Nature
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Trump’s shadow looms at climate summit: what COP29 could deliver
The COP29 climate summit, where negotiators from more than 200 nations will meet, opened on 11 November.Credit: Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Extreme storms fuelled by climate change have wreaked havoc across the world in 2024, including in Brazil and the Philippines. The average annual temperature for the globe could reach 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels for the first time this…
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Five protein-design questions that still challenge AI
Alena Khmelinskaia wants designing bespoke proteins to be as simple as ordering a meal. Picture a vending machine, she says, which any researcher could use to specify their desired protein’s function, size, location, partners and other characteristics. “Ideally, you would get the perfect design that can accomplish all these things together,” says Khmelinskaia, a biophysical chemist at Ludwig Maximilian University…
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My career path from chemist to spin-off co-founder to chief technology officer
Gaëlle Andreatta (left) and Julia Carpenter are working to bring a new type of metal foam to market.Credit: Apheros In August, the technology start-up Apheros announced a US$1.85-million funding round to develop a metal-foam-based cooling system for the world’s data centres, which are expected to account for an estimated 6% of global energy consumption by 2030. The company was established…
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Do disruptive climate protests work? Real-time survey finally offers answers
A Just Stop Oil activist hoists a banner during the group’s blockade of the M25 motorway, some sections of which carry more than 200,000 vehicles per day. Credit: Leon Neal/Getty Disruptive and high-profile climate protestors can raise public support for conventional environmental groups, according to an unprecedented study that capitalized on activists’ closure of the United Kingdom’s busiest motorway. The…
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Is there life on Jupiter’s moon Europa? NASA launches mission to find hints
Jupiter’s moon Europa is thought to hide a saltwater ocean beneath its icy surface.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill A SpaceX rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida today, carrying with it NASA’s US$5-billion dream of finding hints of life on a distant moon. The mission — the most ambitious hunt for life beyond Earth since NASA began exploring Mars decades…
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Author Correction: Fault-network geometry influences earthquake frictional behaviour
Authors and Affiliations Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA Jaeseok Lee, Victor C. Tsai & Greg Hirth Nevada Seismological Laboratory, University of Nevada, Reno, NY, USA Avigyan Chatterjee & Daniel T. Trugman Corresponding author Correspondence to Victor C. Tsai. Source link
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what it will take to reopen Three Mile Island safely
Microsoft announced on 20 September that it had struck a 20-year deal to purchase energy from a dormant nuclear power plant that will be brought back online. And not just any plant: Three Mile Island, the facility in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania, that was the site of the worst-ever nuclear accident on US soil when a partial meltdown of one of…
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Scientists successfully ‘nuke asteroid’ — in a lab mock-up
Scientists and science-fiction writers have long asked whether a nuclear explosion could change the course of an asteroid headed for Earth (artist’s impression).Credit: Detlev Van Ravenswaay/Science Photo Library A blast of X-rays from a nuclear explosion should be enough to save Earth from an incoming asteroid, according to the results of a first-of-its-kind experiment. The findings, published1 on 23 September…
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how conquest and carnage have decimated landscapes worldwide
The Burning Earth: A History Sunil Amrith W. W. Norton (2024) In the 1620s, King Charles I of England commissioned a Dutch water engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, to drain the flat fenlands of East Anglia, which he considered a desolate wasteland. Locals were outraged. These wetlands, writes historian Sunil Amrith in The Burning Earth, “sustained a richness of human and more-than-human…
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Wildfires are spreading fast in Canada — we must strengthen forests for the future
At the end of July, a wildfire driven by extreme winds blazed through Jasper National Park in Canada, forcing the evacuation of 25,000 citizens and visitors. For a month, more than 350 firefighters worked to control the fire, which grew to cover 33,000 hectares, making it the largest wildfire in the park in at least 100 years. Last year’s fire…
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