To deal with AI effects on grant fining “funding bodies should consider shifting the emphasis of evaluation away from written proposals & towards the principal investigator, their research team & their previous and ongoing research programmes”🧪 An interesting proposal that might create new problems?

A data set of thousands of advertisements selling research-paper authorships online sheds light on the global marketplace for academic fraud 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Yesterday I went to the book signing of ‘Beyond Belief’ by @helenpearson.bsky.social I am half way through it & already recommending it to all. An essential book for our times - why should we always ask for evidence & when should we believe it. But don’t just take my word for it, read it ;-) 🧪

We need to talk about failure in science. Everyone fails at some point at something & failure is an integral part of success. Our editorial this week is inspired by a recent meeting at @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social on this topic which I helped co -organise 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Meet Ace - an autonomous robot that can outplay elite table tennis players under official competition rules. Ace consists of a network of cameras, an AI-based control system and a high-speed robot arm with eight joints. I saw it in action at SONY; very impressive! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Forty years after Chornobyl, there’s a kind of nuclear renaissance & many think that civil nuclear technology is key to helping humanity manage & mitigate the effects of climate change. Regulation will be key & it’s everyone’s responsibility 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The Edelman Trust Barometer 2026 looks at trust & health. It finds that an alarming number of people believe claims for which there is no evidence, including about vaccines and raw milk @helenpearson.bsky.social for @nature.com 🧪 #MedSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

US speeds research into mind-altering drugs — including mysterious 'ibogaine' 🧪 #MedSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Is there life on Mars? Organic molecules from clay-bearing sandstones found by the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite onboard the Curiosity rover 🧪 @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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

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 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Scientists are going into politics in the US in increasing numbers. This is a brilliant and much needed trend 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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... 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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...

If ever there was a proof that scientists are human… 👇🏻 wait… could this have been an April fools’ joke? 🤔 @natmethods.nature.com 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Moon fly-by live coverage: Artemis crew see intriguing colours on lunar surface. Our correspondent, @alexwitze.bsky.social is reporting from Houston 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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 is taking humans farther from Earth than any human has before. A new era of exploration begins… 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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

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 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 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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… 🧪

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

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...

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

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 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 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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

This is important! A locally tailored, big-push intervention to educate unmarried adolescent girls in 18 communities in northern Nigeria reduced rates of marriage from 86% to just 21% 🧪 #policy #education www.nature.com/articles/d41...

China has just announced its new 5-year plan. In it, it is pledging to use ‘extraordinary measures’, including 10% science budget rise, to support its bid to become a global leader in AI, quantum technology & other cutting-edge technologies. Impressive! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cognitive decline in aging mice has been linked to accumulation of gut bacteria that produce medium-chain fatty acids which interferes with signalling along sensory nerves & triggers inflammation. A new therapy target if confirmed in humans? 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“There is a new type of politics that is undermining the credibility of official statistics” according to UNICEF chief statistician. Statistics reach a 'crisis point': nations struggle with a critical lack of data 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

‘Black rain’ in Tehran. Damage to Iran’s oil facilities had released toxic hydrocarbons, sulfur oxides and nitrogen compounds into the air; there are dire health effects 🧪 #MedSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

China increases science funding again (by at least 7-% over the next 5 years) as it pledges billion-dollar spending boost for science 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI is being used in warfare despite there being no agreed rules for this application. Researchers working on the most advanced AI models want rules to be drawn up to minimize the harm the technologies could cause. We agree; read our Nature editorial 🧪 @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

What does science really tell us about skincare? Skin is sometimes described as the largest organ in the human body. Turns out advice on how to look after it is rarely based on real science. Nor does it emphasize the link with overall health 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A really cool piece of research on this week’s cover - what happens when a soft material slides against a rigid body… like sneakers on a basket ball court? www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪 @nature.com

Ten years since the first reported observation of gravitational waves 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Is UK science in jeopardy? Huge funding reforms by UKRI spark chaos and anxiety #AcademicSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

First ‘practical PhDs’ awarded in China. Last month, Zheng Hehui defended his PhD thesis in civil engineering at Southeast University in Nanjing, but Zheng had not written a thesis. Instead, he talked about a product he had developed #AcademicSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

RIP Gladys Mae West, a US mathematician best known for her foundational work on GPS systems. At @springernature.com we remember her every day as a major communal space in our London offices is named after her 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This could be a real breakthrough in precision medicine… all down to a change in regulation. Instead of approving a specific treatment, what is being approved is a new “master protocol” for the treatment of groups of genetic conditions within a single framework #MedSky economist.com/science-and-...

Everyone should read this! 🧪 #AcademicSky When two years of academic work vanished with a single click www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Guinea-Bissau suspends a US-funded vaccine trial as African scientists question its motives. “African scientists say that the Guinea-Bissau study shows how political pressure, funding interests & fragmented oversight can push local health priorities aside.” 🧪 #MedSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Hi @magdalenaskipper.bsky.social with us in May #Crick @matthewcobb.bsky.social General bookings from1st Feb www.campdenmayfestivals.co.uk/literature/e...