How a boy from the Bronx unearthed the workings of the Universe

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Scientists are still taking stock of the data they gathered on how the immune system reacted to SARS-CoV-2, but four lessons have already emerged. It became clear that the immune response against the virus relied heavily on T cells, not just antibodies. The body’s early-warning alarm, the innate immune response, rings out across the whole body, not just around the site of infection. Antibodies and T cells differ sharply from tissue to tissue. Finally, researchers have learnt that a variety of factors, such as SARS-CoV-2 hiding dormant in the body, might contribute to long COVID.

Nature | 6 min read

Leaders at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory, will introduce financial incentives for academic publishers to adopt open science policies. Currently, CERN partners with 11 particle-physics journals to publish work at no cost to authors, in exchange for bulk payments. Under the new scheme, CERN will tweak those payments so that the publishers with open policies, such as use of public peer review and linking research to data sets, will be paid more than those without. “Particle physics is large, international, highly complex, highly dynamic. Openness is the only really effective way of practising science in the discipline,” says Kamran Naim, head of open science at CERN.

Nature | 5 min read

Dinosaurs might have first evolved near the equator in Gondwana — a portion of the supercontinent Pangaea that today exists as northern South America and northern Africa. Researchers used computer modelling to analyze three proposed evolutionary trees, based on characteristics such as the ability to generate their own body heat. “These specialized traits didn’t appear overnight,” says paleontologist Joel Heath, who co-authored the research. “However, we haven’t yet found the transitional fossils that show how these changes happened.” The model accounts for gaps in the fossil record by factoring in the likelihood that plenty of fossils have yet to be discovered — especially in difficult-to-explore places.

Reuters | 6 min read

Reference: Current Biology paper

Features & opinion

The Avengers of research integrity — a group of 10 sleuths collectively responsible for uncovering thousands of problematic publications — have assembled to share advice on how to tackle paper mills. First, know your enemy, they say. Studies are needed to examine where paper mills are operating and the fields they’re targeting.. Publishers and editors should brush up on the telltale signs of papers submitted from mills, and guilty authors must be held to account with penalties such as temporary bans from receiving funding. “A structural shift in science is needed, if we are to wipe out commercialized fraud,” they write.

Nature | 13 min read

Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg’s “splendidly readable” memoir shows that he was “much more than a great scientist”, writes reviewer Graham Farmelo. Weinberg’s A Life in Physics, published posthumously late last year, chronicles his life from his childhood in New York City during the Great Depression through to his status as a grandmaster of quantum field theory, featuring “neither unexplained jargon nor even a single equation”, says Farmelo. More than a book about physics, the memoir paints a full picture of Weinberg, known as ‘Big Steve’ by his students. As Farmelo puts it, “his appetite for life was nothing short of gargantuan”.

Nature | 8 min read

Unsolicited job applications can work: according to Nature’s hiring-in-science survey, 43% of laboratory leaders think that cold e-mails are an effective way for candidates to get noticed, if you do them right. Here are some things that hirers in academia and industry say they’re looking for:

• Knowledge of the workplace and research

• Concise and professional in tone

• A message personalized to the recipient

• The applicant is known to a colleague or peer

Nature | 6 min read

Where I work

Palaeobotanist Mihai Emilian Popa spends around three months each year in the field, collecting fossils from across Romania. “Even metro stations in Bucharest have fossils,” he says. “A good example is Politehnica station, which was built in 1983. The authorities used limestone slabs from the Apuseni Mountains to decorate its floor. These slabs are red with white patches, which turned out to be fossils of late Cretaceous bivalves and other prehistoric beings. They are from a former reef ecosystem that is about 70 million years old, and people are walking over them every day … I think that this station really deserves the status of a museum.” (Nature | 3 min read)

On Friday, Leif Penguinson was splashing around in a waterfall in Danska Fall nature reserve in Sweden. Did you find the penguin? When you’re ready, here’s the answer.

Thanks for reading,

Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing

With contributions by Jacob Smith

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