The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice Simon Parkin Scribner (2024) After Simon Parkin’s account of the siege of Leningrad and the fate of the world’s first proper seed bank, after his postscript, afterword and acknowledgements, there are nine pages that — for people who know the story — are…

Scientific partnership between the United States and China is at risk — and it cannot be allowed to deteriorate.Credit: Dilok Klaisataporn/Getty As the political relationship between the United States and China has frayed, the scientific ties between them have become thinner and more fragile. This is a dangerous trend. Working together, scientific communities in the…

Research Staff Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, MGH, Harvard Medical School Charlestown, MA United States Instructor, Assistant Professor, A… Charlestown, Massachusetts (US) Massachusetts General Hospital/Martinos Center

The teaching aspects of graduate-student roles can be particularly stressful for many people.Credit: Maya/Getty Graduate students with anxiety and depression say that their symptoms are exacerbated by the pressures of research and teaching, fuelled by overly harsh criticism and being held to unreasonable expectations, a survey finds. Those who self-identified as having severe anxiety or…

Careers fairs are formal recruitment channels, but some recruiters prefer to hire from their professional networks.Credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg/Getty Every year, tens of thousands of people around the world apply for research jobs armed with postgraduate qualifications and specialized knowledge, only for their carefully crafted applications to seemingly vanish into a digital void. At the…

Abstract In the domain of spectroscopy, miniaturization efforts often face significant challenges, particularly in achieving high spectral resolution and precise construction. Here, we introduce a computational spectrometer powered by a nonlinear photonic memristor with a WSe2 homojunction. This approach overcomes traditional limitations, such as constrained Fermi level tunability, persistent dark current, and limited photoresponse dimensionality…

Some researchers think AI systems will reach human-level intelligence soon; others think it’s far away.Credit: Getty The technology firm OpenAI made headlines last month when its latest experimental chatbot model, o3, achieved a high score on a test that marks progress towards artificial general intelligence (AGI). OpenAI’s o3 scored 87.5%, trouncing the previous best score…

A tobacconist kiosk in Krakow, Poland, where researchers and anti-smoking campaigners were labelled ‘militant extremists’.Credit: Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Scientists who study harms caused by tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed foods can face cyberattacks, lawsuits, surveillance and physical violence, a study finds. Many are labelled extremists, fascists, zealots and prohibitionists, it adds. The study is a review of…

Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. Staphylococcus bacteria are responsible for many infectious diseases.Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/SPL Ten bacteria hog scientists’ attention Scientists have identified more than 45,000 bacterial species — but just a handful of these have been deeply studied. Paul Jensen,…

Staphylococcus bacteria are responsible for many infectious diseases.Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/SPL Paul Jensen, a microbial-systems biologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, wanted to see whether artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as large language models, could synthesize research on different microorganisms. So he located all the relevant papers on a bacterial species that his…