Peer-reviewed open-access journal from Nature Portfolio publishing research across all areas of biology.
Qin Ye's team found 35 acritarch species and six larger fossil forms in the same Hubei rock layers, estimated at 620 to 610 million years old. The age comes from matching the layer to other sections, and no radiometric date exists yet for it.
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Of 37 artificial structures placed in Kane'ohe Bay, Scripps-led trials found coral larvae settled most on those nearest a speaker playing healthy-reef sound. The result puts sound beside living coatings and 3D-printed surfaces as a restoration tool, so far tested in a single Hawaiian bay.
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University of Tokyo researchers taught a 1,000-neuron spiking network to forecast an event's identity, timing and probability using only local learning rules. It shows one circuit can be enough in simulation, on a task with two possible events.
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Researchers at Northeastern and Carleton universities report in Communications Biology that psilocybin may protect rat brains from three mild head impacts. Hits like these can raise CTE risk and have no established treatment, though the evidence so far is brain imaging in rats.
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Tohoku University researchers imaging mice saw brain blood volume start rising about 50 seconds before REM sleep, yet neuronal ATP fell once REM began. The team takes this to mean dreaming uses energy faster than it arrives, though slower ATP production would look the same.
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Genomic evidence turns one widely distributed penguin into four species, three of them sub-Antarctic, and gives the Kerguelen birds the first new penguin name in more than a century. Conservation accounting now has to be done island group by island group.
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Antarctic krill had never been recorded at deep-sea hydrothermal vents until 2024. Every one the team collected at Hook Ridge was a mated, egg-carrying female, and the study asks whether vents are spawning habitat.
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The Constructor team reports two- to threefold better accuracy than AlphaFold 3 for ions such as calcium, potassium and magnesium, on the condition that you already hold a solved structure with its ordered waters intact.
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Boyce Thompson Institute researchers report that ascaroside 18 leaves defense genes easier to switch on, and that field sprays cut fungal disease in corn and soybean. Three of the four named leads co-founded the startup behind it.
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DNA from a 190-year-old type specimen in London settles which name the Himalayan pangolin carries. Species-level matching of trafficked scales gets easier; region-level tracing does not, yet.
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