The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster’s brain has been mapped in a project that discovered more than 4,500 new cell types.Credit: Solvin Zankl/Nature Picture Library The brain of a fruit fly is so small that it can fit on the head of a pin. And yet, it is an inordinately complex object, encompassing nearly 140,000 neurons…

Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. Credit: Petr Horalek/Astronomy Photographer of the Year The month’s best science images Bioluminescent plankton emit an otherworldly glow under the stars of the Southern Cross constellation in this image taken by astrophotographer Petr Horálek in the…

Every day around mid-morning, Joan retreats into the bedroom of her central Massachusetts home. She lowers the window blinds, settles into her favourite armchair and puts on a special headset. For an hour, she surrenders to an immersive audiovisual experience of rhythmic clicking and flashing lights — tuned to repeat 40 times a second. Designed to…

The United Nations Summit of the Future took place shortly before the start of the General Assembly (pictured).Credit: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek/Getty Last week’s United Nations General Assembly debate saw a lot of anger. Some was directed at the UN, some at powerful nations, for their seeming inability or unwillingness to do more to tackle the world’s…

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Technology firm OpenAI released a preview version of its latest chatbot, o1, last month.Credit: GK Images/Alamy Researchers who helped to test OpenAI’s new large language model, OpenAI o1, say it represents a big step up in terms of chatbots’ usefulness to science. Has your paper been used to train an AI model? Almost certainly “In…

The Stacks Journal is upending conventional peer review by introducing collaboration into the process.Credit: FangXiaNuo/Getty The peer-review system has been stressed and stretched to a near-breaking point. It’s becoming harder to find reviewers, many of whom see reviewing as a burden that is not adequately rewarded. The rise of predatory publishers, many of which falsely…

As the leaves turn and the weather changes, we invite you to “Fall into PBS,” a month-long celebration of the best of the best across four captivating categories: food, music, science, and film. Whether you’re a culinary enthusiast, a music lover, a science geek, or a film buff, there’s something for everyone this autumn. PBS…

As the Sugababes take the stage a few metres away, Eefje Schrauwen stands outside her assigned shipping container. There are other units on either side, each decorated differently. Her container bears a clothes line of women’s underwear — a cheeky nod to the science taking place inside. Schrauwen, an infectious-disease researcher at Avans University of…

The Many Lives of James Lovelock: Science, Secrets and Gaia Theory Jonathan Watts Canongate Books (2024) Today, it might seem self-evident that life on Earth shapes, and is shaped by, its environment. We learn in school that the oxygen we breathe is produced by plants, for instance. For those of us aware of the climate…