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‘Hard’ scientists should stop looking down their noses at social scientists, and instead share methods that could help them address pressing societal problems.
Life-sciences databases are in crisis, say their operators, as funders keen to support exciting new projects lose interest in maintaining existing services. Nature investigates the scale of the problem.
Are research expeditions to far-flung destinations as glamorous as they sound? Amanda Haag joins a few research novices who gave up their holidays for science.
Dalton Conley is an award-winning researcher who works on the politically charged issues of race, gender and class. He tells Tony Reichhardt why he wants to stress the ‘science’ in the social sciences.
The first person to carry out a modern survey of the night sky, Fritz Zwicky's astronomical observations led to a new picture of a turbulent Universe that is punctuated by violent events.
Tiny quantum tornadoes observed in ultracold gases of fermionic atoms provide definitive evidence of superfluidity, and open up new vistas in the modelling of quantum many-body systems.
How do neurons in the brain represent movie stars, famous buildings and other familiar objects? Rare recordings from single neurons in the human brain provide a fresh perspective on the question.
A new network of geodetic field stations has greatly improved monitoring of relative motion across a seismic zone in the central United States. It seems that rapid deformation is occurring across this fault system.
The discovery of an all-female population of damselflies in the Azores archipelago provides a novelty for entomologists. It also highlights the unique selection pressures faced by species that colonize islands.
Francis Crick believed that, in biology, structure is the natural path to understanding function. In his later career, he applied this dictum to the study of consciousness.
Granular materials such as sand can either be jammed and rigid, or yield and flow. Puzzling changes in the forces between the grains deepen the mystery surrounding this basic, but poorly understood, transition.
Stargazin is best known for helping to ferry receptor proteins to the surface of neurons. The discovery that it has an unexpected additional role has widespread implications for the way that neurons talk to each other.
Buoyed by a range of new technologies, science illustration is expanding its remit to offer careers beyond publishing in areas such as advertising and law. Virginia Gewin reports.
