A member of the rebel Free Syrian Army walks past a burnt-out Syrian army tank in northern Aleppo province in 2012.Credit: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Working scientist profiles This article is part of an occasional Nature series in which we profile scientists with unusual career histories or outside interests. Aref Kyyaly has a guiding principle: don’t give … Read more
India’s academic freedom has been in steady decline for a decade. This is well documented: in the 2024 Academic Freedom Index update produced by V-Dem, a project on democracy based in Gothenburg, Sweden, India is ranked in the bottom 20% of a list of 179 countries and territories on metrics such as ‘institutional autonomy’ and … Read more
Superconductivity has been demonstrated at extremely low temperatures, but it remains elusive at room temperatures.Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory/SPL Research misconduct is hugely detrimental to science and to society. Defined as “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results” by the US Office of Research Integrity, it violates trust … Read more
Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau and finance minister Chrystia Freeland hold copies of the 2024 federal budget.Credit: David Kawai/Bloomberg via Getty Researchers in Canada got most of what they were hoping for in the country’s 2024 federal budget, with a big boost in postgraduate pay and more funding for research and scientific infrastructure. “We are … Read more
The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector enabled the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics lab near Geneva.Credit: Richard Juilliart/AFP via Getty Roughly 100 metres underground, in a tunnel that crosses the border between Switzerland and France, lies the largest machine ever built. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) compresses and collides tiny bits … Read more
Podcasts are to radio as streaming services are to television, and we are lucky enough to be living through the golden age of both. You can find a podcast about almost anything these days, but with great choice comes great mediocrity—you might need a helping hand to find the podcasts worthy of your ear. Our … Read more
Last August, India became the fourth country ever to achieve a soft Moon landing.Credit: Kabir Jhangiani/NurPhoto/Getty India’s general election begins this week. Nearly one billion voters are eligible to go to the polls in a marathon exercise, starting on 19 April and ending on 1 June. Opinion polls are projecting that an alliance of parties … Read more
Illustration: Fran Pulido Misconduct aftermath Misconduct allegations and findings can tear academic communities apart, and university disciplinary processes can amplify the harm. This two-part series explores the community fallout from harassment and bullying misconduct, beginning with the ripple effects of secrecy surrounding disciplinary processes. A second article will investigate how changes to institutional responses could … Read more
Imagine you want to attend a research conference in the United States this autumn. If you are from most nations in the global north, there’s probably still plenty of time to make arrangements. But, according to our analysis, citizens from 132 of the 134 countries in the global south need a visa to visit the … Read more
Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. Colleagues remember Peter Higgs as an inspirational scientist, who remained humble despite his fame.Credit: Graham Clark/Alamy Theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, the namesake of the boson that was discovered in 2012, died on Monday, aged 94. Six … Read more