How hidden contributions power modern research The people who work behind the scenes to keep research moving say that there should be more recognition for their roles.

Research of today is a team sport. Much of it depends on scientists in research-support roles who remain largely unseen, uncredited and frequently underpaid.

Research is an ecosystem; every niche needs to be recognised

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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Magnetic muon measurements and gene-therapy advances win US$3-million Breakthrough prizes This year’s winners include hundreds of physicists across more than 30 institutions.

Magnetic muon measurements and gene-therapy advances win US$3-million Breakthrough prizes

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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“In southern Poland […] 80,000 people descend underground every day to extract thousands of tonnes of black rock – the same rock still used to produce half of the country’s electricity. But (it) is also the most complex laboratory of an already deeply complex European energy transition.”

AI speeds up design of devices that turn waste heat into electricity An artificial-intelligence system bypasses complex equations to predict the performance of thermoelectric generators.

TEGNet, a new neural-network-based system
speeds up design of devices that turn waste heat into electricity

New original work www.nature.com/articles/s41... in @nature.com

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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

‘Science needs defending’: record number of researchers run for office in US mid-terms Many Democrats making the switch to politics are motivated by the Trump administration’s cuts to science — whereas energy and AI are a pull for some Republicans.

Scientists are going into politics in the US in increasing numbers. This is a brilliant and much needed trend

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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Genetics reveal why people respond differently to GLP-1 weight-loss drugs Genetic variants in GLP1R and GIPR, which encode targets of GLP-1-based medications, offer insights into why responses to these drugs vary and who might face adverse effects.

Why do people respond differently to GLP-1 weight-loss drugs? Genetics has the answer - provided in this genome wide association study led by @adamauton.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Mini models of the human brain are revealing how this complex organ takes shape Lab-grown organoids are turbo-charging the study of human brain development and disease.

Many consider brain as the final frontier in biology of complex systems. It is just so complex & so tricky to study; brain organoids are changing this & revealing how the brain develops & what goes wrong in disease, and which treatments might be most promissing
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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

This is quite extraordinary- scientists set a kind of trap for AI chat bots by inventing a fake disease. AI told people it was real and… the deliberately bogus preprints started being cited in peer reviewed literature 🫣
🧪 #MedSky

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This article was published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, not in Nature. I have no oversight over its content

My favourite is “one-eyed pinhead” but I’m not entirely sure I ever believed the explanation behind this one…

If ever there was a proof that scientists are human… 👇🏻 wait… could this have been an April fools’ joke? 🤔 @natmethods.nature.com

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www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Moon fly-by live coverage: Artemis crew see intriguing colours on lunar surface Astronauts are flying by the Moon’s far side and setting records. Nature is in Houston with the mission’s scientists.

Moon fly-by live coverage: Artemis crew see intriguing colours on lunar surface. Our correspondent, @alexwitze.bsky.social is reporting from Houston

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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration Budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing.

NASA has just shared the first high-resolution images of the Earth taken by the Artemis II crew, meanwhile, massive budget cuts are once again proposed for US science, including for NASA

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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The carcinogenicity of e-cigarettes: a qualitative risk assessment Considering carcinogenic risk for vapers in comparison with never-users, findings 2017–25 from all types of investigation record increasing concern and tak

Nicotine-based e-cigarettes are likely to be carcinogenic to humans who use them causing an indeterminate burden of oral & lung cancer

Conclusion based on results of studies in mice 👇🏻
🧪 #MedSky

Carcinogenicity of e-cigarettes: a qualitative risk assessment url: academic.oup.com/carcin/artic...

Lift off! Artemis II mission sends humans to the Moon — opening a new era of exploration The astronauts will fly by the far side of the Moon in the coming days, taking in views never seen by the human eye.

Lift off! Artemis II mission is taking humans farther from Earth than any human has before. A new era of exploration begins…
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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Reproducibility and robustness of economics and political science research - Nature Robustness checks and reproduction of analyses with existing and updated data based on 110 articles in economics and political science journals with data and code-sharing requirements found high level...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Investigating the reproducibility of the social and behavioural sciences - Nature A study of reproducibility in a stratified random sample of 600 papers published from 2009 to 2018 in 62 journals spanning the social and behavioural sciences finds higher reproducibility among more&n...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Investigating the analytical robustness of the social and behavioural sciences - Nature When 100 social and behavioural science claims were examined, 34% of reanalyses closely matched the original results, with 74% reaching the same conclusion, revealing limited robustness of single...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Investigating the replicability of the social and behavioural sciences - Nature A large-scale study on the replicability of claims from social and behavioural science journals reports that about half of the results replicate in the same patterns as the original study.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cover of this week’s Nature featuring papers on reproducibility issues in social and behavioural sciences

More self-reflection in research can lead to better science - as shown by a package of social & behavioural sciences papers that shows how collaborating can further the cause of reproducible, replicable & robust findings
@nature.com 🧪 #SCORE
@briannosek.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My quote of the day

There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.

Jim Lovell

Humanity is heading back to the Moon — why aren’t more scientists thrilled? Some researchers remain underwhelmed by NASA’s upcoming lunar fly-by.

Artemis II mission will send humans back to the Moon for the first time since 1972. The first time around, in 1969 it was a global event that had almost everyone glued to the TV screens.
Turns out many scientists are not that excited by what’s scheduled for April 1st 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Artemis II mission is about to fly humans to the Moon — here’s the science they’ll do Set to lift off this week, the NASA flight will take astronauts around the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

Artemis II mission is about to fly humans to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years — here’s the science they’ll do

Read our great intro and explainer by @alexwitze.bsky.social
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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Book cover of a Polish edition of Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

Having just finished reading Lem’s Solaris, yesterday I saw the 1972 film directed by Tarkovsky.
The science may be a little out of date but the core message is as timely today as it was then - in the age of space exploration or AI what humans most need is other humans…
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A graph showing that China is ahead of the US, followed by S Korea in terms of the number of top AI researchers

China is winning the AI talent race

“In 2025, for the first time, more studies presented at the world’s top AI conference had lead authors based in China than in either America or Europe”

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economist.com/interactive/...
from The Economist

First atlas of brain organization shows development over a lifetime Scans of more than 3,500 people allow scientists to draw up a guide to the brain areas that work together from birth to 100 years old.

First atlas of brain organization shows development over a lifetime - from birth to 100 years!

The tour-de-force paper is here www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧪 @nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Africa after aid is more resilient than you might think Africa attracts record foreign investment as economies show resilience despite aid cuts and rising commodity costs from Middle East conflict.

This 👇🏻

Africa after aid is more resilient than you might think
economist.com/leaders/2026...
from The Economist

Static electricity is a big mystery — a jolt of fresh research could help to solve it The familiar phenomenon has puzzled researchers for centuries, but experiments are finally making sense of its unruly behaviours.

Hard to believe that static electricity is still a big mystery — Is it the electrons, ions or bits of material that transfer the charge? Why do some materials charge positively & others negatively? What happens when 2 samples of the same material come into contact? 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI is programmed to hijack human empathy — we must resist that As artificial intelligence begins to mimic consciousness with uncanny skill, we need design norms and laws that prevent it from being mistaken for sentient beings.

“AI agents should have no more rights or freedoms than my laptop”
“If society surrenders to the illusion of sentient AI, it risks entering a digital hall of mirrors from which it might never fully emerge” writes @mustafasuleymanai.bsky.social in our WorldView column
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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

How the classic computer game Doom became a tool for science The 1990s game has been run on bacteria and a satellite and played by neurons in a dish.

‘Can it run Doom?’ In the latest, scientists reported that they had taught neurons grown on a silicon chip to play the game
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www.nature.com/articles/d41...