Stay ConnectedThe Nature Podcast brings you the best stories from the world of science each week. We cover everything from astronomy to zoology, highlighting the most exciting research from each issue of the Nature journal. We meet the scientists behind the results and provide in-depth analysis from Nature‘s award-winning journalists.
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For millennia, humanity has obsessed about halting ageing and, ultimately, preventing death. Yet while advances in medicine and public-health have seen human life-expectancy more than double, our maximum lifespan stubbornly remains around 120 years.
On the latest episode of Nature hits the books, Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan joins us to discuss what scientists have learnt about the molecular processes underlying ageing, whether they can be prevented, and why the quest for longevity also needs to consider the health-related issues associated with old age.
Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality Venki Ramakrishnan Hodder (2024)
Music supplied by Airae/Epidemic Sound/Getty images.
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An algorithm that reactivates dormant ‘neurons’ in deep learning based AIs could help them overcome their inability to learn new things and make future systems more flexible, research has shown. AIs based on deep learning struggle to learn how to tackle new tasks indefinitely, making them less adaptable to new situations. The reasons for this are unclear, but now a team has identified that ‘resetting’ parts of the neural networks underlying these systems can allow deep learning methods to keep learning continually.
Research Article: Dohare et al.
News and Views: Switching between tasks can cause AI to lose the ability to learn
To stop crocodiles eating poisonous toads researchers have been making them sick, and a sacrificed child in ancient Mexico was the progeny of closely related parents.
Research Highlight: How to train your crocodile
Research Highlight: DNA of child sacrificed in ancient city reveals surprising parentage
How video games gave people a mental health boost during the pandemic, and where the dinosaur-destroying Chicxulub asteroid formed.
Nature News: PlayStation is good for you: video games improved mental health during COVID
Nature News: Dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid formed in Solar System’s outer reaches
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Stonehenge’s central stone came from Northern Scotland, more than 600 miles away from the monument, according to a new analysis of its geochemistry. It is commonly accepted that many of the rocks that make up the iconic neolithic monument came from Wales, 150 miles from the site. Previously, it had been thought that a central stone, called the Altar Stone, had also come from this area, known as the Preseli Hills. The new work suggests that the ancient Britons went much further, perhaps ferrying the Altar Stone hundreds of miles, to place the rock at the centre of Stonehenge.
Research Article: Clarke et al.
News: Stonehenge’s massive slabs came from as far as Scotland — 800 kilometres away
How a parasite could help scientists break through the blood-brain barrier, and the physics of skateboard moves.
Research Highlight: Engineered brain parasite ferries useful proteins into neurons
Research Highlight: How expert skateboarders use physics on the half-pipe
Chemists have demonstrated a way to break Selenium-Selenium bonds unevenly, something they have been trying for decades. Chemical bonds have to be broken and reformed to create new compounds, but they often don’t break in a way that allows chemists to form new bonds in the ways they would like. Breaks are often ‘even’, with electrons shared equally between atoms. To prevent such an even split, a team used a specific solvent and a combination of light and heat to force the selenium bonds to break unevenly. This could potentially open up ways to create compounds that have never been made before.
Research Article: Tiefel et al.
News and Views: Innovative way to break chemical bonds broadens horizons for making molecules
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AIs built on Large Language Models have wowed by producing particularly fluent text. However, their ability to do this is limited in many languages. As the data and resources used to train a model in a specific language drops, so does the performance of the model, meaning that for some languages the AIs are effectively useless.
Researchers are aware of this problem and are trying to find solutions, but the challenge extends far beyond just the technical, with moral and social questions to be answered. This podcast explores how Large Language Models could be improved in more languages and the issues that could be caused if they are not.
Watch our related video of people trying out ChatGPT in different languages.
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A study reveals that, unexpectedly, plants display a greater diversity of traits in drier environments. Trait diversity is a measure of an organism's performance in an environment and can include things like the size of a plant or its photosynthetic rate. Whilst there are good data on this kind of diversity in temperate regions, an assessment of drylands has been lacking. The new study fills this knowledge gap and finds that, counter to a prevailing expectation that fewer traits would be displayed, at a certain level of aridity trait diversity doubles. The team behind the new work hope that it can help us better protect biodiversity as the planet warms and areas become drier.
Research Article: Gross et al.
Butterflies and moths use static charge to pick up pollen, and quantum physics rules out black holes made of light.
Research Highlight: Charged-up butterflies draw pollen through the air
Research Highlight: Black holes made from light? Impossible, say physicists
An assessment of coral skeletons has shown that the past decade has been the warmest for the Great Barrier Reef for 400 years. By looking at the chemical composition of particularly old specimens of coral in the reef, researchers were able to create a record of temperatures going back to 1618. In addition to showing recent record breaking temperatures they also developed a model that suggests that such temperatures are very unlikely to occur without human-induced climate change. Altogether, the study suggests that the reef is in dire straits and much of the worlds’ coral could be lost.
Research Article: Henley et al.
News and Views: Coral giants sound the alarm for the Great Barrier Reef
Nature News: Great Barrier Reef's temperature soars to 400-year high
Most researchers are familiar with the refrain ‘Publish or Perish’ — the idea that publications are the core currency of a scientist’s career — but now that can be played out for laughs in a new board game. Created as a way to help researchers “bond over shared trauma”, the game features many mishaps familiar to academics, scrambles for funding and scathing comments, all while players must compete to get the most citations on their publications. Reporter Max Kozlov set out to avoid perishing and published his way to a story about the game for the Nature Podcast.
Nature News: ‘Publish or Perish’ is now a card game — not just an academic’s life
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Computer components based on specialised LEDs could reduce the energy consumption of power hungry AI systems, according to new research. AI chips with components that compute using light can run more efficiently than those using digital electronics, but these light-based systems typically use lasers that can be bulky and difficult to control. To overcome these obstacles, a team has developed a way to replace these lasers with LEDs, which are cheaper and more efficient to run. Although only a proof of concept, they demonstrate that their system can perform some tasks as well as laser-based computers.
Research Article: Dong et al.
News and Views: Cheap light sources could make AI more energy efficient
The genes that make roses smell so sweet, and how blocking inflammation could reduce heart injury after a stroke.
Research Highlight: How the rose got its iconic fragrance
Research Highlight: Strokes can damage the heart — but reining in the immune system might help
The highly-pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 was first identified in US cattle in March 2024 and has been detected in multiple herds across the country. We round up what researchers currently know about this spread, what can be done to prevent it, and the risks this outbreak may pose to humans.
Nature News: Can H5N1 spread through cow sneezes? Experiment offers clues
Nature News: Huge amounts of bird-flu virus found in raw milk of infected cows
Nature News: Could bird flu in cows lead to a human outbreak? Slow response worries scientists
Research article: Eisfeld et al.
NASA’s Perseverance rover finds a Martian rock containing features associated with fossilized microbial life, and how metallic nodules on the ocean floor could be the source of mysterious ‘dark oxygen’
Space.com: NASA's Perseverance Mars rover finds possible signs of ancient Red Planet life
Nature News: Mystery oxygen source discovered on the sea floor — bewildering scientists
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In India, a group of researchers raced to develop a CRISPR-based genome editing therapy to save the life of a young woman with a rare neurodegenerative disease. Despite a valiant effort, the pace of research was ultimately too slow to save her life. While many are convinced that these therapies could offer hope to those with overlooked genetic conditions, it will likely take years to develop the techniques needed to quickly create bespoke treatments, something people in need don't have.
This is an audio version of our Feature: Hope, despair and CRISPR — the race to save one woman’s life
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A newly-developed method that can rapidly identify the type of bacteria causing a blood-infection, and the correct antibiotics to treat it, could save clinicians time, and patient lives. Blood infections are serious, and can lead to the life-threatening condition sepsis, but conventional diagnostic methods can take days to identify the causes. This new method does away with some of the time-consuming steps, and the researchers behind it say that if it can be fully automated, it could provide results in less than a day.
Research Article: Kim et al.
The discovery of a connection between three star-forming interstellar clouds could help explain how these giant structures form, and evidence of the largest accidental methane leak ever recorded.
Research Highlight: Found: the hidden link between star-forming molecular clouds
Research Highlight: Blowout! Satellites reveal one of the largest methane leaks on record
When artificial intelligences are fed data that has itself been AI-generated, these systems quickly begin to spout nonsense responses, according to new research. Typically, large language model (LLM) AI’s are trained on human-produced text found online. However, as an increasing amount of online content is AI-generated, a team wanted to know how these systems would cope. They trained an AI to produce Wikipedia-like entries, then trained new iterations on the model on the text produced by its predecessor. Quickly the outputs descended into gibberish, which highlights the dangers of the Internet becoming increasingly full of AI-generated text.
Research Article: Shumailov et al.
How psilocybin — the hallucinogenic compound found in magic mushrooms — resets communication between brain regions, and the surprise cancellation of a NASA Moon mission.
Nature News: Your brain on shrooms — how psilocybin resets neural networks
Nature News: NASA cancels $450-million mission to drill for ice on the Moon — surprising researchers
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A gel that encases proteins could be a new way to safely transport medicines without requiring them to be kept cold, according to new research. To test it, the team behind the work posted themselves a protein suspended in this gel, showing that it was perfectly preserved and retained its activity, despite being dropped in transit and exposed to varying temperatures. The researchers hope this gel will help overcome the need to freeze protein-based medicines, which can be expensive to do and difficult to maintain during transportation.
Research Article: Bianco et al.
News and Views: Gel protects therapeutic proteins from deactivation — even in the post
How an abundance of cicadas led to a host of raccoon activity, and how wine-grape harvest records can be used to estimate historical summertime temperatures
Research Highlight: Massive cicada emergence prompted raccoons to run wild
Research Highlight: Wine grapes’ sweetness reveals Europe’s climate history
By embedding a plastic with an engineered enzyme, researchers have developed a fully biodegradable material that can be broken down in a home compost heap. Plastic production often requires high temperatures, so the team adapted an enzyme to make it more able to withstand heat, while still able to break down a common plastic called PLA. They hope this enzyme-embedded plastic could replace current single-use items, helping to reduce the huge amount of waste produced each year.
Research Article: Guicherd et al.
This time, how to make lab-grown meat taste more meaty, and a subterranean Moon cave that could be a place for humans to shelter.
Nature News: This lab-grown meat probably tastes like real beef
The Guardian: Underground cave found on moon could be ideal base for explorers
Nature hits the books: Living on Mars would probably suck — here's why
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Researchers have developed a method to directly edit the genes of specific bacteria in the guts of live mice, something that has previously been difficult to accomplish due to the complexity of this environment. The tool was able to edit over 90% of an E. coli strain colonising mice guts, with other work showing the tool could be used to edit genes in pathogenic bacterial species and strains. It is hoped that with further research this technique could be adapted to work in humans, potentially altering bacteria associated with disease.
Nature News: This gene-editing tool alters bacteria in the gut of living mice
Research Article: Brödel et al.
The ants that perform life-saving surgery on their nest-mates, and why amber’s scarcity led ancient artisans to make imitation jewellery.
Research Highlight: Ants amputate their nest-mates’ legs to save lives
Research Highlight: Fake jewellery from the Stone Age looks like the real deal
During breastfeeding bones are stripped of calcium, while levels of oestrogen — which normally helps keep them healthy — drop off precipitously. This puts bones under tremendous stress, but why they don’t break down at this time has proved a mystery. Now, a team has identified a hormone produced in lactating mice that promotes the build up of bones, keeping them strong during milk production. Injecting this hormone into injured mice helped their bones heal faster, and the team hopes that their finding could ultimately help treat bone-weakening conditions like osteoporosis in humans.
Research Article: Babey et al.
This time, new clues about the neurological events that spark migraines, and a quick chemical method to recycle old clothes.
Nature News: What causes migraines? Study of ‘brain blackout’ offers clues
Nature News: Chemical recycling’: 15-minute reaction turns old clothes into useful molecules
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