Nature
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Will AI ruin the social sciences — or revolutionize them?
When psychologist Raluca Rilla asked volunteers to complete a survey last year, she got the following response to one of her questions: “I don’t experience confusion in the same way humans do.” Rilla, a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, suspects that this is the obvious tip of a large and worrying iceberg —…
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Innovation starts in schools — lessons from China
In early 2025, the Chinese artificial-intelligence company DeepSeek, based in Hangzhou, unveiled DeepSeek-R1, a high-performance large language model developed at a fraction of the cost of its Western counterparts. Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen called it “AI’s Sputnik moment”. Later that year, Chinese robotics firm Unitree, also based in Hangzhou, released its R1 humanoid robot, which has capabilities approaching those…
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China moves AI brain implants from trials towards real-world use
A brain-computer interface developed by Chinese company NeuroXess.Credit: Chengdu Economic Daily/VCG via Getty Chinese companies are racing to develop and deploy artificial-intelligence powered brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) that can help people to move, speak and control devices. BCIs, which link a person’s brain to an external device or a computer using sensors placed around or inside the head, have been used…
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Hantavirus outbreak exposes uncertainty about how disease spreads
Passengers disembarked from the MV Hondius at the Canary Islands wearing personal protective equipment.Credit: Chris McGrath/Getty Close to 150 passengers and crew members on the cruise ship MV Hondius struck by an outbreak of a deadly hantavirus have disembarked and are returning to their home countries, where they will quarantine. The way that will happen, however, will differ between countries,…
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Iranian scientists on losing labs, libraries and liberty
Sharif University of Technology after it was bombed on 7 April 2026.Credit: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Bombs dropped by the United States and Israel on Iran have damaged some 30 universities since war began on 28 February, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. In an open letter to United Nations officials and the governments of parties to the conflict,…
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match 680,000 innovators with companies
Only a small portion of patents owned by universities in China become commercial products.Credit: Xu Changliang/VCG via Getty China’s intellectual-property regulator has been playing matchmaker — connecting researchers with patents to companies that can commercialize them. Last month, the China National Intellectual Property Administration said that as a result of these introductions around 80,000 patents from universities and research institutes…
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What does the future hold for the thawing Arctic?
Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic Mia Bennett & Klaus Dodds Yale Univ. Press (2025) From the rising temperatures of the climate crisis to the cooling of relations between Arctic states, metaphors of hot and cold pop up frequently in discussions about the Arctic. Political geographers Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds put them to good effect in…
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Huge analysis of 320,000 careers suggests that productive researchers stay that way
Credit: demaerre/iStock via Getty Researchers hoping to find late-career success are in for bad news. A study that tracked the publishing output of hundreds of thousands of scientists has found that the most important predictor of being a top performer in the late-career stage is being a high achiever early on1. The paper, published in Quantitative Science Studies, analysed the…
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Highlights from Nature’s live coverage
The four Artemis II astronauts inside of the Orion capsule before they spoke to US President Donald Trump, after the Moon fly-by.Credit: NASA Updated 6 April 2026, 10.05 p.m. CDT (Houston time) The astronauts spoke over a phone link with US President Donald Trump on their way back from the Moon. Continuing a tradition that stems back to President Richard…
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The hidden costs of ‘helpful’ AI
Nature, Published online: 31 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00966-2 Even when artificial-intelligence tools aid individuals’ decision-making, they can quietly de-skill whole professions by narrowing how uncertainties and values are debated. Source link
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