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    Cancer’s power harnessed — lymphoma mutations supercharge T cells

    Download the Nature Podcast 07 February 2024 In this episode:0:46 Borrowing tricks from cancer could help improve immunotherapyT-cell based immunotherapies have revolutionized the treatment of certain types of cancer. However these therapies — which involve taking someone’s own T cells and reprogramming them to kill cancer cells — have struggled to treat solid tumours, which put up multiple defences. To overcome these, a team has taken mutations found in cancer cells that help them thrive and put them into therapeutic T cells. Their results show these powered-up cells are more efficient at targeting solid tumours, but don’t turn cancerous themselves.Research article: Garcia et al.11:39 Research HighlightsHow researchers solved a submerged-sprinkler problem named after Richard Feynman, and what climate change is doing to high-altitude environmental records in Switzerland.Research Highlight: The mystery of Feynman’s sprinkler is solved at lastResearch Highlight: A glacier’s ‘memory’ is fading because of climate change14:28 What might the car batteries of the future look like?As electric cars become ever more popular around the world, manufacturers are looking to improve the batteries that power them. Although conventional lithium-ion batteries have dominated the electric vehicle market for decades, researchers are developing alternatives that have better performance and safety — we run through some of these options and discuss their pros and cons.News Feature: The new car batteries that could power the electric vehicle revolution25:32 Briefing ChatHow a baby’s-eye view of the world helps an AI learn language, and how the recovery of sea otter populations in California slowed rates of coastal erosion.Nature News: This AI learnt language by seeing the world through a baby’s eyesNature News: How do otters protect salt marshes from erosion? ShellfishlySubscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.Never miss an episode. Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast app. An RSS feed for the Nature Podcast is available too. More

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    ‘Bee protection’ offsets are as flawed as tree-planting schemes

    Tree-planting initiatives, including the World Economic Forum’s 1 Trillion Trees project (www.1t.org) launched in 2020, are a popular way to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. But challenges such as quantifying carbon stored, the time it takes trees to grow and competing land uses mean that these projects are increasingly supplemented with a swifter solution: pollinator protection.
    Competing Interests
    The author declares no competing interests. More

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    Ecosystem effects of sea otters limit coastal erosion

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    How do otters protect salt marshes from erosion? Shellfishly

    Sea otters in California prey on crabs, thereby inadvertently protecting the vegetation that holds creek banks together.Credit: David Hayes/Alamy

    Sea otters are helping to keep the shores of a central Californian estuary from crumbling into the ocean. They act as erosion control by feasting on shore crabs — crustaceans whose burrowing and vegetation-munching habits contribute to unstable salt-marsh banks.By the twentieth century, humans had hunted sea otters (Enhydra lutris) nearly to extinction for their fur. But conservation efforts have helped population sizes to increase, and otters are re-establishing themselves in their historical haunts, including in the salt marshes of Monterey Bay’s Elkhorn Slough. Moreover, in marsh creeks with high numbers of sea otters, erosion rates are lower than when there were fewer sea otters, researchers report today in Nature1.“It’s remarkable when you think about it,” says Jane Watson, a community ecologist at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, Canada. “You can have a single animal, the sea otter, come in and through predation actually mitigate the effects of erosion.”Natural vegetation protectorsSalt marshes provide crucial habitats for wildlife but are threatened globally. Several factors, such as increased water flow and sea-level rise, contribute to the amount of erosion in Elkhorn Slough — estimated at around 30 centimetres per year. Striped shore crabs (Pachygrapsus crassipes) also play a part by eating the roots of pickleweed (Salicornia pacifica), an abundant plant that helps to hold the slough’s sandy banks together. Because sea otters eat the crabs, study co-author Brent Hughes, a marine ecologist at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California and colleagues wanted to know whether the predator’s recovery would change the levels of erosion in the area.To dig into the correlation between erosion and sea otters, the team compared several lines of evidence, such as historical erosion rates in Elkhorn Slough and sea otter population trends. They also did a predator-exclusion experiment, in which otters could eat burrowing crabs in some creeks but not in others. Then, the team compared how much vegetation grew in each of those areas.Turning the tide on erosionOn banks where sea otters could prey on crabs, the vegetation was denser than on those from which they were excluded. Hughes says that sea otters have had a similarly positive impact on other vegetation elsewhere, such as seagrass and giant kelp. “It’s almost like, wherever they go, they’re protecting vegetation,” he says. In areas where otters had returned, erosion slowed from 30 cm a year to 10 cm a year.As their populations increase and they reclaim their historical range, sea otters could turn the tide of erosion in other salt marsh habitats — particularly the marshes of the nearby San Francisco Bay, Watson says. More

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    ‘Like a moth to a flame’ — this strange insect behaviour is finally explained

    Moths love a light bulb. And it’s not just moths — all sorts of insects congregate around artificial lights at night. But what makes these lights so apparently attractive?Previous explanations have included the idea that confused insects are attempting to use the Moon to navigate, or that they’re being drawn to the heat rather than the light itself. Now, advances in camera technology have allowed researchers to study the flight of these insects in more detail than ever before, and revealed a new solution to the mystery.Footage shows that flying insects seem to be twisting to keep their back to the light — a reflex known as a dorsal light response. Rather than being attracted towards it, they find themselves stuck in a loop flying around it …Read the paper: Fabian et al.Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday. More

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    Indian forest act faces challenge in Supreme Court

    Elephants in India often roam outside official forest reserves.Credit: David Talukdar/Getty

    India’s Supreme Court has agreed this week to hear arguments in a challenge to a controversial new forest law. An official request for a hearing was filed to the Supreme Court last Octoberber by 13 former officials in the forest service and environment ministry, who say the amended Forest Conservation Act is unconstitutional. The next hearing, which is yet to be scheduled, is the latest in a series of protests against the law — which some scientists say makes it easier to clear forests for development and erodes the rights of millions of people who depend on these ecosystems.M. K. Ranjitsinh Jhala, a former departmental head at the Ministry of Environment and Forests, and a co-petitioner in the case, says the revised act would harm the ecology of India and the livelihoods of forest-dwelling people. “There’s nothing in that act that we can see is going to help nature conservation, food security, ecological security and livelihood,” he says.The Forest Conservation Act was originally created in 1980, to balance the demands on forests from wildlife, local communities, businesses and the government. It protected all forested land from being used for agriculture, timber plantations, logging or other commercial purposes. If land-holders wanted to develop the land, they had to submit plans to the central government for approval, and “compensatory afforestation” was often required.The Indian Parliament voted to amend the act last August, opening up large areas of forests for development and exempting some new projects from requiring approval. The act was to come into force in December, but is paused pending the outcome of the hearing.The passage of the bill through parliament took place against a backdrop of protest from scientists, environmental groups and tribal people. India is described by ecologists as megadiverse, containing about 8% of all recorded species. Forests covered 21% of the country in 2021, according to the India State of the Forest 2021 report. And only 5.3% of it is strictly protected. Some wide-ranging mammals, such as the tiger (Panthera tigris) and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), live beyond these protected areas, in adjoining lands. The new act could fragment their habitats, leading to increased human–wildlife conflict, says Sandeep Sharma, an ecologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig, who is not a signatory to the petition. Fragmentation would also reduce the ecosystem’s ability to provide services to humans, such as fresh water or clean air, he says. “The water from a contiguous patch of forest is different than the water you get from a fragmented forest,” he says.Nature contacted India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for comment, but it did not respond by the time of publication.The actOne key change to the act hinges on the legally accepted meaning of ‘forest’. A Supreme Court ruling on the act in 1996 defined the word according to the dictionary, which per the Oxford English Dictionary is “a large area covered chiefly with trees and undergrowth”. Now, the government recognizes only areas registered in official records as forests.Ecologists estimate that 27.6% of India’s forest cover, an area that is roughly the size of Uganda, is unrecorded and would lose protection. The environment ministry has asked states to map and record their forests within one year, but this will prove challenging, says Meenal Tatpati, an independent lawyer and environment researcher based in Pune, India. She says the Supreme Court mandated in 1996 that states set up expert committees to identify unrecorded forests, but 27 years later, most still have not done so.The amended act also grants exemptions from review for national-security or defence reasons. But Ranjitsinh says the law is imprecisely worded, which would allow interpretations that “are not quite according to the spirit of the law, and sometimes not even according to the letter of the law”.Projects within 100 kilometres of India’s borders that are of “national importance” or that serve “national security” purposes are exempt from review under the act. This covers a vast region hosting numerous wildlife sanctuaries and forests, Sharma says. The borderlands include rare forests in the Andaman and Nicobar islands and are home to species of global significance, including vulnerable snow leopards (Panthera uncia) in the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary in the Himalayan desert and the critically endangered great Indian bustards (Ardeotis nigriceps) in Rajasthan.It also exempts parcels of land alongside roads and railway lines from development approval. Although the exempt parcels are small, they could add up to a large area: India has more than 144,000 kilometres of highways and 123,000 kilometres of tracks.

    Snow leopards (Panthera uncia) inhabit areas within 100 kilometres of India’s borders.Credit: Shivang Mehta/Getty

    The amendment has made the steps for obtaining consent from tribal peoples less prescribed. Soumitra Ghosh, a forest-rights activist at the All India Forum of Forest Movements, based in Siliguri, says more flexibility in the approvals process might allow some developers to cut corners in consulting with forest-dwellers. Some 300 million people live in villages bordering forests and directly depend on them, according to the India State of the Forest 2019 report. These include tribal people, some of whom have lived in and around the forests for millennia.International commitmentsThe changes to the act could also imperil India’s international commitments, says Tatpati. Under the 2022 Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, India has promised to conserve 30% of its land and oceans. It says that 27% is already under some kind of protection.To reach the 30% target, the Indian government plans to encourage local governments, communities and private landowners to declare areas such as village commons, community forests, artificial water bodies and canals as protected under the classification of other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs).But Sharma says that community and privately owned forests classified as OECMs would not be protected under the amended act. The owners could choose to declassify these areas at any point, making India’s biodiversity target hostage to the whims of landowners.Sharma says that India is nonetheless likely to meet its 30% target, because the biodiversity framework does not specify the quality of conserved areas, only the quantity. A plantation forest created to replace an ancient stand would count, he says.The court has not yet determined when it will hear arguments from the petitioners and the government. Ranjitsinh hopes the Supreme Court will strike down the entire amended act, reverting to the original. “It depends upon the court,” he says. “We all hope and pray it should be successful.” More

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    This AI just figured out geometry — is this a step towards artificial reasoning?

    Download the Nature Podcast 27 January 2024 In this episode:0:55 The AI that deduces solutions to complex maths problemsResearchers at Google Deepmind have developed an AI that can solve International Mathematical Olympiad-level geometry problems, something previous AIs have struggled with. They provided the system with a huge number of random mathematical theorems and proofs, which it used to approximate general rules of geometry. The AI then applied these rules to solve the Olympiad problems and show its workings for humans to check. The researchers hope their system shows that it is possible for AIs to ‘learn’ basic principles from large amounts of data and use them to tackle complex logical challenges, which could prove useful in fields outside mathematics.Research article: Trinh et al.09:46 Research HighlightsA stiff and squishy ‘hydrospongel’ — part sponge, part hydrogel — that could find use in soft robotics, and how the spread of rice paddies in sub-Saharan Africa helps to drive up atmospheric methane levels.Research Highlight: Stiff gel as squishable as a sponge takes its cue from cartilageResearch Highlight: A bounty of rice comes at a price: soaring methane emissions12:26 The food-web effects of mass predator die-offsMass mortality events, sometimes called mass die-offs, can result in huge numbers of a single species perishing in a short period of time. But there’s not a huge amount known about the effects that events like these might be having on wider ecosystems. Now, a team of researchers have built a model ecosystem to observe the impact of mass die-offs on the delicate balance of populations within it.Research article: Tye et al.20:53 Briefing ChatAn update on efforts to remove the stuck screws on OSIRIS-REx’s sample container, the ancient, fossilized skin that was preserved in petroleum, and a radical suggestion to save the Caribbean’s coral reefs.OSIRIS-REx Mission Blog: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Team Clears Hurdle to Access Remaining Bennu SampleNature News: This is the oldest fossilized reptile skin ever found — it pre-dates the dinosaursNature News: Can foreign coral save a dying reef? Radical idea sparks debateSubscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.Never miss an episode. Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast app. An RSS feed for the Nature Podcast is available too. More

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    Predator die-off reshapes ecosystems in expected and unexpected ways

    RESEARCH BRIEFINGS
    17 January 2024

    Mass-mortality events of predators are becoming more common, but their precise effects on food webs remain unclear. Experimentally induced predator die-offs led both to reduced predation and to fertilization from the bottom up. Together, these effects stabilized food webs. More