-
Review: SECOND SHIFT — A Beautiful Science Fiction Enigma
Since the dawn of science fiction, the concept of isolation has been a central theme. Whether it is a lone traveller on the verge of discovering new worlds, or the creation of something new thrust into a world it doesn’t understand and left to its own devices to discover who they are, these stories persevere.…
-
Sex and environment shape cochlear sensitivity in human populations worldwide
Abstract Hearing remains an underexplored aspect of human evolution. While the growing prevalence of hearing issues worldwide highlights the need to investigate factors beyond age, ototoxic substances, and recreational noise— factors affecting only a subset of the population —the role of environmental influences remains relatively unaddressed. In contrast, hearing and vocalizations have been extensively studied…
-
AI is transforming peer review — and many scientists are worried
This February, ecologist Timothée Poisot was surprised when he read through the peer reviews of a manuscript he had submitted for publication. One of the referee reports seemed to have been written with, or perhaps entirely by, artificial intelligence (AI). It contained the telltale sentence, “Here is a revised version of your review with improved…
-
New lasso-shaped antibiotic kills drug-resistant bacteria
Download the Nature Podcast 26 March 2025 In this episode: 00:46 Newly discovered molecule shows potent antibiotic activity Researchers have identified a new molecule with antibiotic activity against a range of disease-causing bacteria, including those resistant to existing drugs. The new molecule — isolated from soil samples taken from a laboratory technician’s garden — is…
-
New antibiotic that kills drug-resistant bacteria discovered in technician’s garden
A species of Paenibacillus bacteria has potent antibacterial activity against some pathogenic bacteria such as Escherichia coli.Credit: Clouds Hill Imaging Ltd/Science Photo Library Researchers have discovered a new antibiotic molecule that targets a broad range of disease-causing bacteria — even strains resistant to commercial drugs — and is not toxic to human cells1. The molecule…
-
Applications of natural language processing and large language models in materials discovery
Abstract The transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on materials science has revolutionized the study of materials problems. By leveraging well-characterized datasets derived from the scientific literature, AI-powered tools such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) have opened new avenues to accelerate materials research. The advances in NLP techniques and the development of large language…
-
Free-energy machine for combinatorial optimization
Abstract Finding optimal solutions to combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) is pivotal in both scientific and industrial domains. Considerable efforts have been invested on developing accelerated methods utilizing sophisticated models and advanced computational hardware. However, the challenge remains to achieve both high efficiency and broad generality in problem-solving. Here we propose a general method, free-energy machine…
-
Why Africans should be telling the story of human origins
Changemakers This Nature Q&A series celebrates people who fight racism in science and who champion inclusion. It also highlights initiatives that could be applied to other scientific workplaces. One of the world’s top hunters of hominid fossils, palaeoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie, appears on the Zoom screen from his home in Arizona, wearing a casual collared shirt.…
-
Does sharing first authorship on a paper carry a penalty? What the research says
A second-place slot on a paper’s author list did not reduce a co-first author’s perceived academic competence, a study found. Credit: Getty Who gets to be first? The question of whether a paper should have more than one first author can lead to fraught negotiations. And the discussions can be just as thorny when deciding…
-
What CERN does next matters for science and for international cooperation
Researchers at CERN in 2012, including its then director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer (second right) and current director-general Fabiola Gianotti (centre), anxiously await confirmation that the Higgs boson had finally been found.Credit: Denis Balibouse/Reuters Fresh from their historic discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, researchers using CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the main particle accelerator at…