Biosensor ring detects sex hormone in sweat

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View this email in your browser Monday 4 December 2023

Hello Nature readers, Today discover how colliding black holes ring like bells, learn that dolphins can sense electricity and see a prototype hormone-detecting ring.

Two colliding black holes spiral around each other until they merge, throwing out gravitational waves that can be detected on Earth (computer simulation). (The SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) Project)

Colliding black holes ring like bells Researchers have found the first evidence that 'ringing' vibrations are produced by colliding black holes. Newly merged black holes are lopsided, but quickly settle into the lowest-energy shape, a sphere. In the same way that a bell rings with specific frequencies determined by its shape, the stabilizing black hole 'rings down', and radiates gravitational waves with frequencies that are determined by its mass and spin. A reanalysis of data from the largest black-hole merger ever detected, in 2019, indicates that it produced a black hole 250 times the mass of the Sun — much more massive than the original analysis suggested. Nature | 4 min read Reference: Physical Review Letters paper

Scientist's disability lawsuit reaches court A long-running US legal case between RNA researcher Vivian Cheung and her former employer, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), has finally reached court. Cheung alleges that the HHMI, a major funder of biomedical research, discriminated against her by failing to make reasonable accommodations and withdrawing her funding after she was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. The institute denies Cheung's allegations. Disability campaigners say that the case holds significance for other disabled scientists, who have long struggled to gain recognition and empathy in a field that has narrow definitions of success. Nature | 6 min read

Dolphins feel electric fields Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) can sense electricity using the pits left behind when the whiskers they are born with fall out. "Everybody thought these structures are vestigial — so without any function," said zoologist and study co-author Guido Dehnhardt. His team trained two captive dolphins to place their snouts near submerged electrodes and swim away when they detected an electric field. The researchers found that the dolphins' sensitivity to electricity was similar to that of platypuses. Electroreception could help the animals to find fish hiding in sand on the sea floor or to navigate the ocean using Earth's magnetic field. The New York Times | 4 min read Reference: Journal of Experimental Biology paper

Biosensor ring detects sex hormone in sweat A prototype biosensor that is worn as a ring can detect tiny amounts of oestradiol in sweat. The hormone has key roles in fertility and sexual health, and there's a "strong demand for technologies that give people more information about their menstrual and fertility status", says biomedical engineer and study co-author Wei Gao. The ring generates a small current to jump-start sweat production, then draws the liquid into a tiny reservoir. Aptamers — fragments of single-stranded DNA — bind to oestradiol to detect the hormone in just 10 minutes. Nature | 6 min read Reference: Nature Nanotechnology paper

The ring also tracks skin temperature, pH and the sweat's salt concentration so that it can calibrate oestradiol measurements in real time and display them on a phone. (Caltech)

Features & opinion

Small but mighty: microbes and climate All climate crises "are driven by microbes, disturb microbes, or can be solved by microbes", notes coral reef microbial ecologist Raquel Peixoto. It's time their influence was recognized, argues a Nature Microbiology editorial. In a special focus issue, the journal highlights different aspects of microbes and climate, including the spread and emergence of infectious diseases, how microbial interactions are modulated by the environment and the urgent need to include the domain in climate discussions. Nature Microbiology feature | 10 min read, Editorial | 5 min read & full collection

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The climate theory of everything The 'climate theory of everything' proposes that pushing forwards into a greener world promises to yield a win–win scenario in pretty much every sphere, writes BusinessGreen editor James Murray. Build well-insulated homes in walkable communities, for example, and "you get not just economic growth, but also lower energy bills, enhanced energy security, improved health, reduced risks, lower insurance premiums, less atomised communities, greater entrepreneurialism, and lower emissions". It's also a process by which so many failures — the halting path to global peace, the promise of a better world for our children — can be renewed. In a wide-ranging and personal essay, Murray outlines why COP28, the UN climate conference currently under way in Dubai, is still worth rooting for. BusinessGreen | 13 min read

Where I work

Ecologist Louis De Grandpré works in Canada with the Pessamit band of the Innu First Nation in Nitassinan, the traditional land of the Innu Indigenous people. Non-Indigenous logging methods have completely changed the forests' age structure, with old growth in some areas having halved over the past 30 years. "I'm not against logging, but I'm against the speed with which it's done here," De Grandpré says. (Nature | 3 min read) (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty)

Quote of the day "Science provides a great reason to go to Mars — just not for a permanent settlement." Most of the reasons mooted in the space-ethics literature for settling a large number of people on Mars don't stand up to scrutiny, argue astrobiologist Kirsi Lehto and philosophers Oskari Sivula and Mikko Puumala. (Scientific American | 6 min read)

On Friday, Leif Penguinson was enjoying the crashing waves at MacKenzie State Recreation Area in Hawaii. 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 and Sarah Tomlin

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