Neuralink human trial: what scientists think

What matters in science | 

View this email in your browser Monday 5 February 2024

Hello Nature readers, Today we gaze at the month's best science images, hear what scientists think of the Neuralink human trial and enjoy the solution to the riddle of 'Feynman's sprinkler'.

(Marcio Cabral)

The month's best science images This panoramic photo of Paepalanthus flowers under the Milky Way in Brazil's Chapada dos Veadeiros national park was a winner of a photography contest focusing on the natural world. To capture the shot, landscape photographer Marcio Cabral illuminated the flowers with a lamp and used a camera specialized for astrophotography. See more of the month's sharpest science shots, selected by Nature's photo team. Nature | Leisurely scroll

Scientists respond to Neuralink human trial Brain-computer-interface company Neuralink has reportedly implanted its 'brain-reading' device into a person for the first time. The implant is designed to record and decode individual neurons' activity, with the aim of allowing a person with severe paralysis to control, for example, a robotic arm. Experts are cautiously excited: this is the first fully wireless device of its kind, and it has more brain connections than other systems. There is frustration about Neuralink's lack of transparency: there's little information about the study and a tweet by the company's founder, controversial entrepreneur Elon Musk, is the only confirmation that the trial has begun. Nature | 6 min read

Flooding Gaza tunnels risks water supplies Israel's plan to flood underground tunnels in Gaza with seawater could reduce freshwater supplies in an area where safe drinking water is already scarce, warn some researchers. The Israeli military has begun to inject 'high-flow' seawater into the network of Hamas-built tunnels. It says that locations were chosen so that "groundwater in the area would not be compromised". There are also concerns that flooding the tunnels could endanger the approximately 130 remaining Israeli hostages who were abducted by Hamas in its attacks of 7 October 2023. Nature | 5 min read

US$10 trillion The benefits to health, livelihoods and the environment that could be achieved each year by more sustainable food systems, according to a new economic study. (The Guardian | 4 min read) Reference: Food System Economics Commission report

Building used by Curie to be preserved A building in Paris once used by chemist Marie Skłodowska-Curie to store radioactive materials will be moved, rather than demolished, following an outcry over plans to build a cancer-research centre on the site. "It will be dismantled and reassembled stone by stone a few dozen metres away," says French culture minister Rachida Dati. Reports that Curie's laboratory was facing the wrecking ball were based on a misrepresentation of the building's significance, say the Curie Institute's scientists. "Her lab is still there, it is maintained, we are not going to touch it," says Raphaël Rodriguez, a chemical biologist at the Curie Institute who is set to co-direct the new centre. "By doing cutting-edge research, we are maintaining the rich legacy of Marie Curie's excellence in research and medicine." Nature | 4 min read Sarah (writer/editor: Nisha)

Brazil's deforestation 'police' on strike Civil servants at the Brazilian government's environmental agencies have stopped field operations to demand more resources and better pay. "Our responsibilities increase while the number of servants decreases, and things get more difficult as work piles up," says Alexandre Gontijo from the Brazilian Forest Service. Researchers in Brazil support the movement and are calling on the government to invest in its workers. If demands aren't met, the workers might halt work altogether, which could also stop research that helps with environmental policymaking. Nature | 6 min read

Image of the week Lasers illuminate water laden with light-reflecting particles to show the jets hidden inside the 'reverse' sprinkler. (NYU's Applied Math Lab) 'Feynman's sprinkler' spin mystery solved In normal operation, an S-shaped lawn sprinkler rotates because of the 'jets' of water shooting from its nozzles. But if the sprinkler is underwater and sucking in water, which way does it spin? The riddle of 'Feynman's sprinkler' was popularized by physicist Richard Feynman. "The answer is perfectly clear at first sight," he wrote in his memoir Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. "The trouble was, some guy would think it was perfectly clear one way, and another guy would think it was perfectly clear the other way." The complexities of flow and turbulence mean that past experiments have given inconclusive or contradictory results (or, in Feynman's case, broken glass and a thorough soaking). Now, researchers have carefully designed a sprinkler to remove confounding effects and found that the underwater sprinkler rotates in the opposite direction to the normal one, but unsteadily, and about 50 times slower. Detailed observations backed up by mathematical modelling suggest that a weak jet effect inside the device dominates the sprinkler's motion. (ArsTechnica | 3 min read) Reference: Physical Review Letters paper

Features & opinion

Why tumour naming needs to change People with cancer are missing out on drugs that could help because of outdated naming conventions, argue five cancer researchers. Cancers are currently classified based on their organ of origin, such as lung, breast, kidney or brain. However, some drugs target gene mutations or other molecular features that are shared across many cancer types. Despite this, these drugs are sequentially trialled on each cancer type, meaning that many people who might benefit have to wait years to access the drug. "The community urgently needs to shift from using organ-based classifications of cancer to using molecular-based ones," write oncologist Fabrice André and his co-authors. "This will require radical changes in how medical oncology is structured, conducted and taught." Nature | 12 min read

(Sources: BRCA–PARP: H. E. Bryant et al. Nature 434, 913–917 (2005); H. Farmer et al. Nature 434, 917–921 (2005). Olaparib trial: P. C. Fong et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 361, 123–134 (2009). Ovarian approval: G. Kim et al. Clin. Cancer Res. 21, 4257–4261 (2015). Breast: https://go.nature.com/3STQGSU. Pancreas: https://go.nature.com/3SHNTEJ. Prostate: https://go.nature.com/4267RUJ)

ACCESS NATURE AND 54 OTHER NATURE JOURNALS Nature+ is our most affordable 30-day subscription, giving you online access to a wide range of specialist Nature Portfolio journals, including Nature. Nature+ is for personal use and is suitable for students. Learn more about Nature+ in the Americas, in the UK and internationally.

Tools for friction-free collaboration Digital tools that ease collaboration should be adopted more often by academics, say two medical students with expertise in data science. They recommend: Shared calendars for internal scheduling and Calendly for external meetings Collaborative editing software, such as Airtable for data, GitHub for code, and Google Docs for text Visual task-tracking tools such as kanban boards Software that creates virtual 'whiteboards' or screen recordings of step-by-step tasks Nature | 6 min read

Genes are not the blueprint for life Reality "is far more interesting and wonderful" than the simplistic idea that "cells are computers and genes are their code", says science writer Philip Ball in his new book, How Life Works. He argues that our genes are no simple blueprint, and things often portrayed as fixed — such as the lock-and-key fit of a protein and its target — actually change according to a myriad of factors. Nature | 5 min read

Quote of the day "In the nineteen-eighties, we used to try to sneak flowers or pretty crystals in front of people before they would take off their headsets; it was a great joy to see their expressions as they experienced awe… They were perceiving the authentic ecstasy of the ordinary, anew." The best aspect of wearing a virtual-reality headset can be taking it off, says computer scientist Jaron Lanier, who coined the term 'virtual reality' in 1987. (The New Yorker | 13 min read)

Last week, Leif Penguinson was hiding in Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. Did you find the penguin? When you're ready, here's the answer. Thanks for reading, Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing With contributions by Katrina Krämer, Smriti Mallapaty and Sarah Tomlin

Want more? Update your preferences to sign up to our other free Nature Briefing newsletters: Nature Briefing: Anthropocene — climate change, biodiversity, sustainability and geoengineering Nature Briefing: AI & Robotics — 100% written by humans, of course Nature Briefing: Cancer — a weekly newsletter written with cancer researchers in mind Nature Briefing: Translational Research covers biotechnology, drug discovery and pharma Please visit your preferences page to choose which Nature Briefing newsletters to receive (or to unsubscribe).

Join our community

You received this newsletter because you subscribed with the email address: manojdole1.Lens@blogger.com Please add briefing@nature.com to your address book. Enjoying this newsletter? You can use this form to recommend it to a friend or colleague — thank you! Had enough? To unsubscribe from this Briefing, but keep receiving your other Nature Briefing newsletters, please update your subscription preferences. To stop all Nature Briefing emails forever, click here to remove your personal data from our system. Fancy a bit of a read? View our privacy policy. Forwarded by a friend? Get the Briefing straight to your inbox: subscribe for free. Want to master time management, protect your mental health and brush up on your skills? Sign up for our free short e-mail series for working scientists, Back to the lab. Get more from Nature: Register for free on nature.com to sign up for other newsletters specific to your field and email alerts from Nature Research journals. Would you like to read the Briefing in other languages? Sign up for the weekly round-up e-mail in Arabic, curated and translated by the editors of Nature Arabic Edition. هل تود أن تقرأ هذا الموجز باللغة العربية؟ سَجِّل الآن لتصلك نشرة العلوم الموجزة أسبوعيًّا، التي يختار محتواها ويترجمه فريق محرري "نيتشر الطبعة العربية". Follow Nature Portfolio on WeChat for a weekly round-up post in Chinese, curated and translated by our team in China. 关注Nature Portfolio官方微信订阅号，每周二为您推送Nature Briefing精选中文内容——自然每周简报。 Nature | The Springer Nature Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom Nature Research, part of Springer Nature. © 2024 Springer Nature Limited. All rights reserved.