The full glory of the network of roads that connected the Roman empire. Plus, meet some of the scientists running for public office in the United States and how a tiny tyrannosaur is putting a palaeontological controversy to bed.
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A high-resolution ‘Google Maps’ for Roman roads includes nearly 300,000 kilometres of viae Romanae. It brings together fragmented data sets to show the full glory of the network that connected the empire around ad 150, when it was at its biggest. But “although the roads are one of the best-known aspects of Roman history, it’s surprising how many details about them we still don’t know,” says historian Catherine Fletcher. The data set reveals that the locations of only 3% of Roman roads are known with certainty.
Nature | 4 min read
894 hours The time I should allow to get from Londinium to Rome in my ox cart (not counting the Rutupiae-Gesoriacum sea crossing), according to the Itiner-e Roman-road route-planner.
Scientists have created the most detailed maps yet of how our brains differentiate from stem cells during embryonic development and early life. In a collection of five papers, they tracked hundreds of thousands of early brain cells in the cortices of humans and mice, and captured with unprecedented precision the molecular events that give rise to a mixture of neurons and supporting cells. “It's really the initial first draft of any ‘cell atlases’ for the developing brain,” says brain scientist Hongkui Zeng, a co-author of two of the papers. Researchers can now “mine the data” to study neurological conditions such as autism and schizophrenia, says Zeng.
Nature | 6 min read
Features & opinion
Only an estimated 3% of US state legislators have backgrounds in science, engineering or healthcare — but that might be about to change. One group that specializes in getting scientists into office says that it has seen applications skyrocket. Some physicians and scientists who are running say they have been inspired by issues such as pandemic-era health protections and — perhaps ironically — the politicization of science and public health. “Politics came for us,” says paediatrician Annie Andrews. “You can’t fight bad politics by staying apolitical.”
The Atlantic | 7 min read
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