Daily briefing: Gaze upon the most detailed Moon maps ever made
Daily briefing: Gaze upon the most detailed Moon maps ever made
The new Geologic Atlas took more than 100 researchers over a decade to compile. Plus, how gliding marsupials got their 'wings' and H5N1 bird flu virus material has been detected in US milk.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has released the highest-resolution geological atlas of the Moon yet. The Geologic Atlas of the Lunar Globereveals a total of 12,341 craters, 81 basins and 17 rock types, along with other basic geological information about the lunar surface. The maps were made at the unprecedented scale of 1:2,500,000. China will use the maps to support its lunar ambitions and researchers say that the maps will be beneficial to other countries as they undertake their own Moon missions. Nature | 5 min read
Rat cells can fill in gaps in the brains of developing mice, such as missing olfactory neurons and even an entire brain region. While researchers have created other hybrid animals, such as mice with rat organs, this is the first demonstration of rat neurons becoming an essential part of controlling the mice's behaviour. Nature | 6 min read Reference: Cell paper 1 & paper 2
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) said it will raise the salaries of thousands of postdoctoral researchers and graduate students who receive a prestigious NIH research fellowship. The move could boost pay for other scientists as well, because academic institutions often follow guidelines set by the NIH. "This is a major step in the right direction and something that the majority will agree is widely needed to retain talent in the biomedical and academic research sectors," says biomedical engineer Francisca Maria Acosta. Nature | 4 min read
Reader poll
A group of researchers wants scientific publishers to display a 'nutrition label' on papers that includes facts about the journal (acceptance rate, for example) and the article (such as the number of reviewers and authors' competing interests). Almost three-quarters of readers who voted in our poll felt that these 'nutrition labels' would be useful. In terms of what should be included, "citation index is nasty, but there is some correlation with general journal quality", says molecular cell biologist Simon Goodman. The labels could be expanded beyond data that are already publicly available. "I want some sort of metric that captures whether the reviewers sent back a 'Yeah looks good' or whether they gave in-depth feedback for a paper," says economist Alexander Smith. "I just want to know whether a paper got 'whatever'ed' or not." There were some worries that journals would try to game the system to make their numbers appear better or that the labels would unfairly disadvantage new journals that don't yet have certain statistics. Others felt that such labels would be unnecessary. "Not because that information is not useful", says education researcher Pilar Gema Rodríguez Ortega, but because it implies that researchers aren't able to make their own informed decisions on a paper's quality.
Three weeks after the announcement of the first ever outbreak of an avian influenza virus in dairy cattle, the H5N1 strain of bird flu has been detected in eight US states. On Wednesday, officials confirmed that genomic material from the virus has been detected in milk sold in shops. "The detection of viral RNA does not itself pose a health risk to consumers," says dairy scientist Nicole Martin. "We expect to find this residual genetic material if the virus was there in the raw milk and was inactivated by pasteurization." More evidence is needed to confirm that pasteurization kills H5N1. There are rules that milk from infected cows must be discarded, so the presence of viral material in commercially available milk might indicate that not every infected cow is being spotted and tested. Nature | 6 min read
Amid the data deluge provided by lab-based techniques, ecologist Chris Mantegna reminds her colleagues not to lose touch with the joy of the field — especially those ecologists from historically under-represented backgrounds, who have long been subject to fieldwork exclusion or harassment. (Nature | 5 min read) doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01266-3 Today Leif Penguinson is hiding among the lush mangroves in Ujung Kulon National Park, in Indonesia — the last home of the Javan rhino ( Rhinoceros sondaicus). Can you find the penguin? The answer will be in Monday's e-mail, all thanks to Briefing photo editor and penguin wrangler Tom Houghton. This newsletter is always evolving — tell us what you think! Please send your feedback to [email protected]. Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature BriefingWith contributions by Katrina Krämer and Gemma Conroy Want more? Sign up to our other free Nature Briefing newsletters: • Nature Briefing: Microbiology — the most abundant living entities on our planet — microorganisms — and the role they play in health, the environment and food systems. • Nature Briefing: Anthropocene — climate change, biodiversity, sustainability and geoengineering • Nature Briefing: AI & Robotics — 100% written by humans, of course • Nature Briefing: Cancer — a weekly newsletter written with cancer researchers in mind • Nature Briefing: Translational Research — covers biotechnology, drug discovery and pharma
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Kiel University (CAU) and the University of Lübeck (UzL) are striving to increase the proportion of qualified female scientists in research and tea... Lübeck University of Luebeck
Kiel University (CAU) and the University of Lübeck (UzL) are striving to increase the proportion of qualified female scientists in research and tea... Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein (DE) Universität Kiel - Medizinische Fakultät
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