Patrick Stewart dies: how Captain Picard inspired today’s science leaders
Actor Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard.Credit: RGR Collection/Alamy Researchers have joined the chorus of Star Trek fans…
Is research funding now a lottery? Elite funder ERC swamped by applications
When grant programmes’ success rates are pushed down below a certain threshold, they essentially become a lottery.Credit: javier…
Stone and water governed early human settlement of the desert
Timmermann, A. & Friedrich, T. Late Pleistocene climate drivers of early human migration. Nature 538, 92–95 (2016). Article …
The Selfish Gene, 50 years on — it’s time for an update
I first read The Selfish Gene in the 1980s, as a graduate student in neurobiology and animal behaviour.…
Moderna mRNA vaccine almost halves the risk of skin cancer returning
Severe sunburn increases the risk of developing melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer.Credit: Olga Pankova/Getty A…
The contribution of salt marshes to wave attenuation during extreme storms
Large-scale assessment of vegetation breakage and wave attenuationThe Delta Flume and the physical model The physical model was…
World’s timekeepers upend how they adjust time to avoid catastrophic ‘negative second’
Metrologists retire the leap second immediately, instead of by 2035. Credit: Alejandro Martinez Velez/Europa Press via Getty Time…
Global conservation area coverage substantially exceeds current estimates
Selection of sample area Our analysis built upon a previous study8 that identified 10% of the terrestrial realm…
US proposes $100,000 charge for international students to do post-graduate work
Universities in the United States would have to pay as much as US$100,000 for one of their graduates…
Flu season could kick off ‘incredibly’ early — what scientists are watching
A variant of the H1N1 influenza virus is dominating flu season in the Northern Hemisphere so far this…
Nobel physics prize awarded for detection of cosmic neutrinos
Francis Halzen received the Nobel Prize in Physics on 6 October for his contributions to neutrino physics.Credit: Althea…
Butterfly wing patterns in flight create powerful illusory motion cues
Temporally fluid motion measures To quantify the influence of butterfly wings and their patterns on motion detection, we…