Close banner

What China’s coronavirus response can teach the rest of the world

Researchers are studying the effects of China's lockdowns to glean insights about controlling the viral pandemic.

How a small nuclear war would transform the entire planet

As geopolitical tensions rise in nuclear-armed states, scientists are modelling the global impact of nuclear war.
Alexandra Witze

News Feature 16 Mar 2020
A year without conferences? How the coronavirus pandemic could change research

As scientific meetings are cancelled worldwide, researchers are rethinking how they network — a move that some say is long overdue.
Giuliana Viglione

News 16 Mar 2020
Highly porous nature of a primitive asteroid revealed by thermal imaging

Thermal imaging data obtained from the spacecraft Hayabusa2 reveal that the carbonaceous asteroid 162173 Ryugu is an object of unusually high porosity.
Tatsuaki Okada
Tetsuya Fukuhara
Yuichi Tsuda

Article 16 Mar 2020
Daily briefing: First coronavirus vaccine clinical trials begin in United States

The phase I trial of the vaccine from drug company Moderna is just the beginning of a long process to test safety and efficacy. Plus: a ‘completely accidental’ discovery hints at how to use standard silicon microchips in a quantum computer and a year without conferences raises the question of whether we need them at all.
Flora Graham

Nature Briefing 17 Mar 2020
- Contents
- Subscribe
Current Issue 12 Mar 2020

News & Comment

Coronavirus latest: First vaccine clinical trials begin in United States

Updates on the respiratory illness that has infected tens of thousands of people and killed several thousand.

News 17 Mar 2020
Coronavirus: three things all governments and their science advisers must do now

Editorial 17 Mar 2020
Dodging bandits, eking out food: tracking wildlife in Mongolia
Tom McCarthy

Book Review 17 Mar 2020
From egg to animal: retracing an embryo’s first steps
Sarah Franklin

Book Review 16 Mar 2020
A year without conferences? How the coronavirus pandemic could change research
Giuliana Viglione

News 16 Mar 2020
Don’t rush to deploy COVID-19 vaccines and drugs without sufficient safety guarantees
Shibo Jiang

World View 16 Mar 2020
How a small nuclear war would transform the entire planet
Alexandra Witze

News Feature 16 Mar 2020

Latest Reviews & Analysis

- From the archive
  
  How Nature reported deep diving on dry land in 1970, and the history of electrotherapy in 1920.
  
  News & Views 17 Mar 2020
- Tiny bird fossil might be the world’s smallest dinosaur
  
  A tiny skull trapped in 99-million-year-old amber suggests that some of the earliest birds evolved to become miniature. The fossil illustrates how ancient amber can act as a window into the distant past.
  
  Roger B. J. Benson
  
  News & Views 11 Mar 2020
- An all-electrical magnetic logic gate that harnesses chirality between domains
  
  Bits of a logic gate can be encoded by differently magnetized regions. A method has been developed in which the walls between these domains are manipulated electrically, rather than magnetically, to produce a logic gate.
  
  See-Hun Yang
  
  News & Views 11 Mar 2020
- Ancient rock bears isotopic fingerprints of Earth’s origins
  
  Identifying Earth’s building blocks from terrestrial rocks is challenging because these ingredients have become mixed as the planet evolved. Evidence of an unknown building block in ancient rocks provides fresh insight.
  
  Katherine R. Bermingham
  
  News & Views 11 Mar 2020
- Chromatin modified in a molecular reaction chamber
  
  Chromatin, the complex of DNA and protein in cell nuclei, can be modified by ubiquitin molecules. It emerges that this modification occurs in a molecular reaction chamber formed from an enzyme and a scaffold protein.
  
  Nick Gilbert
  Fred van Leeuwen
  
  News & Views 11 Mar 2020
- AI finds microbial signatures in tumours and blood across cancer types
  
  Nadim J. Ajami
  Jennifer A. Wargo
  
  News & Views 11 Mar 2020
- From the archive
  
  News & Views 10 Mar 2020
- Research on the cerebellum yields rewards
  
  Jennifer L. Raymond
  
  News & Views 09 Mar 2020
- Tropical carbon sinks are saturating at different times on different continents
  
  Anja Rammig
  
  News & Views 04 Mar 2020
- How a fly came to love the vomit fruit
  
  Jessica L. Zung
  Carolyn S. McBride
  
  News & Views 04 Mar 2020

Latest Research

Highly porous nature of a primitive asteroid revealed by thermal imaging

Thermal imaging data obtained from the spacecraft Hayabusa2 reveal that the carbonaceous asteroid 162173 Ryugu is an object of unusually high porosity.
Tatsuaki Okada
Tetsuya Fukuhara
Yuichi Tsuda

Article 16 Mar 2020
Late-stage oxidative C(sp³)–H methylation
Kaibo Feng
Raundi E. Quevedo
M. Christina White

Article 16 Mar 2020
Hummingbird-sized dinosaur from the Cretaceous period of Myanmar

Oculudentavis khaungraae—a newly discovered theropod from the Cretaceous period of Myanmar—reveals a previously unknown bauplan and ecology associated with miniaturization, highlighting the potential for recovering small-bodied vertebrates from amber deposits.
Lida Xing
Jingmai K. O’Connor
Gang Li

Article 11 Mar 2020
Cryo-EM structure of SWI/SNF complex bound to a nucleosome

The cryo-electron microscopy structure of the yeast SWI/SNF complex bound to a nucleosome substrate provides insights into the chromatin-remodelling function of this family of protein complexes and suggests mechanisms by which the mutated proteins may cause cancer.
Yan Han
Alexis A Reyes
Yuan He

Article 11 Mar 2020
Nightside condensation of iron in an ultrahot giant exoplanet
David Ehrenreich
Christophe Lovis
Filippo Zerbi

Article 11 Mar 2020

Researchers are homing in on the myriad ways in which the bacteria and other microorganisms that inhabit the human digestive system affect our health – and how they could point the way towards new therapies.

Nature Outlook 29 Jan 2020