Category: Science and Nature

  • Daily briefing: The poetry hidden in PhD thesis acknowledgements

    Daily briefing: The poetry hidden in PhD thesis acknowledgements

    Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. Ice-core containers are stacked high at the US National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility in Denver, Colorado.Credit: Curt LaBombard Ancient-ice archive gets ‘future-proofed’ The refrigeration system that houses the largest collection of climate-tracking ice cores is…

  • Science Based Targets Network Releases Updated Guidance for Science-Based Targets on Nature

    Science Based Targets Network Releases Updated Guidance for Science-Based Targets on Nature

    Listen to this story: Key Impact Points: Enhances corporate ambition and credibility in nature-based target-setting. Provides structured guidance to prioritize and implement science-based targets. Promotes collaboration across sectors for comprehensive environmental action. SBTN Launches Updated Target-Setting Guide for Corporate Sustainability In a significant move towards advancing corporate sustainability, the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) has…

  • The geneticist who uses science to free parents wrongly convicted of killing their children

    The geneticist who uses science to free parents wrongly convicted of killing their children

    Carola Vinuesa helped to overturn the conviction of a mother jailed for killing her children.Credit: Michael Bowles/Francis Crick Institute Working scientist profiles This article is part of an occasional series in which Nature profiles scientists with unusual career histories or outside interests. Carola Vinuesa’s story lies at the intersection of an unusual Venn diagram: her…

  • India’s rich science history archives are at risk

    India’s rich science history archives are at risk

    A painting by an unknown artist showing the interior of the Madras Observatory. Credit: John Goldingham/The Royal Society Archives, London India’s efforts to build diverse science archives are hindered by a lack of trained professionals, long-term positions, and relevant academic programmes, science historians and archivists say.They fear that in the absence of standardized preservation protocols,…

  • Many plant names are offensive: botanists will vote on whether to change them

    Many plant names are offensive: botanists will vote on whether to change them

    George Hibbert, an eighteenth-century English merchant who profited from the slave trade and fought abolition, lends his name to a genus of flowering shrubs.Credit: Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru – The National Library of Wales Plant scientists are set to decide on whether to rid their field of offensive names. This week, the group that sets the…

  • Science on the edge: how extreme outdoor skills enhanced our fieldwork

    Science on the edge: how extreme outdoor skills enhanced our fieldwork

    One summer evening in 2004, around the campfire during a rock climbing trip to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky, Doug Benn, a glaciologist at the University of St Andrews, UK, shared a photo with Jason Gulley. It was a picture of a 6-metre-deep hole, shaped like an upside down ‘L’ in the walls of…

  • Forces

    Forces

    In particular, the weak force can change one quark type into another. Protons and neutrons are made of two quark varieties, up and down. The weak force can turn a down quark in a neutron into an up quark, which would change the neutron into a proton and switch its electric charge from neutral to…

  • Evolving scientific discovery by unifying data and background knowledge with AI Hilbert

    Evolving scientific discovery by unifying data and background knowledge with AI Hilbert

    Abstract The discovery of scientific formulae that parsimoniously explain natural phenomena and align with existing background theory is a key goal in science. Historically, scientists have derived natural laws by manipulating equations based on existing knowledge, forming new equations, and verifying them experimentally. However, this does not include experimental data within the discovery process, which…

  • Dinosaur Day

    Dinosaur Day

    Join Texas Science & Natural History Museum to celebrate the prehistoric titans who still have so much to teach us millions of years after they roamed the planet! Enjoy special educational and interactive activities and bring fossils for in-person identification by a paleontologist (ID sessions take place from 10am-12pm and 1-3pm) . Learn about extinct…

  • A global perspective on social stratification in science

    A global perspective on social stratification in science

    Abstract To study stratification among scientists, we reconstruct the career-long trajectories of 8.2 million scientists worldwide using 12 bibliometric measures of productivity, geographical mobility, collaboration, and research impact. While most previous studies examined these variables in isolation, we study their relationships using Multiple Correspondence and Cluster Analysis. We group authors according to their bibliometric performance…