genetic modifications prevent the organ from being rejected. The liver appears to be functioning, producing bile and essential proteins, which is “very exciting news”, says transplant surgeon Burcin Ekser. Since 2022, four other people have received genetically modified pig organs, including hearts, kidneys and a thymus. Only the person who was operated on in mid-April is still alive.

Nature | 5 min read

Tech heavyweights brawl over ‘science’

If you do research and don’t publish it, is it science? That’s the question at the heart of an ongoing social media debate between X owner Elon Musk and pioneering computer scientist Yann LeCun. Some criticized LeCun’s definition of science as knowledge that is published, and tested for correctness and reproducibility. This “gatekeeps the idea that science is a method of understanding that people can use in their daily lives”, says computer scientist Peter Coveney. At the same time, he and others agreed with LeCun that more openness in research is needed.

Nature | 5 min read

Reference: X thread

Japan pushes for all open-access

Japan’s universities will receive 10 billion yen (around US$63 million) to build the digital infrastructure needed to make papers free to read. This will make Japan one of the first countries to move towards a unified record of all research produced by its academics. “Japan is way ahead of the rest of us,” says Kathleen Shearer from the Confederation of Open Access Repositories.

Nature | 4 min read

Features & opinion

Medieval hunters took down blue whales

DNA and spectroscopic evidence from whale bones suggest that Viking-age Icelanders scavenged and even hunted Earth’s biggest animal. While other traditional whaling cultures preferred slower or more coastal whales, medieval Icelanders favoured blue whales over any other species. It’s still unclear how they did this, armed only with spears and using open wooden boats. Perhaps blue whales were more abundant and lived closer to shore before industrial whaling started to decimate their population, theorizes environmental historian Vicki Szabo.

Hakai Magazine | 10 min read

Neuroscience shouldn’t harm trans people

“When it comes to transgender identity, knowledge cannot be pursued in isolation from the many societal factors that shape how that knowledge is received and acted on,” argues a team of neuroscientists and sexologists. More needs to be done to prevent studies from perpetuating stigmas that make it harder for trans people to access medical care, they say. Scientists should prioritize research that is likely to improve people’s lives while taking into account historic tension between the scientific and trans communities, the team adds.

Nature | 8 min read

Read more in Nature’s special collection on sex and gender in science

Futures: Your performance review

A cake shop owner gets an unpleasant surprise when she reviews employee records in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.

Nature | 6 min read

Podcast: Where’s my robot butler?

If we put the latest artificial intelligence (AI) systems into robots, could we finally have the robot butler that we’ve all been dreaming of? On this week’s Nature Podcast, Nature reporter Lizzie Gibney explores whether we could imbue robots with common-sense knowledge by giving them the same AI brains that power chatbots. There are some impressive demonstrations of AI-powered robots, but the road to actual deployment is long. “When you talk to roboticists, they say: ‘Most things fail most of the time’,” Gibney says. “That’s why they are very sceptical.”

Nature Podcast | 23 min listen

Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube Music, or use the RSS feed.