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A Nature feature collects advice from ten PhD students, postdocs and faculty on preparing for a first university lecture, noting that most doctoral programs emphasize research over teaching skills. Geneticist Ľubomír Tomáška recounts losing his class's attention within ten minutes during his own debut lecture decades ago, despite thorough subject knowledge.
A Nature Careers piece describes a lecturer's frustrating search for a functioning projector while preparing to present at a conference in Las Vegas. The essay uses this mundane logistical struggle as a lens to reflect on the everyday obstacles academics face when traveling for work. The full content is behind Nature's standard site rendering, limiting access to detailed narrative specifics.
Climate scientists tracking 14 forecasting models report that central Pacific sea surface temperatures are running about 2.9°C above the 30-year average, more than 1°C hotter than at the same point in the record 1997 and 2015 El Niño events. Models now give a greater than 90% probability that this year's El Niño will exceed every event recorded since the 1870s, raising fears of severe drought, flooding, wildfires and coral bleaching worldwide.
Researchers led by Daolin Tang discovered a novel form of cell death, dubbed alkaliptosis, triggered when a cell's internal pH becomes unusually high rather than through known mechanisms like necrosis or apoptosis. This finding is part of a broader wave of research since 1999 that has expanded the catalog of known cell-death pathways from two classical types to roughly 20 distinct processes, thanks to advances in gene editing, imaging and omics technologies.
A preprint led by Lisa Matthias at Humboldt University of Berlin tracked 440 academic journals that began as diamond open-access, meaning free for both authors and readers, but later shifted to charging fees between 2009 and 2026. Most of these titles, 369, moved to gold open access with article-processing charges, 52 adopted hybrid models, and 19 became fully paywalled, with fees ranging from $8 to $5,300 depending on publisher type.
Researchers created replica papyrus scrolls, inscribed and burned them to mimic scrolls buried by the Vesuvius eruption in AD 79, then showed they could detect the ink by identifying trace lead within it using X-ray techniques. This approach helps overcome a longstanding problem in which carbon-based ink is nearly indistinguishable from the carbonized papyrus itself under standard CT scanning.
A commentary published in Nature argues that the world lacks a coordinated fallback system to preserve and share climate-risk intelligence if key data sources fail or become inaccessible. The piece warns that current climate monitoring and forecasting infrastructure is fragmented and vulnerable to funding cuts, political shifts, or technical disruptions.
Researchers are urging governments and conservation groups to establish protected areas designed specifically for insects, arguing that existing wildlife reserves largely fail to address the unique habitat and life-cycle needs of these species. Current conservation frameworks tend to prioritize larger, more charismatic animals, leaving insects vulnerable despite their critical ecological roles.
A letter in Nature responds to a feature on AI-enabled biological threats by arguing that biosecurity thinking is too narrowly focused on mortality. The author points to severe ME/CFS and post-COVID disability as evidence that a biological event can devastate a population's functional capacity without killing large numbers of people.
Loud laptop fans, especially in gaming laptops, are typically a normal response to heavy CPU and GPU workloads that generate heat needing ventilation. The report explains that fan speed increases with processing demand to prevent overheating, and outlines when loud noise is a genuine concern versus routine operation, along with tips to quiet things down.
Ozzy Osbourne played his final live performance at Villa Park in Birmingham in July 2025, appearing seated on a bat-shaped throne before an audience that included fans watching via livestream. The show was preceded by tribute sets from artists including Metallica, Gojira, Yungblud and Lzzy Hale, who performed covers of Black Sabbath and Osbourne material ahead of his closing set.
Ron Johnson, who built Apple's retail store network starting in 2000, says he doesn't believe AI shopping agents will fundamentally change how people buy products. He argues that for significant purchases like laptops, consumers still want to physically handle items rather than let an AI complete the transaction, even as companies like Google and OpenAI push tools that let agents research, compare, and buy on a shopper's behalf.