Great Barrier Reef is ‘transforming’ from repeated coral bleaching

What matters in science | 

View this email in your browser Monday 22 April 2024

Hello Nature readers, Today we learn that the Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its worst mass bleaching event on record, consider a declaration on animal consciousness and explore the neurodiversity of visual imagery.

Bleached and dead coral around Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. (David Gray/AFP via Getty)

Great Barrier Reef in worst mass bleaching Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its fifth mass bleaching event in eight years — and this one is the worst on record. A report by the Australian government's reef management agency analysed aerial surveys of 1,080 of the reef's estimated 3,000 individual reefs, and some in-water surveys. Corals 'bleach' when stressed by warming waters brought on by climate change, expelling their colourful resident zooxanthellae. Marine biologist Terry Hughes says the solution to the bleaching problem is clear: "Reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Full stop." Nature | 4 min read

Putting worms on ice stops them forgetting The laboratory stalwart Caenorhabditis elegans forgets new information a couple of hours after learning it — unless it is quickly put on ice. Worms trained to dislike a smell retained their aversion while chilled for many hours. Worms given lithium also hung onto their memories for longer than normal. "Why do they forget, when the worms are perfectly capable of maintaining the memories longer?" ponders geneticist and study co-author Oded Rechavi. "Perhaps there's a reason for holding memories for the particular duration that they do." Nature | 4 min read Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)

JWST fails to resolve expansion mystery Hopes that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would finally settle the debate over how fast the Universe is expanding were dashed after two teams that used JWST data calculated different values. Observations of the current Universe typically find the expansion rate — the Hubble constant — to be about 9% faster than predictions based on early-Universe data. Multiple techniques will need to agree before the disparity is resolved, says astronomer Wendy Freedman. Nature | 5 min read

Ten papers most cited in policy The top ten papers most-cited in policy documents worldwide are dominated by economics research: the number one most-referenced, with around 1,300 citations, is a 2003 study about the impact of trade. A list that excludes economics is topped by a 1990 book on the evolution of institutions by Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom and a 1997 paper about Earth's natural capital. Paediatrician Peter Gluckman, former chief science adviser to New Zealand's prime minister, is not surprised that the list includes broad-brush papers rather than those reporting incremental advances. "The thing that worries me most is the age of the papers that are involved," he says — more recent work on climate change, food security and similar areas hasn't made it onto the list. Nature | 7 min read

Features & opinion

Face the possibility of animal consciousness A coalition of scientists has published a declaration that there is "a realistic possibility of conscious experience" in all vertebrates and in many invertebrates, such as octopuses and insects. The group focuses on sentience — an aspect of consciousness often defined as being able to have subjective experiences — pointing to research suggesting that octopuses feel pain and that bees show play behaviour. "When there is a realistic possibility of conscious experience in an animal, it is irresponsible to ignore that possibility in decisions affecting that animal," says the declaration. Nature | 5 min read Reference: The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness

What can you 'see' in your mind's eye? Some people experience intense visual imagery, called hyperphantasia, that means they can replay memories or imagine scenes that are as vivid as real life. Once thought to be rare, research now suggests as many as 1 in 30 people have such vivid imaginations. At the other end of the spectrum are people with 'aphantasia', who have no visual imagery at all. Science is just catching up with this neurodiversity and how it influences memory, childhood, and even mental health. The Guardian | 10 min read To identify where you lie on the hyperphantasia/aphantasia spectrum, try the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire.

The true strength of the strong force Physicists are finally getting to grips with the mysterious strong force, which binds quarks into protons and neutrons and holds the nucleus together. The physicists who made the first measurements in the range of distances where the strong force becomes especially strong and difficult to calculate, and came up with theoretical predictions to match, describe their breakthrough. We at last have the ability to calculate aspects of quantum chromodynamics — the fiendishly complex theory that describes how the force works — from first principles, write Alexandre Deur, Stanley Brodsky and Craig Roberts. It could lead to progress on a unifying theory of the universe and help us discover how many dimensions exist. Scientific American | 12 min read

Infographic of the week

As CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory, celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, researchers argue that its impact goes beyond its 23 member states and discoveries in particle physics. Advances made at CERN, including the development of the World Wide Web, have affected society as a whole. "I think it is a great model for international collaboration," says physicist Rainer Wallny. "It has a lot of facilities available that are beyond the scope of individual user groups. No one has a particle accelerator in their backyard." (Nature | 9 min read)

Quote of the day "Black people don't have time to wait for medicine or biomedical research to commit to undoing excess deaths, because time is not money but life." Psychologist Naa Oyo Kwate reviews two new books — physician-scientist Uché Blackstock's memoir Legacy and evolutionary historian Constance Hilliard's Ancestral Genomics — and explores how racism steals time from Black people in the United States, harming their health and well-being. (Los Angeles Review of Books | 14 min read)

On Friday, Leif Penguinson was visiting the 'Where I Work' photography exhibition near the Nature offices in London. 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 preferencespeopleto 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.