Many tree species planted in cities for their fast growth and climate resilience — including weeping willows and poplars across Beijing — are emerging as a major contributor to urban ozone pollution, according to a study published in Science Advances and covered by Nature.
27 Aug 2026
A US start-up has begun assembling a billion-dollar fusion machine that it hopes will become the first to generate more energy than it consumes, using immense pulses of electricity rather than lasers to squeeze hydrogen fuel until its nuclei fuse. Pacific Fusion's demonstration facility in Los Lunas, New Mexico — sited down the road from a major nuclear-weapons laboratory — could also be used to study the country's ageing warhead stockpile, the company says.
27 Aug 2026
A robotic, cell-free platform rapidly prototypes redesigned genetic codes, enabling the translation of proteins with reassigned codons and non-standard amino acids without altering living genomes. The platform, called AGENTEX, represents a significant advance in synthetic biology and genetic engineering capabilities.
27 Aug 2026
Thousands of antibodies sold by multiple research vendors have catalogue images that appear to have been digitally altered, according to a scientific-integrity specialist who published his findings on 25 August. Reese Richardson, a metascientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, reported more than 18,000 questionable "validation images" associated with antibodies sold by 15 companies, and released a database of them publicly.
27 Aug 2026
In a surprise finding that runs counter to the long-term trend, loss of mass from the Antarctic ice sheet has essentially been on pause since about 2020, according to research by Wang et al. published in Nature and analysed in an accompanying News & Views article by atmospheric scientist Jonathan Wille of the French National Centre for Scientific Research/University of Burgundy Europe.
27 Aug 2026
The world's oceans are on the verge of setting an all-time heat record as a powerful El Niño event gathers strength in the Pacific Ocean, new data from the UN European Commission's Copernicus Climate Change Service shows. In July, the average sea surface temperature outside the polar regions reached 20.96 °C (69.7 °F), surpassing the previous July record set in 2023 by 0.07 °C, according to agency data reported by *Nature* on 26 August 2026
27 Aug 2026
Pulsating muscle grafts mimic exercise benefits in mice, offering potential therapies for frailty and muscle-wasting conditions
27 Aug 2026
Confidence: Verified as reported (Physical Review Letters via Phys.org; team has not claimed confirmed detection)
27 Aug 2026
Researchers have used magnetic nanoparticles to activate deep brain circuits in mice with Parkinson's-like symptoms, improving movement without a single implanted electrode — an early but closely watched step toward less invasive neuromodulation.
25 Jul 2026
Scientists studying older adults with exceptional memory expected to find they had inherited unusually low genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease. A new analysis found their DNA looks much like everyone else's — pointing researchers toward lifestyle and biology instead.
25 Jul 2026
A bright disk of cosmic dust had concealed the world from view, and its discovery is prompting a rethink of how planets form in systems long assumed to be fully mapped.
24 Jul 2026
A new catalog adds 161 black hole mergers, pushing total gravitational-wave detections to 390 — and separately, astronomers found 31 of the oldest known quasars.
24 Jul 2026
Astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have detected a large planet that had been concealed behind a bright disk of dust, in a system researchers thought they knew well.
23 Jul 2026
Modern forecasts are remarkably accurate a few days out, then grow uncertain. Here is how they are made and why prediction has limits.
23 Jul 2026
DNA is often called the blueprint of life, but what is it really? Here is a clear guide to how this molecule stores and uses information.
23 Jul 2026
When you look at the stars, you are seeing light that left them long ago. Here is why looking out in space means looking back in time.
23 Jul 2026
Vaccines teach your body to fight a disease before you ever encounter it. Here is how that training actually works, step by step.
23 Jul 2026
A machine-learning sweep of satellite imagery has produced the most detailed maps yet of Europe's wetlands — and a stark picture of fragmentation and loss.
20 Jul 2026
Confidence: Verified
20 Jul 2026
Nature reported on 17 July 2026 that researchers have built wearable electrodes thin and transparent enough to be effectively invisible and unfelt on the skin, while still recording brain waves and other physiological signals
19 Jul 2026
Lawmakers in the US House of Representatives from both parties voiced concern this month about China exploiting American research, while diverging on how to protect it, at a hearing on Capitol Hill on 15 July. The session followed a US National Science Foundation (NSF) announcement roughly a week earlier that it would bar collaborations between the scientists it funds and international institutions Washington deems a national-security threat — including many of China's leading universities.
19 Jul 2026
A mathematical formula inscribed on a wall at the Maya site of Xultun in Guatemala has revealed the name of an important Maya mathematician-astronomer for the first time, according to researchers who say the scholar — Sak Tahn Waax, or "White-Chested Fox" — was comparable to mathematical giants of the past. The finding, reported by Nature, comes from a study published on 14 July in the journal Antiquity.
19 Jul 2026
A shift to healthier, more sustainable diets could slash greenhouse-gas emissions from farming and trigger the biggest reduction in agricultural land use in more than 2,000 years, according to a study published in Nature on 15 July that combines ten global economic models. The analysis modelled a "food systems transformation" aligned with the 2025 EAT–Lancet 2.0 healthy-diet recommendations, higher crop and livestock productivity, and a 50% cut in food loss and waste out to 2050.
19 Jul 2026
Dust pollution is intensifying across Europe as the climate changes, according to a continent-wide study published in Nature, with the steepest increases recorded over Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. The researchers produced the first observation-driven, daily map of ground-level desert dust across Europe, filling what they describe as a gap left by coarse models and satellite proxies that could not deliver a consistent, continent-wide picture of trends, drivers and health impacts. (Nature:
18 Jul 2026
A single chemical scent produced by the queen of a naked mole-rat colony is enough to suppress reproduction in her rivals, researchers report in Nature, resolving a long-standing puzzle about how o...
18 Jul 2026
Researchers have identified how the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) — present in about 90% of the global population — triggers multiple sclerosis (MS), a finding that also helps explain why existing immunotherapies can slow the disease, Nature reported on 15 July 2026. The results were published in *Science Translational Medicine*.
18 Jul 2026
US officials have approved a mission to launch a giant mirror into space that would reflect sunlight onto shadowed parts of Earth, Nature reported, in a step toward a controversial plan to "turn night into day."
18 Jul 2026
Scientists have used artificial-intelligence models to create synthetic CRISPR proteins that edit the genome more efficiently than their naturally occurring counterparts, according to results published on 16 July in the journal Science. The work was led by Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her role in developing CRISPR gene editing.
17 Jul 2026
Astronomers have detected a four-carbon sugar molecule called erythrulose in a cloud of gas and dust near the centre of the Milky Way — the first "true sugar" ever identified in interstellar space, according to a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
17 Jul 2026
Scientists have discovered a rocky planet that is likely to have an atmosphere — and could be a candidate host for life — according to a report published this week in the journal *Science* and summarised by Nature...
17 Jul 2026
A new partnership links the Centre for Biodiscovery (CBRB) with the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) to advance antimicrobial-resistance (AMR) discovery research, according to Imperial College London (Imperial College London, 8 June 2026 — The institution said the collaboration is intended to strengthen AMR research capacity.
17 Jul 2026
Exposure to microgravity aboard the International Space Station causes mitochondria — the "powerhouses" of the cell — in human cells and in worms to produce fewer proteins, according to a study that identifies a previously unknown molecular pathway linking gravity to cellular function Nature.
17 Jul 2026
Observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed that the scorching rocky exoplanet 55 Cancri e is wrapped in an atmosphere far different from what standard models predicted — one rich in carbon monoxide, containing relatively little carbon dioxide, and surprisingly loaded with hydrogen. The results, reported by a team led by Ignas Snellen and submitted for publication in *Nature Astronomy*, offer a rare glimpse into the chemistry of an alien world's interior (preprint: summary at
16 Jul 2026
A Johns Hopkins-led study in Nature identifies claudin-4 as the entry receptor for a toxin made by Bacteroides fragilis, opening a path to block it.
16 Jul 2026