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Animated sequence of photos of the ten people featured in Nature’s 10 this year.
Nature’s 10: the people who shaped science
A fraud buster, a nuclear-clock maker and a virus hunter are just a few of the remarkable people chosen for this year’sNature’s 10. The list, compiled by Nature’s editors, includes Kaitlin Kharas, a PhD student who helped to lead a campaign to get Canadian graduate students and postdocs their biggest pay rise in 20 years; and Muhammad Yunus, an economist and Nobel peace laureate who is now the interim leader of Bangladesh.
Nature | 10 profiles
EU plans new science mega-programme
The European Union (EU) has appointed Bulgarian politician Ekaterina Zaharieva as commissioner for start-ups, research and innovation in its five-yearly shake-up of its executive body. Zaharieva will help to shape their next multibillion-euro science programme, the follow-up to the Horizon Europe scheme. The inclusion of ‘start ups’ in Zaharieva’s title, a first for the position, reflects the increased focus on business. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to prioritize science during her second term, as the EU aims to become less dependent on US and Chinese technologies.
Nature | 5 min read
Stack of dishes shows how it all fell apart
Clay bowls discovered in Iraq could be evidence of one of the world’s earliest governments. Residue in the bowls suggests they were used to serve meals, which researchers suggest were given out in exchange for labour — a form of centralized authority. Evidence that the site was later abandoned without any signs of violence or environmental pressures hints that local people might have rejected the authority and left. “Hierarchical forms of government were not inevitable in the development of early complex societies,” says archaeologist Claudia Glatz. “Local communities found ways to resist and reject tendencies towards centralized power.”
LiveScience | 5 min read
Reference: Antiquitypaper
Should some biology bar charts be axed?
In a collection of nearly 3,400 papers from 2023 that included at least one bar chart, almost one-third distorted the data in some way, according to new analysis that has not yet been peer reviewed. Most issues related to failing to start the y axis at zero, or mistakes with logarithmic axes. The former can make small disparities look larger; the latter can minimize differences. On the other hand, these choices can be examples of ‘scientific shorthand’ that are well-understood within the biz. “These authors are correctly pointing out that many people could misunderstand what is being stated,” says data-visualization scientist Helena Jambor. “But that does not mean that it was necessarily incorrect or that two scientists talking about the data would misunderstand one another.”
Nature | 5 min read
Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
H5N1 bird flu
Feature
Exactly what makes H5N1 so concerning
The label ‘2.3.4.4b’ refers to the clade of the H5N1 avian influenza virus that has been ripping through populations of birds and wild animals since 2021, and is now sweeping through cattle in the United States. But the H5N1 virus has been on scientists’ pandemic radar since it killed six people in Hong Kong in 1997. That’s given researchers time to get its measure, revealing the virus’s potential weak points, and what might trigger a dangerous shift in its ability to infect and harm people.
Science | 8 min read
Opinion
‘I ran Warp Speed; now I worry about bird flu’
Former US chief science officer David Kessler, who co-led the country’s wildly successful ‘Operation Warp Speed’ COVID-19 vaccine-development programme, says the US government must track the risk of H5N1 avian influenza with similar zeal. Right now, the risk is low to people who are not in contact with animals, but he sees worrying signs that the virus could mutate and start to spread between humans.
• The United States is already stockpiling enough doses of a vaccine to inoculate its farmworkers, but the current version is only moderately effective. Better vaccines and treatments are needed, says Kessler.
• It’s estimated that in California, as many as half the dairy farms harbour H5N1 infections. Kessler recommends that people drink pasteurized milk (not ‘raw’) to protect themselves. And milk should be tested in bulk to better understand and contain the virus’s spread.
The New York Times | 6 min read
Features & opinion
Nine books to shape your science career
Nature’s pick of nine books to shape your science career in 2025 includes an investigation of toxic workplaces and how to fix them, a guide to being more influential at work, and a rejection of ‘performative busyness’ in favour of working at a natural pace with a focus on quality.
Nature | 9 min read
‘Work together to guide more powerful AI’
For the best and safest results, academics and industry scientists must collaborate to guide the development of more powerful forms of AI, argues a Nature editorial. Much of the work to develop such AI is happening in private companies, which don’t always publish openly. Governments, companies, funders and researchers must identify their complementary strengths so that applications of AI research are robust, its risks are mitigated as much as possible, and tech companies’ claims can be verified independently.
Nature | 6 min read
Where I work
Geomorphologist Jeong-Sik Oh in equilibrium on a mountain slope holding a tablet to track hidden geographic markers on the surface to find places where active faults are likely to exist.
Jeong-Sik Oh is a geomorphologist at Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea.Credit: Dave Tacon for Nature
“Until the Tōhoku earthquake in 2011 caused the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in nearby Japan, people in South Korea had not paid much attention to active faults,” says geomorphologist Jeong-Sik Oh. “We’ve become more worried about seismic risks since then.” In 2017, South Korea’s government founded the Korea Active Fault Research Group to create the country’s first active-fault map. Oh and others in the group discovered the previously hidden active fault line, which he is examining in the picture, on a ridge in a forested valley. Researchers use drones and lidar to spot such rifts, but “the best tool of all is my feet”, says Oh. (Nature | 3 min read)
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“There is a cornucopia of endangered species available to buy online, and it simply shouldn’t be that easy.”
Sales of endangered species on social media platforms have soared after a crackdown on street markets, says Simone Haysom, director of environmental crime at the Global Initiative Against Transnational and Organized Crime. (The Guardian | 5 min read)