Nature Summaries and Reviews
See all summaries and reviews from Nature at a glance.
How to Stop Cities and Companies Causing Planetary Harm
Researchers must help to define science-based targets for water, nutrients, carbon emissions and more to avoid cascading effects and stave off tipping points in Earth’s systems.
Nature, 2022
Cloud Labs: Where Robots Do the Research
A host of companies provide a remote, automated workforce for conducting experiments around the clock.
Nature, 2023
Guardians of the Brain
The brain’s borders teem with an army of immune cells that monitor and protect it.
Nature, 2022
DeepMind AI Learns Simple Physics Like a Baby
Neural network could be a step towards programs for studying how human infants learn.
Nature, 2022
Your Brain Expands and Shrinks Over Time – These Charts Show How
Based on more than 120,000 brain scans, the charts are still preliminary. But researchers hope they could one day be used as a routine clinical tool by physicians.
Nature, 2022
Lithium-Ion Batteries Need to Be Greener and Ethical
Batteries are key to humanity’s future – but they come with environmental and human costs, which must be mitigated.
Nature, 2021
Tropical Forests Have Big Climate Benefits Beyond Carbon Storage
Study finds that trees cool the planet by one-third of a degree through biophysical mechanisms such as humidifying the air.
Nature, 2022
Open-Source Language AI Challenges Big Tech’s Models
BLOOM aims to address the biases that machine-learning systems inherit from the texts they train on.
Nature, 2022
Landmark CRISPR Trial Shows Promise Against Deadly Disease
Administering gene-editing treatment directly into the body could be a safe and effective way to treat a rare, life-threatening condition.
Nature, 2021
Energy crisis: five questions that must be answered in 2023
Market turmoil and geopolitical realignment after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put livelihoods and the green-energy transition at risk. Here’s how researchers can help overcome the threats.
Nature, 2022
An AI Tool to Make Clinical Trials More Inclusive
An artificial-intelligence tool called Trial Pathfinder can run clinical-trial emulations using healthcare data from people with cancer, and can learn how to optimize trial-inclusion eligibility criteria, while maintaining patient safety.
Nature, 2021
Six Months of COVID Vaccines: What 1.7 Billion Doses Have Taught Scientists
As countries race to administer coronavirus vaccines, researchers are analysing the effects while a rash of viral variants raises concern.
Nature, 2021
Stem Cells 2 Go
Japan has turned regenerative medicine into a regulatory free-for-all. Patients across the world could pay the price.
Nature, 2019
Stocking the Shelves for the Next Pandemic
Despite previous warnings, drug makers failed to prepare a stockpile of compounds to fight viral pandemics. Can they finally do the right thing?
Nature, 2021
The Future Costs of Methane Emissions
An analysis of the costs of climate change caused by adding one tonne of methane to the atmosphere finds that high-income regions of the world should spend much more on efforts to lower such emissions than should low-income regions.
Nature, 2021
First Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Released in the United States
Biotech firm Oxitec launches controversial field test of its insects in Florida after years of opposition from residents and regulatory complications.
Nature, 2021
Deep-Sea Dilemma
Mining the ocean floor could solve mineral shortages – and lead to epic extinctions in some of the most remote ecosystems on Earth.
Nature, 2019
The Pain Gap
After decades of assuming that pain works the same way in all sexes, scientists are finding that different biological pathways can produce an ‘ouch!’.
Nature, 2019
Four Steps to Global Management of Space Traffic
Jamie Morin sets out the elements required to track satellites and avoid crashes.
Nature, 2019
Nuclear Energy, Ten Years after Fukushima
Amid the urgent need to decarbonize, the industry that delivers one-tenth of global electricity must consult the public on reactor research, design, regulation, location and waste.
Nature, 2021
Can Lab-Grown Brains Become Conscious?
A handful of experiments are raising questions about whether clumps of cells and disembodied brains could be sentient, and how scientists would know if they were.
Nature, 2020
How Does COVID Affect Mother and Baby?
Pregnant women fare worse than others, although the risks to the fetus are slight.
Nature, 2021
The Brain Inflamed
The brain’s immune system could be provoking Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Can scientists get it back in check?
Nature, 2018
Time Trials
Chronotherapy – the specific timing of drug delivery – has shown promise in clinical trials. But that may not be enough to overcome the practical challenges.
Nature, 2018
Gene-Edited Monkey Clones Stir Excitement and Debate
Genetically identical primates offer the best models of human disease, but raise ethical issues.
Nature, 2019
Protect the Neglected Half of Our Blue Planet
Maintaining momentum is crucial as nations build a treaty to safeguard the high seas, argue Glen Wright, Julien Rochette, Kristina M. Gjerde and Lisa A. Levin.
Nature, 2018
Dams Have the Power to Slow Climate Change
Mitigate global warming and produce clean, cheap hydropower at the same time, urges Mike Muller.
Nature, 2019
What’s Next for CRISPR Babies?
Following last year’s bombshell revelation, investigations mount and debates swirl about the future for gene-edited humans. Here are the four most pressing questions.
Nature, 2019
How China Could Be Carbon Neutral by Mid-Century
Our special report examines the role of renewables, nuclear power and carbon capture in reaching this ambitious goal.
Nature, 2020
Classify Viruses – The Gain Is Worth the Pain
Viruses hold solutions to a lot of problems, so let’s fund and reward cataloguing, urge Jens H. Kuhn and colleagues.
Nature, 2019
Resisting the Rise of Facial Recognition
Growing use of surveillance technology has prompted calls for bans and stricter regulation.
Nature, 2020
Beating Biometric Bias
The technology is improving – but the bigger issue is how it’s used.
Nature, 2020
Five Priorities for a Sustainable Ocean Economy
Unleash the ocean’s potential to boost economies sustainably while addressing climate change, food security and biodiversity.
Nature, 2020
Making Sense of Coronavirus Mutations
Different SARS-CoV-2 strains haven’t yet had a major impact on the course of the pandemic, but they might in future.
Nature, 2020
What Landmark COVID Vaccine Results Mean for the Pandemic
Scientists welcome the first compelling evidence that vaccines can prevent COVID-19 – but questions remain about how much protection they offer, and for how long.
Nature, 2020
Why Emergency COVID Vaccine Approvals Could Pose a Dilemma
If approval comes before clinical trials end, this could complicate the study of vaccines’ long-term effects
Nature, 2020
Mandate Vaccination with Care
Governments that are considering compulsory immunizations must avoid stoking anti-vaccine sentiment, argue Saad B. Omer, Cornelia Betsch and Julie Leask.
Nature, 2019
Should We Fertilize Oceans or Seed Clouds? No One Knows.
Gather scientific evidence on the feasibility and risks of marine geoengineering to guide regulation of research, advise Philip Boyd and Chris Vivian.
Nature, 2019
Regenerate Natural Forests to Store Carbon
Plans to triple the area of plantations will not meet 1.5 °C climate goals. New natural forests can, argue Simon L. Lewis, Charlotte E. Wheeler and colleagues.
Nature, 2019
Retire Statistical Significance
Valentin Amrhein, Sander Greenland, Blake McShane and more than 800 signatories call for an end to hyped claims and the dismissal of possibly crucial effects.
Nature, 2019
Here Come the Waves
After a clutch of historic detections, gravitational wave researchers have set their sights on some ambitious scientific quarry.
Nature, 2018
The Entangled Web
Quantum physics can already make communications super-secure. But exploiting some of its strangest properties could take these networks to the next level.
Nature, 2018
Sex, Drugs and Self-Control
It’s not just about rebellion. Neuroscience is revealing adolescents’ rich and nuanced relationship with risky behaviour.
Nature, 2017
