‘Goldene’ is a gilded cousin of graphene that is one atom thick

What matters in science | 

View this email in your browser Thursday 18 April 2024

Hello Nature readers, Today we enjoy the golden cousin of graphene, explore what crackdowns on smoking and vaping will do for public health and discover that some bumblebees can survive up to a week underwater.

"Goldene is the first free-standing 2D metal, to the best of our knowledge", says materials scientist Lars Hultman, who is part of the team behind the new research. (imaginima/Getty)

Meet goldene: a single layer of gold atoms Goldene is a cousin of graphene, the single-atom-thick sheet of carbon first discovered in 2004 — but made of gold. Goldene is roughly 400 times as thin as the thinnest commercial gold leaf, and might find use as a catalyst, or in light-sensing devices. Nature | 4 min read Reference: Nature Synthesis paper

(Source: Adapted from Ref. 1.)

Canada boosts PhD and postgraduate pay Researchers in Canada are thrilled by "the largest investment in graduate students and postdocs in over 21 years", says Kaitlin Kharas, a PhD student and executive director of the campaign group Support Our Science. The 2024 Canadian federal budget gave: whopping increases to stipends for masters and PhD students and postgraduate researchers an extra Can$1.8 billion over five years in core funding for the three federal research councils more than Can$2 billion for the AI sector in Canada Nature | 4 min read

Bumblebees survive a week underwater The queens of some species of bumblebee can survive after being underwater for one week, which could help them withstand floods when they hibernate underground. An experimental accident revealed the possibility, and tests on 126 common eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) queens confirmed that most can survive immersion for up to 7 days. The findings hint that other bee species could also have built-in flood resilience. "This seems to be one small aspect of climate change that we need not worry about," says bee researcher Dave Goulson. The Guardian | 4 min read Reference: Biology Letters paper

Cave provided shelter for 10,000 years Hundreds of artefacts sheltered by a lava-tube cave in what is now Saudi Arabia show that herders and their livestock used the cave on and off for the past 10,000 years. The region near the Umm Jirsan cave was once lush and green. Now, wind and scorching heat mean that, across the surface of Saudi Arabia, "the fossil record is just horrendous", says zooarchaeologist and study co-author Mathew Stewart. But an 88,000-year-old finger bone described in 2018 — one of the oldest human fossils found outside Africa — hints at the region's hidden history. Nature | 4 min read Reference: PLoS One paper

The Umm Jirsan lava tube sits under Harrat Khaybar, a vast basalt plain pocked with volcanic craters in northwestern Saudi Arabia, where people seem to have travelled from oasis to oasis on the same paths for thousands of years. (Green Arabia Project)

Features & opinion

What toilet water reveals about our health During the pandemic, sewage provided a critical source of data for monitoring the spread of SARS-CoV-2. In Hong Kong, routine wastewater tests traced the virus to a single apartment block where no COVID had been reported — ultimately uncovering nine active cases. Now "every day, we come up with new things that we can interrogate wastewater for", says public-health researcher Ted Smith — including signs of drug misuse, antimicrobial resistance and exposure to air pollution. Wastewater research coordinator Bernd Manfred Gawlik calls wastewater the "dirty blood of the city", and compares sewage sampling to blood testing. "We are now only starting to understand" how to diagnose this "blood" at the collective level, he says. Nature | 12 min read

Keep lobbyists away from plastic treaty talks Corporate lobbyists with vested interests in fossil fuels should be kept at arm's length from negotiations for a global plastics treaty, writes ecotoxicologist Martin Wagner. The number of lobbyists from chemical and oil companies outnumbered scientists four to one in the previous round of talks. Their presence threatens to weaken the treaty by casting doubt on plastics research or demanding cumbersome risk assessments for individual component chemicals, says Wagner. Scientists also need better access to the talks for them to be meaningful, argues a Nature editorial. Nature World View | 5 min read | & Nature Editorial | 5 min read

The experts' view on smoking bans Countries are introducing some of the toughest restrictions ever on tobacco use and vaping — especially among young people. New laws in the United Kingdom, Australia and France could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars, say scientists. Many nations are banning disposable vapes that don't contain tobacco but still deliver nicotine, which can raise blood pressure and disrupt brain development. "This policy push should see the upswing in youth vaping contained and reversed," says epidemiologist Tony Blakely. Nature | 6 min read

Quote of the day "The cow is the first animal to die in a drought; the camel is the last." In Kenya, this traditional adage reflects a modern reality: herders are replacing cattle with milk-producing camels to adapt to climate change. (The Washington Post | 12 min read)

Today we're reeling from the sight of what is probably an ancient hominid jaw bone encased in a stone tile. A Reddit user, who's also a dentist, spotted the mandible in his parents' new travertine floor. This type of limestone often contains fossils, notes paleoanthropologist John Hawks. "This naturally raises a broader question: How many other people have installed travertine with hominin fossils inside?" Let me know about what telltale hearts you've got hidden under the floorboards — plus any other feedback on this newsletter — at briefing@nature.com. Thanks for reading, Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing With contributions by Gemma Conroy, Sarah Tomlin and Katharine Sanderson

Want more? Update your preferences to sign up to our other free Nature Briefing newsletters: Nature Briefing: Microbiology — the most abundant living entities on our planet – microorganisms – and the role they play in health, the environment and food systems. 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).

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.

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 Portfolio 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 Portfolio | The Springer Nature Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom Nature Portfolio, part of Springer Nature. © 2024 Springer Nature Limited. All rights reserved.