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Researchers open a canister containing fragments of the asteroid Bennu in a super-clean laboratory beneath inert gasoline to stop contamination.Credit score: Robert Markowitz
Fragments collected from the asteroid Bennu comprise the constructing blocks for all times — all 5 nucleobases that type DNA and RNA and 14 of the 20 amino acids wanted to make recognized proteins. However there’s a twist: on Earth, amino acids in residing organisms are likely to have a ‘left-handed’ construction. These on Bennu, nevertheless, comprise almost equal quantities of those buildings and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image varieties. This calls into query a speculation favoured by many scientists that asteroids much like this one may need seeded life on Earth.
Reference: Nature Astronomy paper
A scanning electron microscope picture of the sodium carbonate crystalline needles present in samples of the asteroid Bennu.Credit score: Rob Wardell, Tim Gooding and Tim McCoy/Smithsonian
The fabric from Bennu can also be wealthy in salts created billions of years in the past, most likely when watery ponds on its mum or dad asteroid evaporated and left behind a crust of minerals. Though no indicators of life have been noticed on Bennu, these salty ponds would have been a superb surroundings to foster the chemistry that would result in it. “Having these brines there, together with easy natural stuff, might have kick-started [the process of] making way more difficult and fascinating organics just like the nucleobases,” says mineralogist Sara Russell. (Nature | 5 min learn)
A examine of 20 bat genomes has revealed immune diversifications that make them virtually invincible to viral infections. Many of those diversifications have been shared by each species researchers studied, suggesting that they emerged in a typical ancestor of all bats — and at across the identical level that fossil proof has instructed they developed powered flight. Why the 2 appear to have co-evolved isn’t clear, however may very well be associated to the metabolic calls for of flying, which result in the manufacturing of poisonous chemical compounds of their our bodies. The diversifications may assist them deal with the toxicity, with immunity to viruses as a bonus.
A lady with coronary heart failure had her coronary heart strengthened utilizing patches of muscle grown from stem cells. The lady had an operation to implant 10 patches of 400 million cells on the floor of her coronary heart. The surgical procedure stabilized her situation for 3 months, lengthy sufficient for her to obtain a coronary heart transplant. The researchers have implanted related muscle patches into 15 individuals up to now. The strategy “is providing one other therapy to sufferers which might be presently beneath palliative care,” says pharmacologist and examine co-author Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann.
Scientists are flocking to DeepSeek-R1, an inexpensive and highly effective synthetic intelligence (AI) ‘reasoning’ mannequin that despatched the US inventory market spiralling after it was launched by a Chinese language agency final week.Researchers say DeepSeek has some notable benefits:
• The mannequin is less expensive to make use of than proprietary rivals, akin to OpenAI’s o1. Utilizing its on-line chatbot, DeepThink, is free.
• Researchers can obtain DeepSeek to their very own servers and run and construct on it, additionally without spending a dime, which is a plus for privateness.
• DeepSeek matched o1’s efficiency in preliminary exams on data-driven scientific duties.
There additionally appear to be drawbacks:
• The mannequin fails on some comparatively easy duties recognized additionally to journey up different large-language fashions, akin to counting the variety of US state names that comprise the letter W.
• DeepSeek-R1 seems to be intermittently incapable of offering details about subjects which might be deemed to be delicate by China’s authorities, though it’s unclear whether or not that is constructed into the mannequin or is utilized to its interface.
The place will all of the lithium come from?
Brine swimming pools in Chile’s Atacama Desert comprise lithium.Credit score: Cristobal Olivares/Bloomberg/Getty
The rechargeable batteries which might be wanted for the green-energy transition depend on lithium — however mining the mineral is pricey, energy-intensive and makes use of huge quantities of water. The excellent news is that enhancements to current strategies of separating lithium from lower-quality sources are on the best way, says a Nature editorial. One other bottleneck is the manufacturing of rechargeable batteries at scale — one thing that few international locations, notably, China, the USA and a few in Europe have cracked up to now.
Digital waste is one other doubtlessly wealthy and sustainable supply of lithium. However a lot of that potential rests on the work of casual employees, who sift by the detritus of cities akin to New Delhi for the damaged devices that function the grist for ‘city mining’. Most earn little, and work with out security or labour protections. “The entire [electric vehicle] trade is making an attempt to make sure that the availability chain for batteries stays formal from the start, however it’s proving to be a tough job,” says Shubham Vishvakarma, who co-founded an e-waste recycling firm that’s backed by a few of India’s greatest enterprise capital corporations.
Options & opinion
Round 2,000 metres beneath the ocean, the coral Desmophyllum dianthus thrives in pitch darkish and virtually freezing circumstances. Their most popular properties make them tough to check. Fortunately for researchers, a layer of sediment-filled freshwater sitting on prime of the Comau fjord in Chilean Patagonia recreates the coral’s favorite habitat, with out the intense depths. Final 12 months, a staff collected a number of specimens from the fjord and monitored them 24/7 within the lab to reply a query that’s stumped coral scientists for years — how do these species reproduce?
At the moment I’m mesmerized watching a northern cricket frog (Acris crepitans) majestically ‘stomach flop’ throughout the floor of water. To the bare eye, these little amphibians seem to skim over water, however a slowed-down video reveals that they really sink just a little earlier than kicking their manner again out, stomach flopping time and again as they go.
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Jacob Smith, affiliate editor, Nature Briefing
With contributions by Flora Graham
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