A train cuts through winter smog in Amritsar, India.Credit: Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty A toxic haze has descended over a land area shared by some 500 million people in the northern parts of India and Pakistan. Its sources include the industrial emissions, domestic fires and diesel and petrol exhausts that form the largest components of air pollution…

Early-careers researchers in China need highly sought-after grants to progress in their career.Credit: Xinhua/Shutterstock Scientists in many countries face intense competition for research funding, but the situation in China is particularly fierce, say researchers, especially for those in their early career. To address this, one of the country’s largest funders of basic research, the National…

Early voting is already taking place in the 2024 US presidential election. Here, voters mark their ballots at a location in Virginia.Credit: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty The US presidential election has divided a nation, but scientists seem to be on the same page. Researchers inside and outside the United States overwhelmingly favour the Democratic candidate…

Abstract Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) requires substantial computational resources for model training and inference, but the electronic-waste (e-waste) implications of GAI and its management strategies remain underexplored. Here we introduce a computational power-driven material flow analysis framework to quantify and explore ways of managing the e-waste generated by GAI, with a particular focus on large…

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump at their first (and only) televised debate, on 10 September.Credit: J Matt/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock Next week, US voters will go to the polls to elect a new president, along with members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. This election will take place at a time of extreme uncertainty,…

Far-right leader Geert Wilders heads the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), which is in a coalition government that is seeking cuts to the research budget.Credit: Remko de Waal/ANP via Alamy A surge in far-right parties entering governments across Europe is raising concerns for science. The parties, whose focus is typically immigration, care little about research,…

After graduating from the medical and biological illustration programme at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Shiz Aoki fulfilled a long-held dream: she launched her own company. Founded in 2010 in Toronto, Canada, Anatomize Studios works with large clients — pharmaceutical companies, magazines and medical professionals with niche needs and capacious budgets. Yet Aoki would…

Garden and landscape design is uniquely concerned with direct relations among art, science, and nature. It operates exactly at the frontier between people and nature, developing transitional connecting zones between the outside limits of buildings and engineering structures and the natural forms and processes that surround them. This is true for large houses and gardens…