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Carbon bond that uses only one electron seen for first time: ‘It will be in the textbooks’
The observation of a single-electron bond in carbon, the basic building block of life on Earth, has excited scientists.Credit: Dominick Reuter/AFP via Getty For a little more than a century, chemists have believed that strong atomic links called covalent bonds are formed when atoms share one or more electron pairs. Now, researchers have made the…
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Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes
A woman with type 1 diabetes started producing insulin (blue) after a stem cell transplant.Credit: Lennart Nilsson, Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, TT/Science Photo Library A 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than three months after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells1. She is the first person with the…
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Bright compact ultrabroadband source by orthogonal laser-sustained plasma
Abstract Laser-sustained plasma (LSP) source featuring high brightness and broadband spectral coverage is found to be powerful in various fields of scientific and industrial applications. However, the fundamental limit of low conversion efficiency constrains the system compactness and widespread applications of such broadband light sources. In this paper, we propose an innovative orthogonal LSP to…
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Data integrity concerns flagged in 130 women’s health papers — all by one co-author
Duplicated text and unusual statistics have been flagged in 130 studies by a single physician-researcher and his co-authors.Credit: Getty A team of scientist–sleuths has flagged data-integrity concerns in 130 studies authored by the same biomedical researcher, a specialist in women’s health and gynaecology, and his colleagues. The sleuths published their findings in a peer-reviewed paper…
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How I apply Indigenous wisdom to Western science and nurture Native American students
Changemakers This Nature Q&A series celebrates individuals who have fought racism in science and who champion inclusion. The series often highlights initiatives that could be applied to other scientific workplaces. So far, 64 undergraduate students at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, have come home from their first year with new hiking boots, sturdy socks…
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The trials and triumphs of sustainable science
The Carbon Neutral Laboratory at the University of Nottingham, UK, consumes less than 40% of the power used by a typical lab of similar size.Credit: Martine Hamilton Knight Photography As chief executive of My Green Lab, a non-profit organization in San Diego, California, James Connelly pays close attention to the marketing claims on scientific equipment…
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The human heart shows signs of ageing after just a month in space
NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are stuck on the ISS for months because of technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.Credit: NASA via AP/Alamy Over the course of just one month in space, engineered human heart tissue got weaker, its ‘beating’ patterns became irregular and it underwent molecular and genetic changes that mimicked the…
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Putting a spotlight on diversity, equity, and inclusion
We present a Focus that calls attention to the current state of diversity, equity, and inclusion in computational science, including discussions on the challenges of improving equitable access and representation, as well as on strategies for improving computational tools to avoid contributing to inequalities. At Nature Computational Science and the Nature Portfolio, one of our…
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Scientists successfully ‘nuke asteroid’ — in a lab mock-up
Scientists and science-fiction writers have long asked whether a nuclear explosion could change the course of an asteroid headed for Earth (artist’s impression).Credit: Detlev Van Ravenswaay/Science Photo Library A blast of X-rays from a nuclear explosion should be enough to save Earth from an incoming asteroid, according to the results of a first-of-its-kind experiment. The…
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Scientists are building giant ‘evidence banks’ to create policies that actually work
Education is one sector that is creating a database that brings together research on how to boost learning.Credit: Martin Bureau/AFP via Getty Funders are injecting tens of millions of dollars into an ambitious plan to solve the biggest problem in science advice: supplying evidence to governments. Their goal is to build a system that allows…