Category: Science and Nature

  • Urban heat stress triggering plant evolution

    Urban environments are built from impermeable surfaces such as asphalt, concrete, brick and stone — materials highly efficient at absorbing and re-emitting heat. This study begins with a simple but striking observation. Occupying diverse habitats, O. corniculata exhibits a high degree of intraspecific variation in leaf colour, ranging from green to red. While rarely found…

  • Daily briefing: First spectacular images from the dark-energy telescope Euclid

    Daily briefing: First spectacular images from the dark-energy telescope Euclid

    Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. Yeast cells containing 7.5 synthetic chromosomes were able to bud normally, splitting into two cells.Credit: Cell/Zhao et al. Yeast created with half-synthetic genome Scientists have created a strain of brewer’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) whose genome is…

  • Researcher resignations from UKRI mount amid Israel–Hamas row

    Researcher resignations from UKRI mount amid Israel–Hamas row

    UKRI chief executive Ottoline Leyser (left) suspended an advisory group at the funder, following a letter from UK science minister Michelle Donelan.Credit: Jeff Morgan/Alamy, Christopher Furlong/Getty More than a dozen researchers have resigned from voluntary positions at the national funder UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), over a row in which the government demanded the dissolution…

  • Author Correction: Plastic pollution on the world’s coral reefs

    Correction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06113-5 Published online 12 July 2023 In the version of the article initially published, the Acknowledgements section omitted reference to the role of Brownies Global Logistics, the technical divers of Global Underwater Explorers (M. McClellan, M. Tanguay, S. Bird, K. Dow, G. Blackmore, J. P. Bressor, S. E. Kim, and K. Kim),…

  • An expandable voice user interface as lab assistant based on an improved version of Google’s speech recognition

    An expandable voice user interface as lab assistant based on an improved version of Google’s speech recognition

    Abstract Voice assistants are potentially helpful when working in a scientific laboratory. A big challenge is the extremely specific use of language in every laboratory. As with any voice assistant, another concern is data security. Here, we present Rainbow—an open source voice user interface (VUI) for scientific laboratories, that is adaptable to any Windows PC…

  • Tropical diseases move north

    Tropical diseases move north

    The mosquito Aedes Albopictus, which can carry some neglected tropical diseases, has spread across parts of Europe over the past four decades.Credit: Christophe Geyres/Abaca Press/Alamy Lire en français Europe long thought itself safe from neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Those old certainties have now evaporated. A warmer and wetter climate has made the continent more welcoming…

  • Climate change beliefs and their correlates in Latin America

    Climate change beliefs and their correlates in Latin America

    Abstract The ability of climate skeptics to block climate action depends on prevailing beliefs among the public. Research in advanced democracies has shown skepticism about the existence, the causes, and the consequences of climate change to be associated with socio-demographic features and political ideology. Yet, little is known about climate-related beliefs elsewhere. We address this…

  • No σ on σ

    Although its measurement was considered an experimental nightmare for decades, the Stefan–Boltzmann constant was assigned an exact value in 2019. Massimiliano Malgieri and Pasquale Onorato explain what this story teaches us. Because of their relationship to planetary radiative equilibrium and the greenhouse effect, the Stefan–Boltzmann law and constant are important factors in physics education. Students…

  • This hybrid baby monkey is made of cells from two embryos

    This hybrid baby monkey is made of cells from two embryos

    A chimaeric infant monkey has a tinge of green in its face and fingers, marking tissue derived from embryonic stem cells that were injected into a recipient embryo.Credit: Cao et al./Cell Scientists have created an infant ‘chimaeric’ monkey by injecting a monkey embryo with stem cells from a genetically distinct donor embryo1. The resulting animal…

  • To promote healthy aging, focus on the environment

    To promote healthy aging, focus on the environment

    Abstract To build health equity for an aging world marked by dramatic disparities in healthy lifespan between countries, regions and population groups, research at the intersections of biology, toxicology and the social and behavioral sciences points the way: to promote healthy aging, focus on the environment. In this Perspective, we suggest that ideas and tools…