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| The skin is dark — almost black — because oil was actively seeping into the cave where the skin was fossilizing, causing "a total permeation and encapsulation" of the organic materials with hydrocarbons. (Mooney et al./Current Biology) | |||||
Oldest reptile skin pre-dates the dinosaursA tiny shred of reptile skin that was 'pickled' in oil 289 million years ago is the oldest ever found for a group of animals collectively known as amniotes, which includes reptiles, birds and mammals. Researchers were able to cut through the fossilized skin and examine a cross-section, in which distinct layers of epidermis and dermis were visible. It's rare for soft, delicate skin to be preserved in the fossil record. This piece probably belonged to a small, lizard-like animal known as Captorhinus aguti. Nature | 4 min readReference: Current Biology paper | |||||
Medical AI struggles with new patientsAI tools designed to predict how people with schizophrenia will respond to different antipsychotic drugs failed to adapt to new patients. The algorithms worked well for people who were part of the models' training sample, but their performance dropped to little better than chance for subsets of the initial sample or for people who were part of an entirely different dataset. "It's a huge problem that people have not woken up to," says psychiatrist and study co-author Adam Chekroud. Nature | 4 min readReference: Science paper | |||||
Ancient Amazonian cities discoveredA civilization of interconnected cities — including houses, plazas, roads and canals — has been found hidden under vegetation in Ecuador. LIDAR imaging reveals settlements that are at least 2,500 years old and comparable in size to Mayan cities in Mexico and Central America. "This shows a very dense occupation and an extremely complicated society," says archaeologist Michael Heckenberger. "For the region, it's really in a class of its own in terms of how early it is." The Independent | 5 min readReference: Science paper | |||||
What counts as plagiarism?The resignation of Harvard University president Claudine Gay following plagiarism allegations has sparked a debate about when copying text should be punishable. Gay's dissertation and some papers contain passages copied without proper attribution, some suggest. Others argue that these are minor omissions. Some scientists are questioning the value of requiring fresh summaries of known facts in each new paper. "I think the idea that one should never ever copy somebody else's words is a bit outdated," says computational biologist Lior Pachter. Nature | 6 min read | |||||
Question of the weekThe notion that researchers must compose their own sentences, or else it's plagiarism, remains a bedrock principle for many. Others suggest that academics should be allowed to sample more liberally from the work of their peers to describe the scientific literature, provided that they cite the source — an approach called 'modular writing'. What do you think? | |||||
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How we can eradicate yawsThe skin infection yaws mostly affects children, and it is a "chronic, disfiguring and debilitating" disease, says Lydia Sahamie, a community health-care worker in Papua New Guinea, where the majority of cases are reported today. Researchers are cautiously optimistic that yaws could be wiped out by 2030, but antibiotic resistance and the existence of reservoirs of the disease in other primates are just some things that might get in the way. "The story has gotten a lot more complicated in the last five years," says global public-health researcher Camila González-Beiras. Nature | 11 min readThis article is part of Nature Outlook: Neglected tropical diseases, an editorially independent supplement funded by a grant from Merck Sharp & Dohme and with financial support from Moderna. | |||||
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Futures: MANNAA delicious fungus-based food transforms the future of humanity in the latest short story for Nature's Futures series. Nature | 6 min read | |||||
Five best science books this weekAndrew Robinson's pick of the top five science books to read this week includes a compelling collection of handwritten scientific documents and the inspirational autobiography of Nobel-prizewinning biochemist Katalin Karikó, which describes her vital and moving struggle for success. Nature | 4 min read | |||||
Podcast: Unmissable science of the new yearIf you took a break from science news as the calendar changed, fear not — the Nature Podcast has done a round-up of five stories from the holiday period you won't want to miss. In it, I give a special shout-out to all those Briefing readers who wrote in with suggestions on how to open the stuck lid of the OSIRIS-REx's sample-return canister, which is stuffed with asteroid material collected during the NASA mission. Update from NASA: they did it! Nature Podcast | 30 min listenSubscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify, or use the RSS feed. | |||||
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Quote of the day"It was our knowledge, and it was the knowledge of the keepers of traditional lands that has always been there. It's always been scientific."Anishinaabekwe permafrost researcher Nicole Corbiere says that she would like to see traditional and Western knowledge coexist, with the former providing historical context and the latter focusing on predictions. (Undark | 11 min read) | |||||
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What matters in science | View this email in your browser Tuesday 19 March 2024 Hello Nature readers, Today, we find out that snake meat could be a more efficient source of protein than mainstream agricultural species, learn about a scheme for universities to share information on harassers and hear from the scientists battling long COVID. Farmed reticulated pythons grow quickly when being fed trapped rodents or waste protein from other meat-producing industries. (Paul Starosta/Getty) ...
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