Nature
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‘Bandit’ algorithms help chemists to discover generally applicable conditions for reactions
RESEARCH BRIEFINGS 18 March 2024 In organic chemistry, finding conditions that enable a broad range of compounds to undergo a particular type of reaction is highly desirable. However, conventional methods for doing so consume a lot of time and reagents. A machine-learning method has been developed that overcomes these problems. Source link
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Indigenous Australian fire-stick farming began at least 11,000 years ago
Northern Australian elder George Milpurrurr shows the next generation how to do a cultural burn.Credit: Penny Tweedie/Alamy Indigenous Australians have been using fire to shape the country’s northern ecosystems for at least 11,000 years, according to charcoal preserved in the sediment of a sinkhole. The study was published on 11 March in Nature Geoscience1. The practice of cultural burning, also…
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Big science in Latin America: accelerate particles and progress
Large scientific facilities do more than just deliver breakthroughs — they build capacity. Regions that host them benefit from the creation of jobs and skills as well as infrastructures, from computing to electricity and transport. The benefits can be especially great for advanced light sources, which generate intense beams of light for a range of uses in academia and industry.…
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To unravel the origin of life, treat findings as pieces of a bigger puzzle
The origin of life is one of the greatest challenges in science. It transcends conventional disciplinary boundaries, yet has been approached from within those confines for generations. Not surprisingly, these traditions have emphasized different aspects of the question. Or rather, questions. The origin of life is really an extended continuum from the simplest prebiotic chemistry to the first reproducing cells,…
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Ambitious survey of human diversity yields millions of undiscovered genetic variants
The All of Us programme aims to recruit one million people from ethnic and socio-economic groups that are typically under-represented in biomedical studies.Credit: Barbara Alper/Getty A massive US programme that aims to improve health care by focusing on the genomes and health profiles of historically underrepresented groups has begun to yield results. Analyses of up to 245,000 genomes gathered by…
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A researcher-exchange programme made me a better doctor at home and abroad
Caleb Skipper (right) answers questions about lumbar puncture with translation help from Alisat Sadiq (centre) at Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala.Credit: Caleb Skipper Caleb Skipper had his first interaction with African science in 2009, when he visited Ethiopia as an undergraduate at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. He spent a year working on a project to…
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It’s time to admit that genes are not the blueprint for life
DNA sequencing has become routine, but the roles of individual genes can be hard to be pin.Credit: Peter Menzel/SPL How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology Philip Ball Pan Macmillan (2024) For too long, scientists have been content in espousing the lazy metaphor of living systems operating simply like machines, says science writer Philip Ball in How…
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Spreading paws-itivity
Nature, Published online: 29 January 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00243-0 Marguerite Nicodeme works with Snoopy the dog to bring moments of cheerful relief to people with cancer. Source link
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Japan’s successful Moon landing was the most precise ever
Artist’s impression of the SLIM spacecraft coming in for landing on the Moon.Credit: JAXA Japan has become the fifth country in the world to soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon, using precision technology that allowed it to touch down closer to its target landing site than any mission has before. However the spacecraft might have survived on the lunar surface…
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How a forgotten physicist’s discovery broke the symmetry of the Universe
Parity symmetry says that something viewed in a mirror should look the same.Credit: Getty When a ‘scanner’ called Minnie van der Merwe handed Rosemary Brown a photographic slide with an unusual configuration of particle tracks, the physicist knew that she was on to something. “I looked very carefully and thought: this is it,” she says. That was in 1948, when…
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