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Malaria causes nearly 600,000 deaths each year, many of which occur in children.Credit: Hajarah Nalwadda/Getty
A new type of malaria drug successfully cured more than 97% of people that were given it in a clinical trial, outperforming existing treatments. The drug, ganaplacide–lumefantrine (GanLum), kills malarial parasites in a different way from existing treatments, many of which rely on the plant-derived compound artemisinin. As such, it could circumvent the partial resistance to artemisinin emerging among parasites in southeast Asia and several African countries. If GanLum gets regulatory approval, it could be available in 12-18 months, and would be the first new class of malaria drug approved in more than 25 years.
The shutdown of the US government, which shuttered science agencies, halted grant operations and left tens of thousands of federal scientists without paychecks, is over after lasting a record-breaking 43 days. Under the terms of a deal between lawmakers in Congress, federal researchers will be paid what they would have earned during the furlough, and those who were laid off will be rehired — at least for now. But ramping back up will not be easy: for example, at the US National Science Foundation, more than 300 grant-review meetings involving six to ten researchers each will need to be rescheduled. And if Congress passes neither a long-term spending package nor a stopgap spending measure by the end of January, the government could shut again.
Globally, greenhouse-gas emissions — which include methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases as well as carbon dioxide — are still rising. But there are signs they will peak around 2030, and some researchers argue that carbon dioxide emissions might have already begun to decline. China is the key, say researchers. The world’s biggest emitter also leads the global clean-energy sector and has promised to reduce emissions from an undefined ‘peak level’ by 2035. Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, as agreed in the Paris Agreement, will require reducing global carbon emissions to zero by around 2050 — and removing some of what’s in the atmosphere already.
Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and cement production are projected to rise by 1.1%, to 38.1 billion tonnes of CO2 this year, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international consortium of researchers. Emissions among the major industrialized countries, which are responsible for the bulk of historical emissions, have been falling for more than two decades. But they are rising nearly everywhere else.
Data-analytics company Clarivate have amended the criteria for their influential Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list to exclude scientists who associate with those linked to possible ethical breaches. The list aims to recognize contemporary researchers who are among the authors of papers that are in the top 1% in their field by number of citations. But this year, any papers with an author who had been knocked off the previous year’s HCR list owing to research-integrity issues were excluded. This meant anyone who routinely co-authored with such scientists was less likely to make the cut.
Features & opinion
At a research farm in the heart of Helsinki, technician Helena Kuoppala spends her days tending to 60 Ayrshire cows. Her work feeding and milking the herd supports research into sustainable food production, exploring how dietary changes affect the cows’ health, milk yields and methane emissions. Recently, Kuoppala opened the barn doors to Nature to share a typical day in her life. “By the end of the day, I’ve usually walked 30,000 steps. I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she says. The herd are “very affectionate animals and fun co-workers, too.”
Water is being rationed in Iran’s capital city of 10 million people, Tehran. If it doesn’t rain soon, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said that the city might be evacuated. A long history of water mismanagement — including the unsustainable use of groundwater, excessive construction of dams and misplaced incentives for low-yield, water-hungry agriculture — have combined with the impact of sanctions, a summer of record breaking heat and six years of drought to leave the country with few options. “Planning must now focus on managing the reality of scarcity,” says critical-infrastructure researcher Farshid Vahedifard. Without precipitation, “the human toll, both economic and social, will be severe”.
A smart fabric made of clothing-like fibres with magnetic materials melted into them could give robotics a soft touch. The fibres can stiffen on demand, giving them the strength to hold objects without applying too much pressure. This could allow usually heavy-handed robots to pick up soft, squishy objects without harming them. The material could also be used to make gloves or clothing that can transmit tactile sensations, which researchers say could help build reactive wearables to make video games more immersive.
Today I’m taking an underwater thrill ride from the comfort of my office chair. By mounting cameras onto humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), researchers have captured footage of remora (Echeneidae spp.) hitchhiking on the animals’ backs. The high-speed jaunt requires impressive agility and perfect timing — the remora must let go of the whales when they breach for air, and grab back on when they re-enter the water. It’s not for the faint of fish-heart.
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